Ms. Chan's Class Blog – Page 19 – Working Together – To better ourselves, each other, and the world around us
 

Awesome Week #2!

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Dear families,

The week flew by! They say, “time flies when you’re having fun!” and fun we definitely had! There seems to be a time thief in our classroom. I love how they are often surprised that it’s already lunch or it’s already home time. We are SO grateful to have met almost all of you during our Parents as Partners conferences! Thank you SO much for filling out the questionnaire and for sharing your expertise about your child so we can better support them and their learning. We were happy to hear that they are enjoying coming to school!

Social Emotional Learning

Last week, we learned more about what it means to have a growth mindset. We continued to work on our comfort zone circles too. Hoping that once they are all done, this will be their first post in Spaces (our ePortfolios)!

READ MORE !

Dear families,

We are so excited to have spent an awesome first week together getting to know each other, setting up routines, and having fun while learning!

Our Beliefs

Thank you to all of you who joined us for our Meet Your Teachers night last Wednesday! Here is a recap of what was shared about our beliefs:

  • We strive for a warm, safe, and welcoming classroom culture that is filled with meaningful relationships, engaging learning experiences, and joy. We want all children to feel loved, seen, valued, heard, and appreciated. We foster collaboration and a mindset of working together by developing teamwork skills. We are better together and stronger together.
  • Relationships are gifts! They are key to learning about ourselves and each other. We believe in fostering love, kindness, gratitude, and positivity through every interaction. Every single ATOMIC interaction is an opportunity to uplift others to help brighten their day and make our environment a more positive one. Each ATOMIC interaction is foundational to building better relationships.
  • In all of our learning, children begin at different levels and we do our best to help them grow from where they are. We plan activities that will encourage them to be in their stretch zone because being challenged is where they grow most, not by staying in their comfort zones.
    • We started learning about the differences in comfort zones, stretch zones, and not yet zones last week with a fun activity physically moving around to understand the differences. If you’d like to learn more about stretch zones, read an article by me titled A Simple Way I Show Students They’re Growing Every Day published on Teacher2Teacher. Many parents and students have commented on this at the end of the year as an important life lesson.
  • We want to help students discover their strengths, values, beliefs, and how they shine. All students have leadership qualities already. We foster these skills through opportunities and by noticing, naming, and nurturing leadership skills we see. If you’re interested to learn more, I wrote an article about the Gift of Leadership.
  • Believe in students until they believe in themselves…then believe in them more. This is so important in building their self-confidence. Children who believe in themselves feel more safe and confident to take more risks and challenge themselves too. We foster a belief that they are their own loudest cheerleader!

Communication

To learn more about which teacher is in the classroom and when during the week, visit our About Our Class page. More information about Scholastic Reading Club can also be found here.

You will be receiving updates on what is going on in our classroom via blog posts. When there is a new post, you will receive an email notification.

Students will also be reflecting and sharing their learning through SpacesEDU, which is a digital portfolio. More information will come at a later date.

Reading

Your child has an EPIC account through our class. Our class code is ycr9510 (think, you can read 95-10 to help you remember). This accessible anytime between 7 am to 3 pm. They have access to over 40,000 books, audiobooks, and learning videos. So if your child is at home sick for the day, feel free to have them read on Epic if they are feeling up to it!

Reminders

  • Please fill out the Parents as Partners – Getting to Know Your Child form before we meet. Thank you for the ones we already received and for your time to fill out.
  • Please sign up for your appointment to meet with us on September 21 or 22. For more information on how, please check out the Gilmore website for specific instructions.
  • Join us at the Gilmore Community BBQ this Thursday, September 22 from 2-5pm!
  • Every Thursday morning, there is a great opportunity to meet with Mr. Greenwood, our Community Coordinator, and other parents for coffee, snacks, and conversation! Come into the Community Room when you are free on a Thursday from 9 to 10am. All are welcome!
  • Students will be presenting their All About Me bags next week. Please have them bring in their items on Tuesday. Thank you for helping your child prepare a few sentences for each item.
  • Please pay for planners on School Cash Online. Thank you!

Thank you so much for reading this post. We aim to have weekly updates so look for the email notification on the weekend.

We appreciate you for all of your support! Anytime you have questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. We are looking forward to working as partners in your child’s education.

So excited to see how the year unfolds as our hearts connect each day!

Gratefully, Ms. Chan & Mrs. Paulich

Not a Farewell

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Dear Div. 6 parents and students,

This will be the last blog post sent to you before you join your new teacher and classmates on Monday morning. As I sit here reflecting on an incredible year of growth filled with love, fun, and laughter, I can’t help but have such bittersweet feelings…sad I will not be teaching them anymore but joyful and proud they worked so hard that their wings grew bigger and stronger to help them fly higher in life. They are well on their way to continue to build a strong relationship with themselves as people who know their strengths, values, beliefs, and how they shine!

All last year, I shared how much we enjoyed being together. During our last community circle on Thursday, everyone had an opportunity to share what they are grateful for our class one last time. They shared such heartwarming reasons. Please feel free to ask your child what they said and what they heard others say.

These mixed feelings made me think about a popular quote by Dr. Seuss: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

I will always have such fond memories and I believe your children will too.

When you think of our year together,
My hope is that you will SMILE,
Feel the warmth in your heart because of the LOVE we shared,
And remember how much FUN we had as we enjoyed each other’s company.

