VCSS Weekly Email - November 29 - December 3

Greetings!

Advent has begun.  We enter into this expectant season with many questions, like “When will this COVID thing be over?”  No idea.

However, we can always prepare ourselves for the day that it does end.  Of course, we should also be preparing our homes for Christmas and our hearts for Jesus. 

We think of all those references to the coming of the Lord in the Old Testament.  Many were prepared, but, as it turned out, most weren’t prepared for what actually came.  Folks expected a Saviour in heavy armour, instead, we got the Prince of Peace.

We can daily prepare ourselves for Jesus by praying and making some room for him.

This Week

Share the Spirit is now well underway.  The large gym saw loads of students engaged in some nerf battle.  Very popular.  We’ll see bake sales and the like, so make sure students have some change in their pockets.  We are not set up for e-transfer on Share the Spirit items!

There will be an Advent Liturgy given to each teacher in block 1 and 2 on Tuesday.  We can’t congregate in the gym for a whole or even half-school gathering, so we’ve had to go back to having liturgies the individual classes.
You may have heard that the student Chat function has been eliminated from MS-Teams.  Students are able to message the teacher, but only as part of the whole team.  Anything now posted will be able to be read by everyone in the class or team.  There are no more private chats between students and no more between teachers and students.  This is unfortunate as we have come to rely on this convenient means of communication.  Email will still work, but even that is unreliable as First Class, our email platform, is nearing the end of its life and many teachers don’t check it regularly.  This move was commissioned by the department as there was some abuse of the chat privilege – across the Yukon – by a few students.  This may change in time, but not likely this year.

From Ms. Clarke at the Learning Commons:

Excellent, reliable, free information for school research projects is available at home for Vanier students: Yukon students have access to a suite of research databases 24/7 by going to vcss.ca - learning commons - researching. The user name is YukonEd and the password is resources. The databases have full text articles and include World Book Advanced, Explora, Science in Context, Gale in Context Canada, and Global Issues in Context. Any questions? Just ask Ms. Clarke, teacher-librarian, [email protected]

Finally,

The COVID Vaccine Mandate is coming on us this week.  School will continue to function normally.

Blessings,

Kyle Janzen, Principal VCSS