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An Update 

July 9, 2018 

At Upper Lynn we have been actively looking at the school planning process for next year and we are very encouraged with the direction that we are heading on our journey to a Vibrant Learning Community. We will be looking for input from our parents, students and from all staff. Our Mission Statement continues to be: The Upper Lynn Community supports all students in realizing their full potential in an environment that promotes healthy, intellectual, emotional, social and physical growth. 

It looks like we will continue with our two areas of focus, for the Plan, and will refresh, gather new insights and refine our goals

Creating a Culture of Independent Thinkers
We will be continuing with our focus on creating a culture of thinkers for independent learning. Some highlights from this last year include exploring the inquiry process using Ron Richart's Creating Cultures of Thinking & Making Thinking Visible.  We value students questioning the world around them and working through the inquiry process on a topic of interest to build understanding. As a learning community we broadened and practiced our understanding of active listening: (shared understanding of active listening) small workshops in staff meetings and brought the learning back into our classrooms

 We will further explore student self-awareness and their critical thinking strategies by promoting opportunities to make thinking visible and analyzing how it changes. An area that we would like to further explore is becoming even more familiar with Indigenous Ways of Knowing and work to shift thinking from understanding to validating and valuing.  We will continue to do this by honing or our questioning and inquiry skills to seek new knowledge from a place of curiosity rather than a place of judgement

Creating a Culture for Personal and Social development

One of the more interesting focuses of our school's plan is our exploration of the Growth Mindset with respect to better understanding our personal strengths, challenges and setting goals to meet those challenges.  There was and will continue to be direct teaching of core competencies (communication, thinking, personal and social) which culminates in many opportunities for self-exploration, a better understanding of self, and social connections. This year, under the leadership of Ieke Giese, our students took on a prominent role of leadership within our school through the creation of student's council. This allowed for visible student participation, service, creative and critical thinking opportunities with active engagement in planning and shaping our school's activities and culture.  This consistent language and application of expectation of a growth mindset is already paying dividends throughout the school.

More details will certainly follow!