Blog Posts

Over the last six months, our secondary schools have launched B.C.’s first-ever Student Community of Practice for Equity (SCOPE). Fifty-two grade eleven students, with teachers and school administration, are exploring a fundamental inquiry: What does it look like to center student voice and leadership through ongoing cycles of listening, uncovering, reimagining and, ultimately, moving forward with action?

Our secondary schools in the Abbotsford School District are in the initial stages of reimagining how high school should look and feel. Robert Bateman Secondary School has been working through a process with two student groups. Six grade twelve students started our student voice work last spring.  We have a second group of six grade eleven students working on this project this year, with teaching staff joining.

Student voice is an initiative started at Abbotsford Senior Secondary in 2021. Student Voice hosts students from all different backgrounds that encompass the school’s demographics. These students meet every Thursday to delve into school and community-based topics that they identify. Previous topics have included rewriting the school dress code, organizing a better way for grade 9 orientation, and Indigenizing school announcements.  

Student success is a focus of the Abbotsford School District. The desire for student success permeates through all levels, from senior management to building administrators, classroom and support teachers, education assistants, and students. At Abbotsford Traditional School (ATS), we have a reputation for preparing our students for the expectations and rigours of university–academic student success. This is one kind of student success. Another kind of student success is accomplishing academic achievement in parallel to student well-being.

The teaching and support staff at Rick Hansen are actively pursuing their commitment to student achievement and understand that getting a pulse on the mindset of the current teaching climate is an essential factor in this pursuit. As every teacher in our school community is trained in Inquiry-Based Learning, they know that IBL is the best vehicle to not only hear from as many of their colleagues as possible but also to create in-house ideas, strategies, and solutions for everyone can buy into.

Two months into our new school year, we are well underway in intentionally making Yale a more equitable, culturally inclusive, and responsive school through the lens of equity, anti-bias, and anti-racism. As we listen to our students, one thing that they keep telling us is that they value positive relationships with Yale staff. Our students want to belong to a school community where staff know their students, and where every person’s individuality is acknowledged and respected.

When asked to reflect on a classroom, most of us will envision rows of desks facing a blackboard where a teacher stands. For decades, this image represents the learning space for millions of students and yet excludes how we learn naturally and daily in non-school environments. True knowing and understanding mean being able to transfer knowledge from one setting to another.

In May this year, six Grade 11 WJ Mouat students participated in a Mental Health Forum hosted by the Abbotsford School District. They were tasked with reviewing the YDI (Youth Development Index) survey results for WJ Mouat and to come up with an actionable plan to help improve student well-being and mental health at their school.

What if you could lower student anxiety while increasing their confidence? At the start of my teaching career, high school math classrooms were typically quiet rooms unless the teacher was talking where they stood and delivered content. This has changed over the years, and the practice has changed to better support student engagement, deeper thinking, and collaboration.

The Studio Art 12 class at Yale Secondary engaged in an inquiry project based on propaganda that was used to convey a political message or specific point of view.  The project intent was to engage students by digging deeper into an issue with what they know and wonder while applying curricular competencies including critical thinking, analysis, reflecting, and reasoning.