Blog Posts

June 16, 2022

The Launch of Our Equity Website

One of the lasting legacies of the COVID-19 pandemic will be its exposure of pre-existing societal inequities to a wider audience. While inequities have existed in society and schools since they were created, the pandemic has caused many of us to see them with greater clarity. The murder of George Floyd perhaps served as a catalyzing moment, but I suspect there were more forces at play.

March 10, 2022

Trust the Village

I visited the temporary Upper Sumas Elementary site this week to see how the staff and students were adjusting to their “new” environment (For those of you who have been around as long as I have been, this was the old Abby Elementary School site). As I approached the front doors, I saw a class of students standing in circle in a little garden patch. I made eye contact with the teacher, Ms. Marr, who invited me to join their circle. She told me that they had just finished sharing what they were grateful for and invited me to do the same.

February 28, 2022

Student Voice: Selling Hope

With all that has transpired in this country and in Europe over the last few weeks, it is easy to slip into despair. However, when you work with and in service of children it is both difficult and unhealthy to live in that space. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with a group of eight students from Robert Bateman Secondary last week, and true to form, they not only affirmed the importance of our work, but lifted my spirits about the fundamental importance of our ongoing journey to deepen student learning experiences in our schools.  

February 3, 2022

Why Celebrate Black History Month?

I have a hope that one day we will not have to celebrate Black History Month, that our society, discourse and school curricula will be redolent with the contributions and experiences of Black Canadians, that Black students in our schools will be proud of who they are, that they will see their history and culture in the ecology of their school experiences, and that they will not suffer the legacy of prejudice and racism as their previous generation had.

December 9, 2021

School is Where the Heart Is

When I was recently asked to share with some of my colleagues how our school district was handling the challenges related to the recent rainstorms and flooding, I could not help but reflect on the numerous calamities we have experienced as a community over the last decade. In addition to the pandemic and disastrous flooding of the last three weeks, our community has endured more than its fair share of tragedies. We have lost more students from a range of misfortune too difficult to recount here.

November 25, 2021

An Open Letter to Ethan (and his Classmates)

On the heels of our decision to open some of our schools last week, several high school students wrote a version of this letter below to me:

Dear Dr. Godden,

On behalf of several students in the Abby school district, we would like to request that you close the school district completely for the remainder of the week as well as thank you for your prompt decision making in this unfortunate situation. 

October 26, 2021

Distinguishing the Weather from the Work

As a way of keeping our focus on the teaching and learning in our schools, I have drawn a distinction between the “work”, our primary focus on providing for the educational needs of our students, and the “weather”, the conditions under which we do this work. In uncertain times if we are not careful, we sometimes confuse the two. While it is clearly important to ensure that we are following all the public health protocols, caution must be extended to ensure that this does not become the primary focus of our discourse and practice.

September 7, 2021

Welcome to the 2021-22 school year!

This will be a year to remember. I think all of us are happy to put 2020-21 in the rearview mirror. While we did a truly heroic job of navigating the pandemic last year, I think it’s fair to say that none of us wants to do it again. But let’s take a minute to reflect on our efforts. Not only did we live through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, but we were also able to keep our schools open, take care of each other and – most importantly – fulfill our mission to provide the best possible education to our students.

June 30, 2021

A Profound Gratitude

With the recent Ministry announcement that our schools will be returning to Stage 1 (“near normal”) operations for the coming year, I cannot help but reflect on the enormity of what we have accomplished this year in our province, and particularly here in Abbotsford. Put simply, our staff – all of them – have done a phenomenal job of keeping our schools open and functioning during a global pandemic, the likes of which none of us have ever experienced. This is worthy of celebration and profound gratitude.

March 11, 2021

This Time Last Year

A member of our District's Pandemic Response Team recently congratulated us on our "one year anniversary" of the weekly meetings we have been hosting since COVID-19 took its place in our collective consciences. It took a while for it to sink in, but it dawned on me that we have been working at this for what seems like several years. This time last year, the World Health Organization declared that we were amidst a "global pandemic." We hosted a meeting with all school district leaders at the Abby Arts Centre to map out how we would tackle this emerging threat after Spring Break.