New Daily Kindergarten Program at Whitmore School with Family Connection Component
Dauphin, MB – Whitmore School and MVSD are proud to announce a new kindergarten program called Valuing the Whole Child, beginning in the fall of the 2022/2023 school year. This program will be the first daily kindergarten program in Mountain View School Division. What makes this program unique is that for the last portion of the school day, families will be welcomed into the school to participate in various cultural programming. This program is only available to students residing in the Whitmore School catchment area. Tanis Bennet and Melissa Ferland, teachers at Whitmore School, applied for a grant from the Manitoba Teachers’ Idea Fund to fund the program for the next four years.
This program was the result of teachers wanting to make a difference in the lives of their students. Increases in the cost of living, effects of intergenerational traumas, and a disconnection from culture due to moving to an urban area away from home communities creates a struggle for many of our families. A loss of trust in the school system stemming from the residential school era leads many of our families to disengage. Due to the challenges involved with COVID-19, we are seeing kindergarten students arrive with many social, emotional and academic needs. We designed this program because we wanted to be proactive and creative in trying to meet the needs of our students.
In response to the needs of our school and the need to be creative in finding a solution, we applied for a grant in the fall of 2021. The need to repair the connection between home and school is critical. The Manitoba Teachers’ Idea Fund grant provided us with the chance to design a program that would focus on building this bridge.
We recognize the need to prepare students with the readiness skills for entering schools, but we also, and most importantly, need to focus on preparing our learning environments and ourselves for the students we are receiving. Having students coming to school every day provides families with routine and structure; it offers twice the opportunity for students to develop the literacy and numeracy skills that they will need moving forward. The truly innovative aspect of this program, though, is the family connection component. This is a time for families to share about their child. What are their gifts and challenges? How do they best learn? How can we work together as a team? We hope to collaborate with local groups to offer cultural experiences and help connect families to various resources within the community.
We recently hosted an open house night to share this new and exciting program with our families and to offer an opportunity for our families to express their interests and concerns as well. We wish to have as much family input as possible in the early planning stages so that we can design a program that best meets their needs. Any families that have registered their child for the program will receive a learning kit that contains a variety of materials that you can use now to help prepare your child for kindergarten in the fall, while supplies last.
Please contact Whitmore School at (204) 638-4782 for more information and to register your child today!