As summer seems like a distant memory, the start up to the school year at Carson Graham Secondary has been going smoothly. With any high school, there are a number of activities and initiatives taking place that deserve pause, reflection and appreciation.
On Wednesday, October 23, the Carson Graham staff met as an entire group as part of our International Baccalaureate (IB) collaborative planning time. As an IB World school, Carson Graham offers both the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP) to its students. Over the past 16 months, we have been working on an intensive review to ensure that the programme standards and practices are being maintained. Equally important, it has allowed us to carefully review and assess our practices identifying major achievements and areas that require further development. On December 5 & 6, we will be hosting an external IB team for a Middle Years Program programme evaluation visit. The evaluation will partially consist of conversations and interviews with both district and school administration, staff, parents and students – offering a comprehensive review.
Back to our Wednesday morning IB staff development, I was able to take the opportunity to meet individual departments with our MYP coordinator. Now in my second year as principal at Carson Graham, I remarked to our coordinator how impressed I was with the initiative, organization and collaboration displayed by our teaching staff. At the heart of these department meetings included colleagues reviewing their curricular unit and lesson plans ensuring alignment and identifying changes for improvement. With our Parent Advisory Council’s continued support for this time, the dedication of our staff continues to solidify and their collaborative efforts directly translate into a better learning environment for our students. Unquestionably, this opportunity for additional collaboration is invaluable.
Later at lunch, I took the opportunity to meet our Grad Council at their weekly meeting where school announcements or lack thereof is a topic of concern for our Grade 12 leaders. School PA announcements continue to be ‘hit and miss’ in terms of providing effective updates to the school population, however, once removed it was surprising to see how many students wanted them back. Interestingly, it became very clear that it was not about the actual PA announcements but rather having an effective communication tool for the many daily events that take place in a high school. In a effort to empower our grad council, I challenged them to not simply revert back to status quo but seek out new and better ways to communicate to the student body. In the meantime, I was most impressed by the Carson Graham grad council and our ‘Radio Carson’ group in their ability to negotiate a compromise with me that has thus far made our announcements more efficient and streamlined than ever! With our new portal system, we are excited to post announcements on each student’s electronic dashboard or homepage which they can access via their student login.
Later that afternoon, Carson Graham hosted our Family of Schools (FOS) meeting for our respective school planning councils. Our FOS includes Carson Graham and its seven elementary feeder schools in which school teams engage in collaborative planning meetings throughout the school year. This particular meeting emphasized a review of our current school goals and achievements prior to planning for the 2014-15 school plan. Of particular interest is the fact that all eight schools remain committed to our 7/8 transition school goal understanding the importance of our K to 12 continuum.
Finally, that evening we hosted our first meeting with our parent focus group that will be participating in our MYP evaluation visit mentioned earlier in this post. This great group of parent volunteers offered some very positive feedback on our growth over the past six years acknowledging some big changes that have made Carson Graham an attractive school of choice. Moreover, our parents offered additional suggestions for continued growth.
Let me end by saying, I feel honored to work with such a great community of staff, parents and students.