St. John's Academy Newsletter - Dec 4

December 4, 2020

St. John's Academy Shawnigan Lake

In This Issue

• Head of School's message

• Victoria Times Colonist article

• Mr. Josh's elementary class

• St. John's Academy's Interact club

• Positive Discipline

• Physical and Health Education

• St. John's Academy's photos

• Upcoming important dates

• Next week's menu

• Notices

• Contact Us

A message from our Head of School

Dear Parents and Students,

Parent Teacher Meetings

Thank you to all of the parents and students that took part in our virtual parents’ evening on

Wednesday and Thursday. I hope you enjoyed speaking with your child/ren’s teachers and feel the

meetings were constructive. Please do not hesitate to contact either the school or individual

teachers if you would like a follow up meeting for any reason whether it be a technical glitch or you

have specific concerns where you need further feedback. It seems the students were involved in

most of the meetings, which is very much appreciated, thank you.

FACES

We also held a FACES meeting yesterday, which involved a lot of productive discussion on how we

can further develop our school. The minutes are available on our web-site or can be found by

clicking Dec 3 FACES minutes. All parents are welcome to attend these meetings which will be held

online through Teams for the foreseeable future. The next meeting is Thursday January

14 at 6:00 PM. Please e-mail Amy at amy.heffring@stjohnsacademy.ca if you wish to be sent an invitation to the meeting.

COVID 19 Updates

Upon our request, we had a visit from the Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA) earlier in the

week where we asked them to review our operations. The feedback was very encouraging.

Following this meeting, our kitchen staff are now wearing masks throughout the day and we are

treating our Admin building as an office requiring that people wear masks when in the

building. Although not officially mandated, we are encouraging students to wear masks in

any common areas throughout the day. As per usual, we continue to mandate the wearing of masks

on the bus. Any student not wearing a mask will be reminded &/or provided with a mask. After a

warning, if a student is found to not be wearing a mask on the bus, they will no longer be able to use

the bus service for one week in the first instance. Fortunately, we have not had to follow through

with these consequences thus far and it is our hope we will not have to do this, as we are all doing our part to keep one another safe.

House Leaders

I had the pleasure of meeting with our House Leaders and Co-Leaders yesterday for

our fortnightly meeting. They are doing a brilliant job of arranging an action-packed last day of term

for all of our students. Students are allowed to wear holiday sweaters and hats at school for

the remainder of the term and the last day will be a non-uniform day where students are encouraged to wear festive, holiday outfits.

Photos

For some strange reason, the school photographers informed us that they do not take class photos

due to camera issues. So, when mentioning this to my Advisees last week, Marnie De Montford

offered to take them for us. She completed all of the class photos today and they look

brilliant. Thank you for helping us out Marnie. I’m sure you’ll agree when you see them that Marnie

has a special talent for taking brilliant photographs.

Mr. Dave Pontich

Head of School

The Times Colonist article about the Olympians training in

Shawnigan Lake- link below

Canadian paddlers hope to mine Tokyo Olympic gold from

Shawnigan Lake | Times Colonist

Mr. Josh and the Grade 4/5 class

The Grade 4/5 class has been continuing with our Wilderness Wednesdays, braving the cold and rain

to spend one day outside each week. We have been fortunate to continue our relationship with

O.U.R. Ecovillage with regular trips to their site where students have had the chance to feed the

animals, plant new trees, make apple juice and re-locate chickens to a new coop. We hope to keep up our visits in the New Year.

Our class has also been fortunate to correspond with a Grade 5 class in Bermuda. We have already

done a video call with them to learn about their island, and have now connected with them on our

blogs. Students at both schools can write blog posts, read each other’s writing and leave comments

or questions for the other class to answer. Our class recently created small handmade Christmas cards for each of their students and mailed them off this week.

It has been exciting to have our Canadian canoe and kayak athletes around campus. We see them

quite regularly heading up to the fitness centre for their daily training. Hopefully our students

recognize the hard work and dedication that goes into reaching the highest level of their sport. To

celebrate and welcome the athletes to our school, the students in Grade 4/5 have been colouring

and decorating posters for each of the athletes to be displayed around the dining hall. One of

athletes was so pleased with his poster that he donated one of his Team Canada competition jerseys to the school that will be displayed above his poster in the dining hall.

If you walk into our class area you will also take note of some large body outlines taped up around

the walls. We have been wrapping up our body systems unit in Science by creating posters of the

body parts and organs that make up the skeletal, digestive, circulatory or respiratory systems.

In Social Studies we have been exploring Canadian government and how they impact our lives. We

learned about majority rule and consensus, and students were challenged to reach consensus on

whether we should have a four-day school week that has Wednesday or Friday off. There was some

good debate and in the end the class agreed that having an extra day off on Friday would be better than Wednesday. The chance to have sleepovers for multiple nights was a big selling point!

