Missing CREW

Dear students, parents, and staff.
Crew has been an important part of our school year, whether it’s been our daily crew meetings, or whether it’s been the conversations that many of us have had around crew as school culture.  We are all crew members, not passengers, on this ship called Providence.  We all have a role and a job to do, and we do so together.  It’s part of living and working in community and loving and serving one another.  I’ve loved this part of school, and I miss our crew meetings.  I miss my crew.  We can do some of this online, and so I encourage you to keep up the conversations and the meetings and the face time.  Hopefully, we’ll be back soon.
On January 12, we listened to Premier Ford talk about COVID projections in Ontario, declare a state of emergency, and issue a stay-at-home order.  We will be listening again on January 20, when he’ll announce which regions can return to class on January 25.  Due to the uncertainty of next week, the board and administration has made a decision to cancel exams this semester. Here are some important details:

• Classes that had culminating assignments instead of exams are not affected.  Those culminating assignments are still happening.  The calendar has been adjusted so that all culminating assignments will be finished by Tuesday, January 26.
• If teachers had previously scheduled exam review for this week, they are being asked to use that time in a different way. Some teachers are planning to use that time for a smaller culminating assignment or unit task.  If teachers do add an assignment like this, it can only be worth up to 5 or 10% of the final grade, and not the 30% that exams normally are. 
• An updated calendar for each grade’s final assignments is included in this Post. 

 
Due to the cancellation of exams, we are also looking to make a change to the calendar for the first week of semester 2.We are planning to start the second semester a day earlier on Tuesday, February 2, rather than Wednesday.  This will give us a PD later on in the semester – the date has yet to be determined. We’ll have more details about the first week of the semester after Premier Ford’s announcement on January 20.
In the meantime, stay safe, call a friend, and enjoy a walk. 
Wishing you a blessed week.  MVD

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