Mission Trip Update

Hello Parents;

Wednesday was an exciting day for Brant High School students. The 34 students and 3 chaperones met at the international terminal at 7:00 AM. After a little confusion with the ticket kiosks and having to change some tickets so that names fully matched with passports, the students were on their way. They have been building their houses since Thursday, wrapping up the project yesterday, working in terrible weather conditions of 25C and sunshine! I don't think they are missing Alberta weather at all. You can follow their progress by going to the following blogsite, Muybrueonobcs.blogspot.ca  For those of you who speak Spanish, yes brueono is spelled wrong but this is how the blogsite was set up, so that is what you need to type in. I encourage all of you to visit the site to get daily updates on what is happening in Tijuana. They will return this Wednesday.

Wednesday was a professional development day for teachers. Tom Hamer is one of the Directors of Learning with the Palliser School Division and he spent part of the day with us presenting a workshop on Digital Citizenship. This will be one of the focuses for our school division in the months and years to come as we work with students and parents to create habits that promote the safe and respectful use of technology. 

We were in school on Friday. This was two weeks in a row which is very unusual for Brant. It is important to remember that a Friday on is like any other day of the week for us as teachers and for the students. Unfortunately we often see students missing on these days which makes it difficult for us to carry through with our plans. I had to cancel a class presentation because of the number of students away. I'm not sure when community activities started to take precedence over school but I do know that it sends the wrong message to students as to what is important and where the value of education lies. I realize that there are always valid reasons to be away from school but I also know that it is easy to slip into a sense of complacency. We have few Fridays in our school year that require us to be at school. It is important to miss as few as possible.

Thank you for your continued support of Brant Christian through your prayers and your volunteer efforts. Your involvement as parents in our school is vital to the health and strength of our school.

Kevin Bailey