On the agenda of the upcoming PAC meeting (this Monday, 25th February) one of the agenda items will be a vote on the following statement.  The purpose of this statement is to voice our collective support of the already in progress VSB efforts to look into ways student safety needs can be best addressed in the new school and all schools.

"The Lord Tennyson PAC strongly supports the effort that the VSB School Board Trustees are undertaking to increase the safety and security of all students, staff and facilities in the district. We encourage your reviews of: the number of supervision aides, fencing and gates, identifying areas of vulnerability and considering the effectiveness of cameras.

We look forward to the findings of your preliminary report and encourage any efforts to make all schools safer for all.”

Being a pretty uncontentious statement the conversation and vote around it will likely be straightforward; however, do make sure you come out to the PAC meeting if you have strong feeling on this or any other issues, to have your say. The PAC meetings are a forum for all Tennyson parents to discuss school issues, policies  and procedures, fundraising and special events.

The following post was written by Vice Principal:   Mme Vosahlo and  originally posted  on the VSB's Lord Tennyson Elementary School web page. Check it regularly for school news.

On Wednesday, February 20th, 2019, students and staff celebrated the Pink Shirt Day at Tennyson.  This year the student leadership team focused on further promoting kindness, empathy and gratitude in our school community.  During the assembly, they read a book, Have You Filled a Bucket Today? The book challenged all of us to show kindness and positive actions to others. When we do this, we fill up someone else's bucket and brighten up their day and our day as well.  Rose Fulker, our videographer put together a video where Tennyson students expressed their ideas on what kindness at Tennyson looks like.  This day was a fantastic continuation of demonstrating acceptance and inclusion in our school community every day of the year. 
 

PAN, the Parent Advocacy Network, is asking you to use their quick and easy email tool  to tell BC’s government leaders that it’s time to update the school design policy.

This quick and easy email tool is populated with a letter outlining PAN's grave concerns with the out of date Area Standards school design policy that right now is the foundational document when building new schools. The short of it? With this outdated document, schools are built too small and with inadequate movement, psychological and learning spaces to provide 21 century learning, support the new curriculum, allow for  substantive  arts education, or deliver inclusive  education. 

The email tool has a pre-written letter that you can send as is, or even better, add your own thoughts and experiences  at  the bottom. When constituents add  their own heartfelt  concerns as  part of this type of collective organized action,  government listens. For each person who submits this type of letter, politicians know that it represents many other voters. 

The email tool will  collect the addresses for  your MLA, the Minister of Education Rob Fleming, Premier John Horgan, BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson, and BC Green leader Andrew Weaver making it easy to write them about your support of prioritizing the Ministry’s review of its Area Standards policy and ensuring that review is consultative and addresses the concerns raised before budget 2020. It is important not only to build physically and psychologically safe schools; we must build the right schools for a long term vision of student success.

Click this link to begin. It only takes a few minutes.

You are invited to an adult-child workshop about physical, mental and emotional health. Please email Jen Cumming, j.cunnings@standrewswesley.com, if you would like to attend.

Do you want to check out some awesome hockey this Family Day weekend for free?

The UBC Women’s hockey team are currently in the playoffs and are hosting Regina this weekend for the Western Quarter Finals. They would like to extend an invitation to all Tennyson families to come out and watch them play this weekend for free.

The Game Schedule is as follows:

Friday February 15 4:00PM
Saturday February 16 4:00PM
Sunday Feb. 17 2:00PM (if necessary)

If you would like to attend please email Mandy Hillier with your contact information. the date you want to attend and the number of tickets you would like.

GO THUNDERBIRDS GO!

The City of Vancouver hosted a 10th Avenue Improvement Plan Open House at Kitsilano Community Centre on February 7. If you didn't get a chance to go along don't worry, you can view the display boards here and can submit your feedback with their online survey (Survey closes Feb 28).

The key objectives as listed on their website are:

• Improve comfort and accessibility for people walking and rolling
• Upgrade 10th Avenue to make it safe and comfortable for people of all ages and abilities to cycle
• Accommodate the vehicle loading and access needs of adjacent schools and businesses
• Protect the street’s healthy and mature tree canopy
• Manage on-street parking to support access to homes, schools, businesses, and other organizations on 10th Avenue

To read all about the project plans and have your say visit the City's 10th Avenue Improvement Page.

Partners for inclusive education is a social-educational meeting for parents and caregivers of children at Lord Tennyson School. The goals for this group are support of inclusion and diversity at Lord Tennyson Elementary School.   

The meetings provide a safe and confidential place for open conversations and sharing of personal stories with other parents/caregivers who have lived experiences with meeting the educational needs of students at Tennyson.  We discuss both current students experiences, and how past students and caregivers are now supported (both at the school and with other outside  sources i.e., tutoring, coaching, a wide variety of therapeutic modalities, Psych-Ed assessments, other forms of assessment, support agencies in the broader community, and more).

Parenting peer support is available to help parents and caregivers manage relationships between various school and home-based teams, including relationships in our parenting community.  Also, we often eat pie