Dear Families,

Your child’s school years are such an exciting time: a time of change and challenge; a time to strengthen existing friendships and to build new ones; and, a time of hope and goal setting. It is also a time of hard work and collaborative good will. I want to thank all the staff, students and parents/guardians at Maple Grove for their fine efforts to make our school such a great place – a place focussed on success, caring and consideration.

I was recently reading an article by one of my favourite educators, Elliot Eisner. He suggests that we need to care for the whole child and his article contains some key points that I will paraphrase:

·    Those of us in education need to try to recognize the distinctive talents that individual students possess and we need to create an environment that increases the possibility of these talents being actualized.
·    Educators need to consider the various ways in which students may respond to what is planned. The aim is not to focus only on the narrowly cognitive but also to promote responses that are emotional, imaginative and constructively social.
·    Assessment should provide a complete picture of the student, remembering that not everything that matters is measurable and not everything that is measurable matters. We need assessment methods that help us to see the success that each student is having and that promote a better understanding of how to teach each student.

I look forward to a year of working together with you in the education of your children, our students.

Sincerely,

Dr. Eileen Phillips