Blog Posts

On the heels of our decision to open some of our schools last week, several high school students wrote a version of this letter below to me:

Dear Dr. Godden,

On behalf of several students in the Abby school district, we would like to request that you close the school district completely for the remainder of the week as well as thank you for your prompt decision making in this unfortunate situation. 

As a way of keeping our focus on the teaching and learning in our schools, I have drawn a distinction between the “work”, our primary focus on providing for the educational needs of our students, and the “weather”, the conditions under which we do this work. In uncertain times if we are not careful, we sometimes confuse the two. While it is clearly important to ensure that we are following all the public health protocols, caution must be extended to ensure that this does not become the primary focus of our discourse and practice.

As we navigate the fourth wave of the pandemic, with an eye to post-pandemic teaching and learning, it has dawned on me that two of the lessons learned from the pandemic might be at odds with each other. With physical distancing being one of the best ways to keep ourselves and kids safe from COVID-19, we saw many classrooms migrate outdoors, at least for part of their instructional experience. This was sage advice given to us by public health, and many classroom teachers were all over it.

This will be a year to remember. I think all of us are happy to put 2020-21 in the rearview mirror. While we did a truly heroic job of navigating the pandemic last year, I think it’s fair to say that none of us wants to do it again. But let’s take a minute to reflect on our efforts. Not only did we live through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, but we were also able to keep our schools open, take care of each other and – most importantly – fulfill our mission to provide the best possible education to our students.

Over the past school year, the staff at Rick Hansen have been hard a work creating course-based Learning Maps.

With the recent Ministry announcement that our schools will be returning to Stage 1 (“near normal”) operations for the coming year, I cannot help but reflect on the enormity of what we have accomplished this year in our province, and particularly here in Abbotsford. Put simply, our staff – all of them – have done a phenomenal job of keeping our schools open and functioning during a global pandemic, the likes of which none of us have ever experienced. This is worthy of celebration and profound gratitude.

In this week's installment of our Equity for Humanity Project - take a quick peek at the work of various educators around the district at different levels as they tackle what Equity means in their brave space. 

Over the last year, educators across the Abbosford School District have been part of the equity discussion.  It is our pleasure to highlight their work in our Equity for Humanity Project.   The word "equity" has many different connotations when applied to the framework of education.  It has been our joy to witness teachers entering into brave spaces and navigating the challenge of providing equity with the classroom and beyond.  

Take a quick peek at what we've been working on.... 

Kudos to our own Pari Khanna, Grade 11, who took on the community issue of Abbotsford Homeless in her leadership PBL unit.  As as result of her driving question, she put together 55 care packages for the Salvation Army.  We'd like to thank the local business community for answering her calls and donating merchandise and funds in order to supoport the  project. 

Kudos to Jeevan Grewal who for her District Dogwood Scholarship looked around her campus and decided the tackle the Torch logo on our upper field.  The Torch was overgrown with grass and other weeds.  Jeevan investigated a number of different options to bring the Torch back to life from gravel, to concrete, or different vegetation.  Her researched looked at cost analysis, time to design and implement and environmental impact.  In the end, she decided on various perennials to bring in the colours of the torch year after year.  Last week, she began the large task of w