On September 19th, parents had the opportunity to go to St. George’s School, located at 4175 W. 29th Avenue in Vancouver to meet their son’s teachers and advisors. The event put together by the Associate Principal, Mr. Collins, The IT Department, Catering and St.George’s Security took place between 6:00 and 9:00 in the evening. The event was compiled of 10-minute sessions that followed their son’s schedule closely.

Parents had maps and navigated their way to each class. Teachers presented subject content and talked about how they will teach the students. Parents and teachers talked about their son’s needs/accommodations, and what the teacher expects from the student.

“As a new staff member, it was nice that the meet the advisor part was first and the parents welcomed me to St. George’s,” said Ms. Ridge, Learning Success Teacher.

“We set up a schedule of the blocks for that night IT sets up the information in PowerSchool, and in order to not cause problems with attendance, we set it up on a Saturday so Block A takes place at 7:15 and Block B is at 7:30,” said Mr. Collins.

IT posted that schedule to the Parent Student Portal and parents can see their son’s schedule that was drawn from a Saturday that doesn’t really exist. 

Mr. Collins emailed the parents to remind them of the date and where to find their son’s schedule and attached a school map to the email to help them navigate with a hard copy or on a phone. He also asked them to be sensitive to the neighbours, due to the high amount of vehicles likely parking on nearby streets.

“I worked with Mr. Palmer to have grade 12 students help parents find the right classrooms. I got Mr. Kay to program the school bells to run on the Saturday schedule so the parents would know when to switch classes,” informed Mr.Collins.

Mr. Collins emailed all the teachers to let them know the schedule and let security know that there will be a lot of parents.  He also let security know that there could be 1 or 2 parents with wheelchairs, so he had to unlock the wheelchair elevator near the music room. He let catering know to have tables and refreshments ready for parents. IT put a schedule on a giant PDF for parents who didn’t have it printed and they could take a picture of the screen instead of printing. It may not seem like a lot from the average spectator, but behind the scenes, this event takes hours upon hours of planning. Mr. Collins shared that he learned a lot from last year, and he thinks that it will be even easier next year. If you want to keep up to date on Parent and Teacher events, the next event will take place on October 17th, 2017.