January 29, 2009

Well, the new school year is off to a roaring start. We were very fortunate to receive another grant from THE WILD ROSE FOUNDATION of Alberta and so this year were able to take on new projects and children within our school. The past month I have been here has been spent taking applications from families, conducting home visits and reviewing the progress of last year's students. I am happy to report all of our 2008 students were promoted to the next grade. They have all been attending school faithfully and working hard at achieving passing grades. We have added 5 new students to last year's 16, bringing our total to 21!

Our new music classroom is now in use even though they have very few instruments at this point. We have just placed an order for many new instruments and they should be delivered in the next month or so.

As a result of receiving the matching grant, we were able to hire three more full time teachers; in music, physical education and English. We are the only primary school to offer three languages in the lake area. It will definitely give our students an advantage.

We have also ordered 20 new desks to be made locally for our new music classroom. It was lovely the other day when I heard the sounds coming out of the classroom; children singing and simple rhythm instruments keeping time. It really is rewarding to see the results of the work we are doing here.

Next week all our children will present me with their uniforms as many have grown out of their pantalones and will require bigger sizes. We will get them ordered right away as they take a lot of pride in their school clothes and the sense of belonging that comes with them. They wear sweat pants and t-shirts that identify them as students of La Escuela Bilingue Integral Santiaguito.

Also, in the next week, we will be working out a schedule for the volunteering that our children do in the community. More on that then!