 

Thank you for trusting us with your child every day and for your continued support all year. It was a true pleasure being partners in your child’s learning.

This isn’t a farewell. It’s a “can’t wait to see you again soon”! As I shared at the end of last year, I am your child’s forever teacher and will be here, happy to support you and them when needed.

Have the most wonderful and exciting fresh start to a brand new class! Welcome to grade 5 and 6!

Miss you already!! Please come visit!

With much love and gratitude, Ms. Chan ❤️

Dear families,

Wow! How did time pass so quickly to find us at the end of June already? I have had a number of kids come to me to say that it’s hard to believe we are at the end of the year. I feel the same way! I always find this time to be bittersweet. The relationships we build are so incredibly meaningful to me. I love and adore your children. I have given them my heart this year and they will always have a piece of it.

As I was reflecting, it made me think of the chorus in the song by Phil Collins: You’ll Be in My Heart

‘Cause you’ll be in my heart
Yes, you’ll be in my heart
From this day on
Now and forever more
You’ll be in my heart
No matter what they say
You’ll be here in my heart
Always
Always

I have been listening to this song on repeat this weekend as I was reflecting on our special year together.
SO many fond memories.
SO many heartwarming gift of words from your children.
SO many times my heart was touched by their love and care.

I feel so blessed and grateful to be their teacher as we learned about each other and learned together this year. We not only shared our stories, we connected our hearts.

The community we built together is a strong one and we had a great year together! It’s one thing to hear me say it but another to hear from your children. Here’s some feedback from them:

  • This year was a GREAT year!
  • This year it felt like the best year I’ve ever had! I loved all the reading time, passion projects, iPads/laptops, friends, hugs, and cushion time! Our class is a great one because we did community circle, and I think it helped us get to know one another.
  • It was really fun being in your class! I was really happy with what we got to do with you!
  • I have really enjoyed our school year with you and Mrs. Paulich! I am upset that it has to end. This community was great with you and Mrs. Paulich! Thanks a lot for this amazing school year!
  • I enjoyed being in your class this year. I think that our community is kind, fair, and safe because we have community circle.
  • This year has been great! I’ve learned so many different things throughout this year! Our community was so great in so many different ways! We each support each other in many different ways.
  • What an amazing year! I have really enjoyed the school year. I had a great school year because I learned so many different things.
  • I feel very happy because this was the best year at Gilmore. It made me emotional. I’m very sad that it’s almost the end of the year!! It went so fast!! The community was a great one because it was fun and joyful.
  • I loved this year with you and Mrs. Paulich because you are both kind.
  • My thoughts on the year are positive because I feel I had a good year.
  • I think the year was great. We did lots of fun things and learned a lot. What made our class community great is that everyone was positive and happy.
  • It was a great year. I really liked it. Passion Project is a really fun thing to do and I wish I could do it every year! Community Circle really helps people to get to know each other a lot more.
  • I think this year was my favourite year out of all six years and I learned a lot. I had a fun year. This year was great because everyone is nice.
  • I think my most memorable thing this year was getting to know everybody. This year was the best year yet!!
  • I really love being in you and Mrs. Paulich’s class. I feel very happy.
  • I thought this year was really fun and exciting. Community Circle definitely made our community stronger.
  • I really like all of my classmates and teachers.
  • I have had a great time in this class so I wish that this year would never end.
  • I had an AMAZING year!

I also asked them for suggestions on what would make our community better too midway and at the end of the year. I value feedback. I am always learning to be better every day by learning from other educators around the world. I love to be active on various social media platforms, listen to podcasts, read articles and books, blog, and reflect on my own teaching and learning. It is my passion to continuously learn! If you have any for me, please feel free to share. We are so grateful for your continued support all year. Thank you for sharing your beautiful children with us. What a gift it was to be their teacher!

You may have already heard that next year, I am blessed to teach upper primary again! I began my career teaching grade 2/3 for 12 years before working on the Staff Development team in Learning Technologies. In the last four years, I have taught grades 1-5 so I am excited to return to teaching a younger age group. For those of you who have younger children, I hope we have the pleasure to work with you again as partners!

Every year, I share with all of my students that once they have been in my class and once they have had a piece of my heart, they will BE in my heart always. I will be their forever teacher. I come with a lifetime guarantee. 🙂 They can come to me for love and support whenever they need it. I still have students I taught in my very first year of teaching in 1998 that I am blessed and grateful to keep in touch with. I am here to support you as well. Please feel free to reach out should you need support or have questions in the future. I support all families too! 🙂

So, what made this year so awesome? It’s the relationships. It’s all about relationships and the connections we made. It starts with the relationship they have with themselves, finding their strengths, understanding themselves, believing in themselves, and then the relationships with others and their teachers. My heart is full of gratitude for the relationships we built…together.

My deepest hope is that I have made a big impact in your child’s life (and learning journey) and an imprint on their heart…that they felt seen, valued, heard, and appreciated through every single atomic interaction we shared.

This is what I live by daily:

I am blessed & grateful to be a teacher.
I am blessed & grateful to be a learner alongside students and parents.
I am blessed & grateful to work at Gilmore Community School.
I am blessed & grateful to work in Burnaby.

To all of my students, thank you for an incredible year of love, laughter, and learning:

You’ll be in my heart
No matter what they say
You’ll be here in my heart
Always
Always

With sincerest gratitude and with all of my heart, Ms. Chan ❤️

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