Students are excited for Christmas holidays and many have been taking advantage of the freedom to

wear Christmas sweaters and Santa hats around school. Although Christmas is still three weeks away, the cooler weather has certainly reminded us that the holidays are fast approaching!

Mr. Josh

Grades 4 & 5 Teacher

Interact Club

Interact Club is a leadership club that is sponsored by the Rotary Club, a club started by business

leaders around the world to make their communities a better place. The Interact Club would give

students a chance to work with the local community on projects or other ideas to make the Cowichan

Valley better.

The Interact Club led a candy cane gram activity last week and collected nearly $200 that they were

able to donate to Toys Toiletries & Toques an organization that gives to the 5 food banks in the

Cowichan Valley.

Positive Discipline training for St. John's Academy staff

As part of our commitment to Positive Discipline, some colleagues have begun training to become

‘Positive Discipline (PD) for Parents’ workshop leaders. This training, lead by Joy Marchese - author

and Positive Discipline leader, is endowing St. John's Academy with a group of teachers who will educate our community about the best ways to support and guide our students, and your chil dren.

Positive Discipline is about being kind and firm, giving mutual respect, involving young people in

decisions at school and home and focusing on solutions instead of punishments. The philosophy

focuses on connecting with young people before we correct them and the approach is not a quick-fix but is a long-term investment in our learners.

Here at St. John's, your child's Advisor has been working all school year to build in Positive Discipline

routines. Ask your son, daughter, or dependent about their classroom jobs, classroom agreements,

or classroom meetings. These are all practices based on the philosophy of Positive Discipline.

In the New Year, you can expect to hear from us about opportunities for the parent community to

receive PD training. Some of you may have attended our PD seminar last year (in September 2019

with Karine Quarez) and you might be using some of these strategies at home. We would love to

hear how things are working (or not!) in your household - please email Mr. Nick or Mr. Dave if you have feedback, success stories, or need support!

Our Strategic Improvement Plan incorporates Positive Discipline and we have a milestone that the

entire school community is implementing these strategies and practices by June of 2023. We have a

lot of learning, teaching, and guiding to do before that date, but the efforts are worth it as we are investing in our most precious assets - your children.

Mr. Nick.

Director of Students

Physical and Health Education with Mr. Travis

Mount Tzouhalem hike with the Grade 8 class

The past couple of weeks, Physical and Health Education classes have been busy with a number of

hikes and some bowling trips. Students have also had the opportunity to inquire into particular sports

through research and practice and then demonstrate their understanding of those sports by planning

and leading a drill to a group of their peers.

Recently, students were asked to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the sport of

volleyball and have been consistently showing improvement in their volleyball skills and gameplay in

class. Next week students will complete their second round of fitness testing and they will also be

asked to reflect on the SMART fitness goals they created in September. They will be making

refinements and changes to these. Students are encouraged to step up the volume and amount of

exercise time spent on these at home as we enter into the holidays.

Mr. Travis

Head of Outdoor Education and PE

Bowling with PE 9

St. John's Academy's Photos

Lauren and her grandma knit hats to see, to raise money for the

Mill Bay Food bank

Art 6 - Christmas card service project

Art 7 Christmas card service project

Art 8 Christmas card service project

Art 10 Christmas card service project

Art 11 & 12 Art Installation

Math with Ms. Julie

Class photos on the railway tracks, thank you Marnie for being our

photographer!

On Friday, Grade 10 student, Marnie, took class photos on the railway tracks behind our school. Final

class photos will be ready after winter break. marnie_just.photos Instagram handle.

Mr. Josh's super cool drone shots of our campus!

Upcoming important dates

Thursday, December 10 - Grades 4-6 skating from 9:30-10:30 am, must bring their own helmet

Friday, December 11 - Last day of classes before winter break

Monday, December 14 - Friday, January 1 - Winter vacation

Noon December 24 - January 1 - Administration Office closed

Monday, January 4 - Classes resume

Next week's menu

Monday

Juice/ Chocolate milk/ Fruit cup/ Bacon/ Eggs/ Waffles/ Tatter tots

Tuesday

Turkey soup/ Hot dogs and veggie dogs/ Smokies and Bratwurst)/ Veggie chili/ Salad s

Wednesday

Minestrone soup/ Spaghetti with meat sauce or veggie sauce/ Steamed broccoli/ Chicken strips/

Caesar salad

Thursday

Roasted red pepper and tomato soup/ Grilled cheese/ Waffle fries/ Green salad and macaroni salad

Friday

Seasoned chicken breasts/ Stuffing/ Mashed potatoes/ Peas and carrots/ Gravy/ Cranberries/

Dessert bars

Notices

School fleeces will arrive by mid-December, apologizes for the delay.

Contact Us

St. John's Academy Shawnigan Lake

2371 Shawnigan Lake Road

Shawnigan Lake, BC, V0R 2W5

250-220-4888

info@stjohnsacademy.ca

admissions@stjohnsacademy.ca

Visit us on the web at shawniganlake.stjohnsacademy.ca

School Video: St. John's Academy