Welcome back for another exciting school year. Thank you for your ongoing support. Without a strong partnership with the caregivers of our students, quality learning is impossible. We want to help parents and guardians be as active in their students’ education as possible. Thank you for your time and efforts up to now, and we look forward to helping you feel more confident in helping your students’ achieve the best they can.
There has been a great deal of time spent on Kitasoo Community School’s COVID-19 response plan. Please refer to this document with any COVID-19 questions or concerns.
This school year, our grades 1 through 12 teachers have been reformatting their yearly plans. They are doing so as a response to our new format. We challenged our teachers to offer only two courses at one time. This results in 5 terms throughout the school year. We created our response plan for the likely event that KCS must offer schooling remotely throughout this school year. By offering two courses, we are setting up our students, families and staff to complete the courses remotely. We understand that the changes, while necessary, will take some time to feel comfortable. Thank you for your patience as we all adjust to this new format.
To further help students and families learn, our teachers have been summarizing their courses into “I Can…” Statements. These summaries help students and parents know the expectations at the end of a lesson, unit and term. It is our goal to meet the requirements of the B.C. Curriculum by providing learning opportunities in the classroom, on the land, and with family members. Learning and education do not only exist at school. Our students are learning and developing at all times, and we want to encourage parents and families to collaborate with teachers and staff to meet the learning needs of our students.
Another exciting item KCS has been diligently working on is replacing zero/zero and read with a kid with another practice to honour student development. KCS, thanks to the hard work of Lorna Fraser, who recently completed her graduate studies at VIU, has developed a set of 4 values that we would like to model, honour and recognize in our students at the end of every term. They include: Gugwilx’ ya’ansk (Intergenerational Knowledge), Loomsk (Respect), Sityaaw (Reciprocity), and Sagayt K’uuim Goot (interconnectedness)
Together we can help the children become healthy learners, confident in their reading, writing and math skills, and mature to live their lives to uphold Kitasoo/Xai’Xais values. We appreciate your support, and for those parents who want their children to do more work or reading at home, be sure to call the school and talk to the teacher to get books or whatever resources you need!
We are all teachers of the leaders of tomorrow,
Justin Magnuson, Principal