New Plans for End of Year Celebrations

By Doug Palm, Principal, Senior School We wanted to update our families on some important and exciting changes being planned for the Senior School end of year celebration events and some scheduling adjustments that will occur in June 2019. Much thought, consideration and input has gone into making these changes and we wanted to provide you with some details. End of Year Celebration Events: Over the past few years, we have been looking at ways to have all of our end of year events in our wonderful Hall. By celebrating these events at school, we can have more flexibility to craft them to focus on separate events: a Senior School Closing and a Grade 12 Graduation. With this in mind, we are able to confirm the following:

• The Night of the Gryphon will be held on June 5 at 7 p.m. In addition to recognizing the athletic achievements of students in Grades 6 to 12, Gryphon Awards are given to graduating athletes who have contributed to two or more athletic teams in each of their four years in the Senior School.
• The Senior School Closing will take place on Wednesday, June 19 at 10 a.m. This will be for all students in Grades 9 to 11 and we will celebrate the accomplishments and awards of these students. This will be the last event of the year for Grades 9 to 11 and, upon its completion, they will be officially dismissed for the summer. The exception to this will be those Grade 11s who will be Prefects for the following year. This ceremony replaces our former Internal Awards Ceremony that typically took place earlier in the month.
• The Grade 12 Graduation will occur on Friday, June 21 at 2:00 p.m. in the Hall to acknowledge the accomplishments and the graduation of our Grade 12s. Along with this event, we will be introducing a post-ceremony get-together for our Grade 12 families to celebrate with teachers and staff.
• Finally, on the following evening, Saturday, June 22, we will have our traditional, and much loved, Graduation Dinner and Dance at the Crystal Gardens in downtown Victoria beginning at 7:00 p.m. for our Grad Class. With these two significant events occurring just a day apart, we hope to make it easier for our families from both Victoria and much further shores, to be able to attend these meaningful events for their graduating son or daughter.

June Schedule: In addition to the changes to our end of year events, we also wanted to look at maximizing our instructional time over the month of June. Our former schedule had a number of non-instructional days due, in particular, to year end assessments. As our Senior School Closing (for our students in Grades 9 to 11) has moved to June 19, 2019, we have the fortunate opportunity to add more instructional time. Subsequently, for our Grade 9 and 10 cohort, we will have classes run until Friday, June 14. There will be two days of year-end assessments on Monday and Tuesday (June 17 and 18). For our Grade 11 class, we will run classes until Wednesday, June 12, and have a four day window of year-end assessments from June 13 to June 18. For any Grade 12s who may be completing Provincial courses, there may be a few exams interspersed throughout this four-day assessment window. We are confident that this increased teaching and learning time will be highly beneficial to optimize the student learning experience. As a final note, we will still be having the important Farewell Assembly for our Grade 12s on Wednesday, June 12 (time to be confirmed). Parents of Grade 12s will be invited. All of these dates will be put in the school Blackbaud calendar to ensure you are able to get a monthly calendar ‘view’ to understand and plan from. Should you have any further question about any of this information, please do not hesitate to contact me through email at dpalm@mygn.ca, by phone 250-370-6800, or in person. We are excited for the opportunities these changes will make for student learning and in our celebrations of the many accomplishments and final graduation of our Grade 12s.