February Newsletter
February 2021 School of Hope - Vermilion Homeschooling
Principal's Message
Good day everyone,
I hope you are in a part of Alberta where the cold snap is not so prominent, but then again our resilience is part of what makes Albertans so strong isn’t it! We have come to the end of the first semester, and jr/sr teachers are busy adding marks. A report card will be issued and emailed at the end of next week. To help teachers get/stay organized, our division has an organizational day scheduled for February 1st, so there will be no online lessons that day.
Last year at this time, we announced that we were moving to the Canvas learning management system to house our courses. Moving courses to a new system is a labour intensive process, so we suspended online lessons for a few Thursdays in the semester to allow teachers to make some headway toward transferring their core courses to be ready for September. We are following the same model this year for non-core courses to be added into Canvas. To that end, our two scheduled PD days (January 29th and March 5th) will be used for this purpose, as well as three Thursdays (March 4th, 25th, and April 29th). This will go a long way to ensuring all our courses are in a similar format in one accessible location, which was a concern raised by parent council last year.
We are welcoming a new Parent Directed Homeschooling staff member, Kim Palmer. She has experience being a homeschooling facilitator, and is a homeschooling parent herself as well. Welcome Kim!
We have a few new activities for you and family to check out! Please see below for information on a drawing club for Gr. 1-6, a debate club for higher grades, and a Calendar project asking for art entries from all grade levels! The Hands of Hope club members are organizing SOH’s First Ever Social for gr 7-12. Please mark the date and time on your calendar. (Sat., March 27th at 1 p.m.) More information to follow.
“Go in peace, be warmed and filled” James 2:16
Stay warm and God Bless,
Michel Despins and Dwayne Coffey
SOH/VHS admin team
School Council
We have a school council meeting February 1st at 6:30 pm. We encourage you to come and hear in more detail what is happening at our school, and to give us your input on new ideas and directions. Simply email Michel Despins at michel.despins@ecacs16.ab.ca for a Zoom link to
the meeting. Please come support and share!
Hands of Hope
The Hands of Hope club is looking for works of art to be
featured in an upcoming calendar.
Whether you draw, paint, or are a great photographer, we invite you to participate.
For more information please click the link below.
SOH Debate Club
The School of Hope would like to invite students to a newly established extracurricular club. The SOH Debate Club hosts stress-free and fun activities for all students in Grades 9 to 12. This is a great way to meet new people, increase your public speaking and persuasive writing skills, and share in some fun debates on a variety of topics.
For more information please click the link below
Hands of Hope
SOH Debate Club
Grad News
Grad news
If you are a student in Grade 12, you should have access to ‘Grad Info’ on Canvas. We are in the early stages of posting information but we hope to be able to answer your questions through this format. Please, email us your ideas and thoughts.
We would like to try something new - it is totally your decision to participate. Many schools have photos of their grads to celebrate their accomplishments and we would like to do the same thing. If you would like to participate, please share your photo (could be a grad pic (cap & gown) or just a general picture) along with a description of your post high school plans and a favorite quote. We will post them on our website for our families to view. We hope that this will serve as a celebration of our grads' success and as a beacon for our younger students to work hard.
This is a sample of what it might look like. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve this, please let us know.
Drawing Club Grades 1 - 6
Miss Woodward will be hosting a Grades 1-6 Drawing Club for the months of February and March. Click on the attachment below to see the dates and the topics. This will be a drop-in basis through Zoom (no need to sign up). Your homeroom teacher will be sending out the Zoom link for anyone who would like to join.
Miss Woodward looks forward to getting to know everyone who attends and can't wait to see all of the awesome drawings!!
VIBE
For VIBE School updates and Mental Health Information visit VIBE Facebook page or their website
Random Acts of Kindness Week February 14-20, 2021
Important Dates
February 1 - Organizational Day - No School for Students
February 2 - First Day of Second Semester
February 3 - Drawing Club Grade 1-6
February 4 - SOH Debate Club
February 10 - Drawing Club Grade 1-6
February 11 - 12 - Teachers' Convention - No School for Students
February 14 - Valentines Day
February 14 - 20 - Random Acts of Kindness Week
February 15 - Family Day - No School
February 17 - Drawing Club Grade 1-6
February 18 - SOH Debate Club
February 24 - Drawing Club Grade 1-6
March 3 - Drawing Club Grade 1-6
March 4 - No online classes for School PD
March 4 - SOH Debate Club
March 5 - Professional Development Day
March 14 - Daylight Savings - Time change
March 17 - Drawing Club Grade 1-6 St. Patrick’s Day
March 24 - Drawing Club Grade 1-6
March 25 - No online classes for School PD
March 27 - Hands of Hope Social Grade 7-12
March 31 - Drawing Club Grade 1-6
February - Did you know...
February 2 is Groundhog Day
February 14 is Valentine’s Day.
School of Hope - Vermilion Homeschooling
Website: https://soh.ecacs.ca/
Location: 5212 Railway Avenue, Vermilion, AB, Canada
Phone: 780-853-2188
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/School-of-Hope-320214374696062