Year: 2001 – Province: British Columbia
Certificate of Achievement Recipients
Karen Dicks
School: St. Michaels University Junior School
820 Victoria Avenue
Victoria, British Columbia V8S 4N3
Principal: Robert Snowdon
School Telephone: 250-598-3922
School Fax: 250-592-0783
School website: www.smus.bc.ca
Grades/Subjects Taught: Kindergarten, all core subjects
Teaching approach:
- The education of a child requires a triad of student, teacher and parent.
- Increase the children's ability to share ideas.
Outstanding achievements:
Creates a classroom and a school year filled with a wide variety of fun, exciting and interesting educational activities:
- Discovery Table: covered with puzzles, challenges and theme-related material
- Office Orders: cards providing suggested morning activities
- Assignments: groups of children, changed on a regular basis, assigned to a specific area in the classroom
- Memory Book: photos, examples of work, stories and memories of the year for each child.
Models and teaches positive qualities to budding students, sets them on a path towards effective learning and social interaction, uses discussion, problem solving and activities to teach respect, self-confidence, self-awareness, critical thinking, logical action, and appreciation for the qualities of others.
Welcomes parents to classroom, encourages their participation in children's learning. For example, on Freedom Fridays parents are invited to spend an hour in the class with their children and Brown Bag Lunch Days are monthly lunchtime get-togethers for parents and children.
Rave reviews:
There wasn't one day throughout the school year that Lucas didn't want to go to school. Parent
I remember kids that on the surface didn't seem to be so clever and whose parents didn't seem to be so high profile but who learned to believe in themselves and to know that they could accomplish anything because you touched their lives with a little bit of magic. Former colleague
The Kindergarten students possess such a communal sense of the positive experience of their own classroom that they are itching to share it. Headmaster