Dear Vanier students and families:
The gospel from Sunday’s Mass was the story of the two disciples meeting Jesus on the road of Emmaus. The two disciples did not recognize Jesus at first and only realized, later, who he was. It’s a beautiful story on the theme of despair turning to hope and unbelief turning into belief. What lessons can we take from this story of not recognizing Jesus immediately? How do we make sure that the lives we live, or the situations that we face, don’t cause us to overlook or fail to recognize the presence of God in our lives? The rhythm and routine of learning from home is starting to settle in for many students and families. Here are a few items that may help as things continue… Students: General information and announcements Students may have noticed that an extra class popped up today in their Google Classroom desktop – “The Hallway” is a classroom that contains general information and announcements that pertain to a variety of things: Skills Room, Learning Commons, Grad 2020, Social Justice Club, etc. Please check this classroom periodically for information only – there are no assignments or work required for this class!! Students & Parents/Guardians: Getting extra help As a school, we will start to reach out a bit more to those students who don’t appear to be engaging their course work so that we can offer as much support as necessary. At any time, if you need specific help that is best supported by a teacher, connect to Vanier’s Virtual Skills Room or to a teacher. We do not want this “learning from home” to add undue stress or negatively affect family relationships. Please reach out if you need help! Parent/Guardians: Productive feedback for learning at home Hopefully, your children are able to do a lot of their school work independently from you. However, there will be times when they struggle or want to show you their work. When you notice that a child needs feedback about a task, there are some ways to ensure your responses are helpful. Ideally, we need to help learners know what their strengths are and then provide information to help them adjust their thinking in order to build or improve skills. We want to avoid simple statements like “Looks good,” or “Not bad.” Feedback can promote learning – and benefit your relationship - when it is specific and builds on strengths. Try using these prompts to promote learning:
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns. Simply reply to this email, email a staff member at [email protected], email [email protected] for general inquiries, or call the school at 667-5901 – take your pick! Sincerely, Ryan Sikkes, principal and Jeanette Gallant, vice-principal Dear Vanier Students and Families:
We're pleased to announce that, effective tomorrow (Friday) at 9am, our Virtual Skills Room will be open to provide extra assistance to students learning from home! Our Virtual Skills Room will be staffed by Educational Assistants and Teachers who are available by email or Zoom to provide help (or connect to teachers who can help) for any subject. Here is the schedule:
Whomever is “on duty” can be contacted by email at [email protected]. We do not want to share the Zoom link publicly for security reasons. Students who want to join by Zoom can check their teachers’ Google Classrooms for the Meeting ID and password or email [email protected] to get it. Schedules of “on duty” staff and direct links to Zoom will soon be available through Google Classroom to all students. Of course, teachers are also available for extra help – they can be contacted by email using the email convention [email protected] (e.g. [email protected]). We hope that learning from home is going well so far – please don’t hesitate to reach out by email or telephone (667-5901) if we can provide any support or assistance. Sincerely, Ryan Sikkes, principal and Jeanette Gallant, vice principal Dear Vanier Students and Families:
Draw us forth… Draw us forth, God of all creation. Draw us forward and away from limited certainty into the immense world of your love. Give us the capacity to even for a moment taste the richness of the feast you give us. Give us the peace to live with uncertainty, with questions, with doubts. Help us to experience the resurrection anew with open wonder and an increasing ability to see you in the people of Easter. Amen. We hope everyone enjoyed the lovely weather this past weekend – the crocuses appearing and the trees starting to bud is such an exciting sign of rebirth and renewal! It is no coincidence that the early Christians chose to mark Jesus’ death and resurrection during this season. Our first few days of learning from home with most students participating online have been quite smooth from our perspective. If your reality has not been the same, please let us know so we can try and help! We would much rather help sort out any issues early on before a student starts to feel behind. Here are few bits of information to share this week:
I just want to repeat a few suggestions for students to help set the best conditions for learning at home:
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns. Happy Easter! Sincerely, Ryan Sikkes, principal and Jeanette Gallant, vice-principal Dear Vanier students and families:
Halleluiah, He has risen! Truly, He has risen! On behalf of all staff of Vanier Catholic Secondary, I bring you warm Easter greetings. Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection remind us that all things are possible through God. We hope that these warm, lengthening days inspire a sense of rebirth and renewal. We hope that your long weekend was joyous, despite the lack of being able to gather as we usually do with family and friends. Thank you for making those sacrifices for the sake of our collective health. This week will see the commencement of learning from home on Thursday. Tomorrow, all students will receive emails from their teachers outlining what the remainder of the year’s learning standards will be, along with details about how students will interact with teachers going forward. As a reminder, the expectation is that all Grade 8 and 9 students will have a total of 10 hours per week of teaching and work time. Grade 10-12 students will have 3 hours per week per class for teaching and work. Student and family well-being are our top priority, so please communicate with teachers if adjustments are necessary. At this time, we still do not have approved protocols for the handling of materials (e.g. locker contents, technology items, assignments and learning materials). We have been advised that these will be in place tomorrow afternoon and we can begin making arrangements for pick ups or deliveries as soon as we verify our processes will be safe and hygienic. When pick ups or deliveries of materials is ready to begin, we will send out another email to everyone. Thank you for your continued patience. However, we are now in a position to begin arranging for the loan of technology. We have a very limited number of laptops, iPads, and keyboards that we can loan. These are our priorities (in order):
We understand that, for many families, it will be convenient to have an additional device in the household. We simply cannot provide enough devices to meet those who desire them for convenience’s sake. Please keep the following in mind when assessing whether you need an additional device:
