Blog Posts

Welcome back to school McMillan Families!

I hope everyone had a wonderful spring break, and whether you stayed close to home, or were able to enjoy a vacation somewhere else, I hope you are well rested and refreshed. This term brings some new "firsts" for this year and the staff at McMillan are looking forward to working together with you to make the most our of this last term we have. Here are a few updates that everyone should be aware of;

I visited the temporary Upper Sumas Elementary site this week to see how the staff and students were adjusting to their “new” environment (For those of you who have been around as long as I have been, this was the old Abby Elementary School site). As I approached the front doors, I saw a class of students standing in circle in a little garden patch. I made eye contact with the teacher, Ms. Marr, who invited me to join their circle. She told me that they had just finished sharing what they were grateful for and invited me to do the same.

With all that has transpired in this country and in Europe over the last few weeks, it is easy to slip into despair. However, when you work with and in service of children it is both difficult and unhealthy to live in that space. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with a group of eight students from Robert Bateman Secondary last week, and true to form, they not only affirmed the importance of our work, but lifted my spirits about the fundamental importance of our ongoing journey to deepen student learning experiences in our schools.  

I have a hope that one day we will not have to celebrate Black History Month, that our society, discourse and school curricula will be redolent with the contributions and experiences of Black Canadians, that Black students in our schools will be proud of who they are, that they will see their history and culture in the ecology of their school experiences, and that they will not suffer the legacy of prejudice and racism as their previous generation had.

Happy January! Well, what a start to 2022 we have had! At this point, after a very busy week, I took a step back, and enjoyed some visits to the classroom that gave me a fresh perspective on the amazing McMillan community of staff and students. I'm so glad I took the time, and I wanted to share what I saw with you.

Over the last few years, it has been my practice to post a “Top 3” January blog related to our educational transformation efforts and ways these ideas might be manifested in the coming twelve months.

When I was recently asked to share with some of my colleagues how our school district was handling the challenges related to the recent rainstorms and flooding, I could not help but reflect on the numerous calamities we have experienced as a community over the last decade. In addition to the pandemic and disastrous flooding of the last three weeks, our community has endured more than its fair share of tragedies. We have lost more students from a range of misfortune too difficult to recount here.

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. 

Hello McMillan Families,

From my principal's chair in my principal's office, I have a lovely, sunshiney view, and today could feel like a very good day. But that is just the surface, and I am reminded of how everything is not always as it seems, as well as how quickly things can change.

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.