184 Days of Learning

On June 8th our school put on a fun day for the unveiling of our new track.  This was a day in which students, staff and parents gathered to celebrate the achievement of building a beautiful new track for our students.  I was amazed by all the hard work that our parent community put into fundraising, planning and implementing such a huge but wonderful new opportunity for our students.  It made me realize how lucky we are as a school to have such a supportive network of people in and outside of the building.  As an extension of this day, my grade 9 homeroom organized field day activities for the younger grades.  We started planning in May.  The grade 9s researched activities and collaborated to come up with games that would be suitable for grades k-9.  They also assigned roles for each other, wrote scripts on how they would present their activities and took turns on challenging activities.  I became very hands off during aspects of this planning.  It was neat to watch my students come together with little guidance or influence from myself.

They worked diligently, putting together signs, planning activities and testing their ideas.  Just like their parents, my students showed a genuine interest in organizing and participating in events to celebrate an important occasion in our school.

I learned some very valuable lessons from this experience: how to relinquish some control, how organized grade 9 students can be when they are doing something they feel passionately about, how important parents really are to our community at Muir Lake.  The biggest thing I took from this experience was pride.  I had pride in my students, their parents and our community! I am so grateful to be where I am, and I will definitely miss my grade 9s next year.  Memorial will be getting a great group of kids from Muir Lake.

Kelly Williamson is a grade 9 homeroom teacher at Muir Lake School.  She has a dog named Lula and loves teaching Science.