THE DRAGON'S PEN
/WINTERTIME at KG
A clothing drive, food drive, and a list of changes in VSB policy
by Henry MacDougall
(click images to enlarge)
December has arrived, and at King George Secondary this means food and clothing drives, holiday festivities, and the increasing academic pressure that precedes winter break.
INTERACT CLOTHING DRIVE
For the fourth year in a row, the King George Interact Club is holding their winter clothing drive, partnering with members of the Vancouver Park Rangers to support local unhoused people during the cold, wet winter months in Vancouver. This year, the clothing drive will also support BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital, through the charity thrift shop Still Fabulous.
The results of last year’s Interact sock and toque drive.
The clothing drive initially came to life years ago when Ron Suzuki, long-time community leader and Rotary member, reached out to Steve Anderson, also a member of Rotary International and a Vancouver Park Ranger. As Ron Suzuki is the sponsor of the King George Interact Club, the two set up a collaborative campaign that aimed to collect socks and toques to be given to rangers Steve and Mario, so that they could be distributed to folks who don’t have a home and are living in Vancouver parks.
The Interact club is accepting a wide array of clothing items for donation, excluding undergarments and swimwear. All items will be accepted if they are clean and in good condition. Socks, toques, and mittens will be handed over to Vancouver Park Rangers to be given to unhoused people, while all other clothing items will be donated to Still Fabulous, a charity thrift shop that donates its profits to the BC Children’s and Women’s Hospital.
Monetary donations are also accepted and will be put towards purchasing extra socks, toques, and mitts for the park rangers to distribute.
Donations can be dropped off at the KG library, located on the second floor of the West End Community Centre. Clothing donations can be dropped off in donation boxes by the door, and monetary donations will be accepted inside the library between hours 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on school days.
THE CANLEY CUP
The KG Student Council is continuing their yearly canned food campaign, the Canley Cup, this year, collecting canned food items for those in need.
Donations of cans or cash are accepted in students’ third period classes until December 12, when the cans will be handed over to the local food bank. The third period class that donates the most cans and cash will be rewarded with a pizza party. Bring in some cash or cans to help those who are hungry in these winter months and win a pizza party for your class!
RENAMED AND EXPLAINED
Report Cards and Parent-Teacher Conferences
In the past few years, VSB students and parents might have noticed that report cards, accessible via the MyEducation BC interface, have been quietly renamed to “Learning Updates”. Similarly, parent-teacher conferences were more recently renamed to “Student Learning Conferences”.
This shift in naming convention was acknowledged and explained in a one-hour long episode of the VSB’s podcast, “After The Bell” (see link below), recorded live at a Microsoft Teams meeting, open to a public audience of parents and students. In this podcast episode, host Jiana Chow discusses what differentiates a learning update from a report card with guest speakers from within the VSB. These include district principal of learning instruction Suzie Polzin, as well as Ranjit Bains and Shannon Burton, who are both directors of instruction, for Secondary and Elementary respectively.
Speakers discussed why the report cards and conferences needed a new name, citing the massive overhaul that the VSB took in 2016 in their approach to learning.
This was a response to the “Technology-rich world we live in today”. The shift in approach took form in changes that aimed to improve personalized learning and critical thinking skills, as well as concept-based learning, with less priority for simple memorization. These changes demanded a more nuanced approach to feedback, one that was less focused on grading a product and more on the learning process that was taken on. An example of this is how many classes now are graded based on a trend, meaning that your more recent marks have a higher weighting, even replacing past marks.
These shifts also affected the main topic of the podcast, being student learning conferences (formerly known as parent-teacher conferences) and learning updates (report cards). This means a proficiency scale rather than a traditional letter grade. One interesting takeaway from the podcast was that although the proficiency scale can be converted into percentages, the point is not to grade based off a mastery of a subject, instead opting to provide feedback on a learning process that students take on during a course.
With these changes impacting both learning feedback as well as learning itself in the VSB, the conclusion was that the names should also be changed to reflect the more nuanced nature of learning within the VSB in the post-2016 curriculum.
This month, Student Learning Conferences will be held on Thursday, December 4. Conferences will be held through Microsoft Teams video calls, in designated time slots given to parents. Classes will be dismissed early for the meetings.
WINTER BREAK
This year, winter break will be starting on Monday, December 22, with Friday, December 19 being the last day of school. School will resume session on Monday, January 5.
An unexpected outage in the third-floor hallway on Halloween... Spooky.
HALLOWEEN FESTIVITIES
In October the Student Council organized a variety of Halloween events, with pumpkin painting and a scary movie.
Spooky decorations were also put up, all in the Halloween spirit. In an unplanned and unexplained happening on the day of Halloween during fourth period, there was a sudden power outage in the lights on the third floor.
Spooky!
KG Students also volunteered at the Barclay Manor haunted house again this year. That spooky fundraiser was well-attended, with a line stretching far out the door and beyond. Tickets were priced at $5 for students and $10 for adults. As always, funds that were raised went towards the KG Youth Leadership club, which was responsible for organizing it.
Thanks for reading, happy holidays, and see you in 2026, KG!
