Love, love, love.  I have the pleasure of teaching Grade 3 Religion this year.  Love, love, love is a common discussion that we have.  In many of our discussions we simply ask, “What does Jesus want us to do?”  The answer: love, love, love.  As a faith community of hope and learning we challenge ourselves to use Christ as our role model.  If we follow Christ’s example, many (if not all) of our issues would disappear.

Now, I want to apply this question to education with a little bit of a twist.  Education is changing, whether we call it reformation, evolution, or transformation, it is changing.  Within schools, the principal is expected to lead this change. With this change, a lot is expected from students, parents, and staff.  With respect to this change, someone recently asked me, “What do you want us to do?”  My answer is – learn, learn, learn.

·        Students – we expect students to learn.  If you are not learning, we are not doing our job.  We do need your help.  Please challenge us to engage you in meaningful learning activities.  Please challenge us to meet your individual learning needs.  We also ask you to help create a positive learning environment.  Encourage your peers, be a support.  The focus is your learning.

·        Parents – we expect you to support student learning.  Our students nowadays are different.  As digital learners, students simply learn differently now than when we were young.  Since students learn differently, we need to teach differently.  Please be active and patient as schools change.  In the past school worked for most of us, not all of us.  We are trying to build a school that works for all.  The focus will remain learning.

·        Staff – Staff have always supported student learning, but we were (are) part of an educational system that does not work for all.  Our challenge is to learn different strategies to reach all our learners.  We need to take some risks and try new ideas to reach all our students.  I am very proud to say the atmosphere of learn, learn, learn is very evident among our staff.

As we continue to build our community of hope and learning, we all need to continue to love, love, love.  Also, we will continue to learn, learn, learn.

Greg Kostiuk