We're excited to share the next Educator of the Month with you - Liana Tilt. Here's how she answered our questions (hint: the best advice she ever received is priceless!)

Mrs. Tilt, we're thrilled to have you as our Educator of the Month for March. Tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is Liana Jule Tilt and my maiden name was Greiner but my family calls me L.J.,Geaner, or Mule. I was born in Matsqui, B.C. near Abbotsford and moved around to Loon Lake, Yarrow, and eventually to Summerland in the Okanagan where I spent most of my life.

We're excited to share the first Educator of the Month in 2018 with you - Joan Wheeler. Here's how she answered our questions (hint: we love her approach to education!)

Mrs. Wheeler, we're thrilled to have you as educator of the month! Let's get started! Where are you from?

We're excited to share this month's Educator of the Month with you - Jenny Stirling. Here's how she answered our questions (hint: we love her insights!)

 Ms. Stirling, we're thrilled to have you as educator of the month! Let's get started! Where are you from?

We're excited to share this month's Educator of the Month with you - Sheldon Stuttard. Here's how he answered our questions (hint: we love his answers!).

Mr. Stuttard, so great to have you as educator of the month! Let's get started! Where are you from?

Can you believe that another school year is coming to a close? It seems like we just got started, but in a few weeks, the next set of SCIDES graduates will walk up to the stage to receive their well-deserved diplomas. SCIDES graduation takes place on Tuesday, June 20th, at 11 am at the Merritt Civic Centre (with an informal gathering starting at 10:30am), and we would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to all our students. You all worked hard for this, and it’s a great accomplishment. You did it!

Summer is approaching fast, and before we jump into our yearly celebrations in June, we want to share another exciting topic with you: Math! Yes, math is exciting, and not just for mathematicians. Math is used in many professions, including air traffic controller, architect, astronaut, forensic analyst, nuclear engineer, stockbroker, and urban planner.

But today we’re not talking about the careers that math makes possible (we talked about careers in general in one of our recent blogs), we want to highlight a few other interesting things for you.

How was your Spring Break? We hope it was fantastic and you had a chance to relax and explore. Maybe one of the things you explored was your potential career path, and in case you haven’t read it yet, we encourage you to check out our last blog post about a possible career in trades.

This month, we celebrate Science Month at SCIDES.

March is here, and Spring is just around the corner. Doesn’t seeing nature awaken all around you make you want to try out new things and plan for the future? That’s great, because it’s career and trades month at SCIDES, and we want to show you how you can earn credit for your post-secondary education while you’re finishing up high school.

Hard to believe the first month of the new year is already over, but here we are: it’s February! We hope you had a chance to test the waters with journaling in January; if you missed our writing prompts, you can find them here. It’s never too late to give journaling a try.

This month we celebrate Social Studies Month at SCIDES. Social Studies are an important part of the core curriculum. They encompass world history, as well as a closer look at Canada, while also considering human society, political science, philosophy, and more. A broad and very interesting field, with many opportunities to create your own learning plan. Contact us at SCIDES to find out more about individualizing your education! 

Happy New Year! We hope that 2017 will bring you happiness, health, and inspiration. For this month’s blog post, we want to help you kick start your inspiration, with 31 journaling prompts. Write your heart out, then come back to read through it, and get inspired to take action.

Set a timer for 10 minutes, pick a prompt, and start writing unfiltered. Whatever comes to mind, write it down. Don’t’ worry about grammar or editing (yes, we said that), just get your thoughts onto paper. You’re only writing this for yourself, not for marking! 

If you get into a habit of journaling, you’re in good company. Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Mark Twain regularly wrote in their journals. And journaling is not a thing of the past, people like Lady Gaga and Jennifer Aniston are avid note takers.

It’s the last month of 2016, and we’re celebrating Language Month at SCIDES. Did you know there are over 6,900 languages in the world? There are 6,909 to be exact, as documented by the Linguistic Society in 2009. That’s close to seven billion people in the world, speaking over 6,900 languages – wow! Some languages are only spoken by a handful of people, while the most-spoken language in the world (by population) is Chinese, with over 1.2 billion native speakers.

Can you believe fall snuck up on us like that? It’s in full swing and we’re dedicated to staying healthy and active during the cold and wet season – so we’re declaring November Sports Month at SCIDES! Let’s have a look at what we can do for you and your fitness (if you participate!) and what’s in store for this month.