To request a device, please follow this link or call the school at 667-5901. We have heard some anxieties with regard to assessment, grading, and report cards. Here are some key messages from us:
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have further questions or concerns. Sincerely, Ryan Sikkes, principal and Jeanette Gallant, vice-principal Dear Vanier students and families:
First, two important updates. As you can imagine, things have been changing quickly over the last days and weeks and we had been making some specific plans without all the necessary information. As a result some of our plans need to change. We apologize for any inconvenience these changes may result in: 1.The distribution of locker contents and learning materials is postponed. We had been advised to not provide families with any materials from inside the school to ensure the safest and most up to date recommendation are followed to prevent any possibility of the spread of COVID-19. We don’t want to create any unnecessary risks and in an abundance of precaution, we will wait for official guidelines for the safe handling of all materials from schools as recommended by Yukon Department of Health and Social Services. 2.Home learning will start on Thursday, April 16. Up until yesterday, we had been operating on the understanding that learning would resume on the 15th. All communications from Vanier, including yesterday’s emails from teachers, reflected this. The Department of Education has clarified that classes are suspended until the 15th, inclusive, resulting in the first day of learning at home being Thursday, April 16. Yesterday, our Minister of Education announced that face-to-face classes with students would be cancelled for the remainder of this school year. We are quite sad that this is the case, but absolutely understand the need to do so in order to limit the spread of COVID-19. I’ve attached a letter and FAQ sheet – these were also sent out yesterday. Since staff returned to school on March 30, we have been preparing for this possibility and will be ready to roll out our learning from home program next week as promised. Each teacher has been asked to develop an educational program for their class to facilitate learning from home. As mentioned in Monday’s email, the time allotments for this program are:
Teachers will choose one of three methods for delivering and accepting assignments with the goal of these being ready for use on April 16. On that date, you will be able to check what each teacher will be using by checking our school website next week.
In all cases, teachers and staff may host Zoom meetings to facilitate small-group or class-wide discussions or to provide additional support. If you need help accessing the portal, please start here: https://www.vcss.ca/help.html and watch Mr. Biss’ very helpful video. The link to the portal login is at vcss.ca under the ‘Portal’ menu.
We will also be developing some structures to help students need additional support, especially those who were used to being supported by our Educational Assistants. We are developing plans and structures to make additional help available to students. Please keep in mind this may look and feel very different from what students are used to receiving in the school. There are still many unknowns with regard to how the next days and weeks will go. Our commitment to keeping you as informed as possible remains. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with your questions and concerns. Sincerely, Ryan Sikkes, principal and Jeanette Gallant, vice-principal On April 7, it was announced that face-to-face classes would be cancelled for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year. Our school staff has been working hard over the last days preparing for this eventuality and will be rolling out an educational program to get kids to the end of the year on April 15. ![]()
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Dear Vanier students and families:
In the Catholic tradition, this week is called Holy Week as we mark the somber events leading to Christ’s crucifixion and death and celebrate the joy of his resurrection on Easter Sunday. It is a week that elicits a wide range of emotions. In a similar way, we are all experiencing a wide range of emotions as we deal with the worldwide response to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the uncertainly, at the school level, of what comes next for us all. Ms. Ouellette and Ms. Brogdon have started an information website with resources for students and parents/guardians: https://vaniercatholicsecondarycounselling.weebly.com/ Please feel free to reach out to them if you or your child requires any additional supports during these difficult times. Next week, on April 15, our teachers will commence a program to facilitate our students learning the remaining essential parts of each course from home. Here are the requirements that the Department of Education have shared with us:
We have heard some concerns about technology as we have been reaching out to families:
Starting Wednesday afternoon at 1 pm, we will begin distributing the contents of student lockers through curbside pickup or through delivery to homes. We will share the specific instructions on how to obtain the locker contents at the school or request delivery by email on Wednesday morning. To be honest, I had hoped to send out more specific information and instructions about various things in this email. However, we simply don’t have all the information that we need, as a school, yet to move forward. Hopefully by Wednesday morning, we will be in a better position to do so. Thank you for your continued patience. We hope that all our students will use this week to continue reading, trying new things, keeping physically active, and reviewing previous topics. Our Instagram page and school website have lots of other suggestions to keep busy, too! As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions or concerns. Sincerely, Ryan Sikkes, principal and Jeanette Gallant, vice-principal Dear Vanier students and families: I hope this email finds you all feeling well. Please find, attached, an update letter from the Department of Education. We are part-way through calling all families to verify contact information and to collect some other information such as technology access. Thank you for your cooperation as we go through this process, especially as some of our staff are calling from their homes. Once we have updated this information, students and families can expect to receive updates directly from teachers. Our staff have very successfully made the transition to meeting and collaborating online to plan for instruction resuming on April 15! We've been so happy to see the number of students joining our noon daily prayer and engaging with other content on our Instagram page. Near the middle of next week, we will:
Until then, please don't hesitate to contact us, by replying to this email or emailing [email protected], to ask any questions or share comments and concerns. Sincerely, Ryan Sikkes, principal and Jeanette Gallant, vice-principal ![]()
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