Wednesday 5 December 2012

Empathy at Christmas Time...

 The students in Grade 1G are very lucky to be vertical mentors with Miss Hadland's Grade 6 class. Together, our classes challenged ourselves to bring in enough donations to pack at least 20 shoe boxes to send away to deserving children across the world. Well, we are very proud of ourselves, because we actually brought in enough donations to fill 24 shoe boxes with an assortment of items.

We filled them with small toys, school supplies, soap, toothbrushes and hard candies. We also donated $168.00 to cover the cost of shipping the boxes. This project is part of our school wide efforts to increase empathy in our school. When I explained to the grade ones that what was in the shoe boxes might be the only thing that some children will receive....one student said, "we are like Santa's elves," and another one said, "that's good because he is way more busier than us!" Take a peek at our efforts.

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Baby Taye's First Visit!


Well, today was a historic day at Glendale Sciences and Technology School....it was our first baby visit for our Roots of Empathy Program.  Mrs. Grainger's grade one class was joined by baby Taye and his mom Lea.  The kids were asking all morning..."When is baby Taye coming?...is that before or after lunch recess?"  They all had noticed the new pictures of the baby that were on our bulletin board.  All the children were commenting about how cute he was.

Finally...after what the kids call "lunch recess" the moment we had all waited for arrived!  All of the students gathered around the green ROE blanket and began singing "Hello baby Taye, how are you? Hello baby Taye, how are you? How are you today?" Baby Taye entered the room in all his glory.  He was dressed up for the occasion in his plaid shirt and vest.  The children all 'oohed' and  'aahed'.

Monday 3 December 2012

Our Glendale Stories...


To celebrate the initiation of our Empathy ReBoot Project, we've decided to get to know each other a little bit better. Today, three bulletin board displays went up highlighting the learning stories of staff members in the form of My Story posters. Our plan is to display the staff posters for one week allowing kids to see and read them, and to provide examples to work from as they build their own posters in the coming weeks and months. Next week the first batch of student posters will go up, and every week thereafter so each member of our school family has a personal poster displayed before the end of the year. Glendale staff members have done an excellent job filling the halls with their posters, and they're already generating lots of interest.

The idea behind the posters is really quite simple. We all have a story: the parts already written; the parts we're writing now and the parts we have yet to write... the ones with all the happy endings. Each individual child needs to feel a sense of ownership and purpose in his/her own learning. Creating these posters provides everyone an opportunity to reflect on their learning places... where they've come from; where they're at now and where they want to move toward in the future. Children enter school already five years into their learning stories meaning we have a lot of catching up to do!

Please take the time as you visit the school to look at the posters to begin learning our stories. This will be the first step toward creating an empathetic school; one where people care and know about each other.