PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE

 Dear Maple Grove Families,

I just wanted to acknowledge our wonderful PAC for all of their hard work in making Friday’s Lunar New Year’s event such an amazing success!  We have so many talented and wonderful parents who have many skills… it’s awesome to see them in action!  Thanks to everyone- from those who stayed behind to clean up, to those who worked tirelessly putting together donations.  Thank you to the Lunar New Year Committee members as well for all of their time, energy and effort!  It was a yummy event with so many highlights.  Special thanks to Paula Temrick for all of her efforts in organizing committee members.

On another note, from time to time, schools practice for emergency events (e.g., fire drills, earthquake drills and lock down drills).  Schools do this in an effort to prepare students so that if they’re faced with an unfortunate event actually happening, our staff and students are prepared.  In the fall, Maple Grove practiced for these events, like all schools in Vancouver.  We will continue to practice inside drills including shelter in place and/or secure and hold.  In the spring we will also be practicing our District wide earthquake drill.

Sometimes students can be anxious or apprehensive with these drills.  Maple Grove has a wonderful staff who are always supervising and looking out for your child’s best interests.  We encourage children to talk to their teacher if they are feeling anxious or apprehensive.  Sometimes, that’s all that’s needed.  If more support would be beneficial, we have our amazing school counselor.  Ms. Lyons is at Maple Grove Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays all day.  She is accessible to students on a drop-in basis.  She is usually outside with the children at recess and lunch along with Mr. Evans, Ms. Smith, our Supervision Aides and the SSA’s.  If parents need to contact Ms. Lyons, she can be reached by calling the school or by email.  Ms. Lyons actively works in classrooms with students as well as with small groups of children in her counselling office (located next to the library).  While we have previously mentioned these types of procedures in our school blog and Maple Grove Handbook (mapegroveschool.net), we will be adapting these documents over the coming weeks so that information is more readily available to everyone.  Thank you for helping to keep Maple Grove a safe place to learn.

What a way to finish this week.  Hip Hop dancing lessons were a blast!  Jarec was amazing and so too were our amazing MG Dancers!  Thank you to our awesome PAC for subsiding some of the costs; thank you to parents for helping to bring Boogaloo into the school; and huge thanks to staff and students for making all the necessary scheduling changes to accommodate this wonderful production.  We are super excited about Thursday afternoon class presentations.