Social and emotional development is the change over time in children’s ability to react to and interact with their social environment. The development process is complex and includes many different areas of growth including temperament, attachment, social skills, or social competence, and emotion regulation. We must incorporate expert advice in our education program to continuously evaluate and improve to equip our students as:
Life expects everyone to discover solutions, think through issues, and make decisions efficiently. Problem-solving and critical thinking is the ability to use knowledge, facts, and data to analyze and find the solution that best resolves the problem. Even young children use these skills in their everyday life, but non-routine problems may require more innovative approaches. While an elaborate segment will be developed and used in the education program offered at the school, a few basic points can be touched upon to develop the skills to inspire students to be:
In our view, leadership itself is the most important life skill and could be learned through education. Leadership is personal. It is about who we are, how we show up, the actions and behaviors we choose, the way we treat other people, the decisions we make, and how we manage our emotional and mental states.
It truly begins with self, so the students must learn and practice leading themselves before try leading others. In the backdrop of our education program, we will strive to teach the students to:
Given the young age of our students, we will be introducing it through games to follow each step of effective development, such as:
The ultimate message to takeaway are that leadership is a life-long commitment, not a “one-off” instance.
In addition to the BC curriculum, the school intends to offer Punjabi as a second language. As mentioned previously the gurdwara has been operating a Punjabi Language School for the past decade. These language classes have been developed over time and are offered in the evenings and on weekends. In preparation for the opening of an independent school, the Gurdwara has assigned two BC-certified teachers to modify and adapt the existing Punjabi curriculum to meet the BC-redesigned curriculum guidelines for language courses. This includes all aspects of the BC redesigned curricula such as the teaching of core competencies, curricular competencies, indigenous studies, and First Peoples Principles of Learning as incorporated components of the Punjabi language curriculum. In addition, the assessment practices will follow the BC performance standards for languages and a variety of assessment tasks to ensure an authentic assessment of the students’ Punjabi language abilities.
Being a faith-based independent school, the teaching of the Sikh religion will be inclusive in the children’s education. The teaching of Gurmat (Sikh values) and Kirtan (Sacred Music) will be integral to the school’s program and will be taught by specialist teachers who hold the appropriate TRB certification, most likely subject-restricted (SR) or school subject-restricted (SSR) certificates. The religion program development is currently under the supervision of the Granthi (minister/priest) who heads the development team. As with the Punjabi language program, the religion program will follow the BC redesigned curriculum guidelines in all aspects including the teaching of core competencies, curricular competencies, indigenous studies, and First Peoples Principles of Learning as appropriate.
Academic Excellence demands making evaluations constantly. Expertise, personal taste, and the perspective of the evaluator are part of the decision-making process and there are many spoken and unspoken rules. Our students are that an expert or the process must place integrity and objectivity above any personal biases and/or special interests.
Achievements must be evaluated based on expertise, excellence, originality, and no other more ephemeral characteristics, such as achieving high rankings for the school. We need to groom academically excellent students, but our philosophy is to groom students with deep understanding and original thinking through academics, not only students who achieve higher marks in the grade book.