October is Art Month at SCIDES! We’re kicking off the new school year with creativity. Last school year, we had Art Month in May, and you can read about it in our blog archive. Just like last time, we have another trip planned to 4Cats Studio, and we’ll be offering various activities at SCIDES and online. But there is more! On October 21, 2016 is a non-instructional day (in School District 58), and we challenge you to create something that day.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Last month was Art Month at SCIDES, and one of the things we talked about in our blog was Aboriginal Art in British Columbia. Aboriginal Art has been around in BC for thousands of years. We are very lucky to live in a province with such rich aboriginal culture and heritage, which is often reflected in the art created by First Nations artists. But of course there is much more to aboriginal culture than arts. This month, we want to celebrate aboriginal education and highlight the programs we offer, as well as the much needed progress that has been made in incorporating the aboriginal voice into our curriculum. 

Last month was Earth Science Month at SCIDES, and this month we're getting artsy - May is Art Month! We're talking about a few exciting field trips, BC artists past and present, post-secondary art schools in BC, and Aboriginal art in our province. Of course we also want to let you know that we offer Art Classes at SCIDES, and we're thrilled to feature the art work of SCIDES student Mariya Johnson in our blog picture this month, who's taking Art 12 right now. 

March was Math Month at SCIDES, and we hope you had your slice of Pi! Just in case you missed it, here's something you should not miss: The "Lose Yourself in the Digits" Pi Day video, performed by Pi Diddy.

Now we're moving on to Earth Sciences, and we're talking about Earth Day, Geocaching, and Earth Sciences at SCIDES in this blog post - we know, it's exciting! 

February was History Month at SCIDES, and we hope you had a chance to check out all the fantastic resources. All of North America celebrated Black History month, and if you haven't seen it yet, you need to check out this short video, where a 106-year-old black woman meets President Obama. (If you have seen it, watch it again - it's fantastic!). Now, let's move on to Math Month! We're excited about that, and it's not just because we plan on eating a lot of pie on 3/14.

January was Reading Month at SCIDES and we hope you had a chance to check out some (or all!) of the resources we mentioned in our last blog post. This month, it's not only a new semester for most secondary students, but we're also diving head first into an exciting topic: history. History does not have to be ancient, and certainly not boring! It's being made every day and both our shared current and past experiences bind us together. They are stories worth learning and sharing! Here's what we want to share with you this month:

Happy New Year! We hope you have a fantastic 2016, filled with joy and success. The SCIDES team is by your side to take your education to the next level, and we’re committed to providing you with great resources throughout the year.

December was Writing Month at SCIDES, and it was great to see your writing adventures on our Facebook page; we’re looking forward to hearing from you about your reading journey in January! 

December is Writing Month at SCIDES, and we're celebrating writing in all its forms - especially letter writing by hand. (Yes! That's still a thing!)

November is Sports Month at SCIDES, and we want you to get active and celebrate sport in your community!

Sports and play are important for kids and adults alike, and we'll introduce a few amazing programs and opportunities to help you get more active this month.

October is Science month at SCIDES and the Kengard Learning Center! We'll be celebrating, challenging, learning, and having fun with Science all month long. Check out what we have lined up for you...

If you're enrolled with SCIDES full time (meaning SCIDES is your school of record), then you're in for a real treat: you will get access to BrainPOP! BrainPOP is an online platform that engages students through animated movies, learning games, interactive quizzes, primary source activities, concept mapping, and more. There are two versions available, one suitable for Grades K - 3 (Junior BrainPOP) and one for Grades 4 - 10 (BrainPOP). 

BrainPop covers topics within Science, Math, Social Studies, English Language Arts, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Music, Health, Reading, and Writing - watch your inbox for the login code. We'll get it out to you soon!

It's Orientation Month at SCIDES, and we hope you settled comfortably into the new school year. To cap off this month of new grades, new courses, and new experiences, we asked our Principal Ms. Colleen Mullin for her best advice for a successful school year. Here's what she had to say:

The new school year has started and we’re excited for our first “theme of the month”. We had originally planned for September to be Geography Month, but found that in honour of Terry Fox, it would make much more sense to make September “Pay it Forward Month”. Let us explain: