As a Green STEM school, we will intentionally increase our focus on our faith to ensure that is permeated throughout all we do. The students compost, recycle, garden, look at water conservation, and take part in social justice activities with an environmental focus (yard clean up, and seed paper). All classrooms have a specific prayer area and incorporate prayers into the daily routine. Whole school liturgies allow us to celebrate special religious occasions as a whole school. We are connected to the parish with regular priest visits and once covid allows regular visits to the church will resume. Morning announcements provide a prayer, gospel reading and a reflection on the gospel. Our very special relationship with Sakaw Terrace Seniors residence allows the students to regularly engage in acts of service. We will continue to do monthly activities with them. Fundraising efforts will continue in support of the Catholic School Foundation so they may continue supporting others in need. In addition to providing assistance to our families in need through food and clothing drives, we will continue to build relationships with local businesses for food donations. We will use our new greenhouse to grow fresh food to help feed our hungry students and families.

Our school prides itself in meeting the needs of all students. We will use all the resources we are given and apply for any available grants, donations or fundraising to provide additional human resources to support our diverse learners. We strive to honour every member of our school community and to treat each other with dignity and respect. We will continue to expand our use of Kagan Strategies to promote engagement for all students. STEM will continue to be a focus with more opportunities to provide different learning experiences. We will continue to have the focus sequence available in the halls, having access to a sensory space, making sure that the Pathways program is implemented in each classroom, and we will continue to prioritize mental health by accessing our Family School Liaison, and the AHS psychologist. We will provide Collaborative Response Model time to discuss classroom needs and make sure that emergent needs are addressed, and supports are given to ensure growth and success. Authentic outdoor learning will be a focus to promote whole body interaction with curriculum areas.

As a school we value collaborative relationships. We engage in face to face collaborative planning time with the teachers on a regular basis. As a staff, we will decide at the start of the year which ATA workshops, consultant PD or outside PD we would like to have in order to increase our capacity to provide diverse learning experience to the students. We will prioritize Indigenous perspectives, health and wellness and teaching applications such as STEM, Kagan and Outdoor learning. Our month will include many opportunities for us to gather as a staff to plan instruction as well as, dedicated time for staff to explore areas of teaching and learning that enriches the children's learning experiences. We will provide opportunities and encourage our staff to lead within the mentoring opportunities with the other STEM schools or with parent engagement events. We are planning PD for our staff to implement new curriculum in kindergarten to grade three and piolet the new science curriculum from Kindergarten to grade 6.

We will utilize the Collaborative Response Model in order to identify our diverse learning needs and find creative ways to spread our resources throughout the school to meet the emerging needs of students. We will incorporate the Indigenous in-services offered by the Division and ATA into our Professional Development times in order to build capacity in our teachers. We will continue to spend time examining our vision and mission statements to align them to reflect our current school community and their values. We will continue to involve our parent community through information evenings, surveys and our Parent Advisory Committee to get feedback and share information in order to reengage our school community after the removal of pandemic restrictions.

The new playground was blessed this fall. We are pleased to order a new Pedal-a-Watt via the A+ for Energy grant. Students participate in STEM activities are consistently through the week and through clubs such as MakerSpace in both divisions. A new Eco Club, focused on actionable climate change awareness, is building capacity in student leaders who are planning activities for the student body. A new Drama club is helping build self-confidence and we plan to tie STEM into the visual arts. In addition to grade level visits all students gave a Halloween concert for Grandfriends at Sakaw Seniors Home. We continue to share all these activities via our social media. Teachers incorporate social emotional activities to support positive mental health skillbuilding by students. Teachers now share assessment on a monthly basis with parents via email and work sent home, in addition to the two Demonstrations of Learning in December and March as well as two summary reports via PowerSchool at the end of January and June. Collaborative Response and Division level meetings have permitted planning for targeted support of our students. With all the new curriculum and as one of five Science curriculum pilot schools, all teachers have been taking advantage of the numerous professional development sessions each month. The focus of the collaboration and PD is on delivering a quality STEM program with engaging learning activities for our students that integrates the new curriculum and support students to improve their reading, numeracy, collaborative and critical thinking skills. We have shared Parent Engagement opportunities, we are looking forward to the first ever STEM evening at the Zoo on December 7th and we are planning on two whole school STEM challenges in December around snow sculpture and reducing waste through a gift wrap challenge.

We are very proud of the effort that we are putting in as a school community to make St. Richard a welcoming, engaging, and responsible place to be. As a ‘Green’ STEM school, our charism is to empower the students to be true stewards of God’s creation. So far this year, that has included a ‘Green’ club, (looking after the plants and animals), propagating strawberries in each class, growing pumpkins from old pumpkins during STEM time, composting, and most recently a garbage audit to analyze our waste and make a commitment for change. This garbage audit was incorporated as part of our “spirit buddies” time. Spirit buddies is a time for the teachers to be able to collaborate while the students are learning about the 13 virtues attached to the tipi poles. So far, we have earned our poles for Obedience and the garbage audit is to help us earn the pole for Respect as we work towards increasing our respect for our Earth. Added into the ‘respect’ tipi pole was respect for our elders. We have gone over to celebrate Halloween by singing to our Grand friends and have invited them to share in our STEM flavored Christmas concert. Our continued STEM focus allows us to immerse ourselves in exploring best practice. We have engaged in PD to improve our cross curricular teaching by embedding numeracy and literacy into our STEM projects. We have looked at improving engagement by exploring Kagan strategies, and our next PD will be focusing on universal designs for learning targeting of our unique learners. Literacy and numeracy are not only embedded into STEM but has become an area of focus within our school community. We engage in math games and sharing of math activities at staff meetings and include literacy and numeracy activities to do at home in our parent weekly updates. Recently, we were very proud of our results in the mental health survey in that most of our results exceeded our expectations. This shows that we are on target with meeting the needs of our students. We have created a mental health Champion student group that is working on ways to build resiliency in their peers. One of the ways they are doing this is by creating “resiliency” tips for our school announcements. We are very fortunate to have dedicated teachers that have put extra time and effort into making our announcements special. They are student centered, incorporating scripture, student news stories and lots of humor. We are very proud of our school and have been appreciating the consistent positive feedback from our families.