Halfway through November! Some of you are finishing courses already and ready for more, and if that applies to you, see below! For our grade 12 students, post-secondary schools are beginning to take applications for September 2024, it is recommended you check out the websites of the programs you are considering to be aware of important dates.
As a fulltime student with EBUS, I will email you each a credit check detailing your progress in the graduation program showing the courses and required assessments completed, courses you are registered in and what remains to be complete to meet graduation requirements. I have emailed nearly all our fulltime grade 12s and have begun on the 11s and 10s, in order to ensure our students planning to graduate this year are all set with required courses and grad assessments. Watch for this important email if you have not already received one.
REQUIRED GRADUATION ASSESSMENTS
Students graduating under the 2018 graduation program will need to complete a total of 3 assessments to meet graduation requirements; Literacy 10, Numeracy and Literacy 12. These assessments must be written in person under the supervision of a teacher and are written in high schools across BC. EBUS will help our fulltime students find a seat a local high school for the January and June sessions.
Students need to complete these only one time.
For students looking to write in the January session, EBUS can help you find a school close by for you to write in. You can register for that HERE between November 3 and December 18. Registrations received after the 18th will be accepted but we cannot guarantee to find a seat.
You can get all the details at https://ebus.ca/welcome-package/grade-10-12-homeroomnews/graduation-assessments-provincial-exams/
For students looking at post-secondary education, UBC requires students applying there must score a 3 or better on the Literacy 12 assessment, with no requirements for the Literacy 10 or Numeracy. Currently other colleges and universities have not indicated the Literacy 12 result will be used as part of their admissions requirements, and students are responsible to research their future college or university to ensure you meet all admissions requirements.
For the required graduation numeracy and literacy assessments, all BC students will need government issue photo ID. A BCID card or a public school ID card will qualify. If you need a school ID card please send a current colour photo to ebusresources@sd91.bc.ca well in advance of your assessment date.
The next session EBUS will organize is for June 2024, and registration for this session will open in April.
REQUESTING NEW COURSES
For full time students wanting to add a new course, please email me your new request. Be sure to put the full student name and the specific course you are requesting, like English New Media 10 or Foundations Math 11. A new course will only be added if you are nearly finished a current course, we do not automatically add new courses at the end of January. As students complete or drop courses they finish or are not interested in taking, that frees up a seat for another, so it is in all students’ interests to not have inactive courses on your dashboard and to finish courses as soon as you can. We plan that the latest courses will be added this school year is March 1 2024. Summer session registration will open the beginning of May each school year and I will have more info about that after Spring Break.
COURSE REMINDERS
This year it is essential students get started in all the courses on your dashboard given the volume of new students we are welcoming this year. Note that students who have not submitted any work within 4 weeks of having the course on your dashboard risk being withdrawn for inactivity. If you need help with something reach out to the teacher right away, or if you need to make a course change, let me know. Our goal is not to stress students out with this information; we want to support each one of you with your goals of learning and high school graduation. As a guideline, students working in 4 or more courses should plan for a minimum 25 hours each week for learning time, scheduled flexibly when it works for you. Your teachers are available during the traditional school day as indicated in their course, and we work hard to respond to student questions within 1-2 school days. Note if your teacher works part time, it may take longer to respond.
PHONE APPOINTMENTS
For students and families looking to book an appointment with me, please visit https://tinyurl.com/yyrbnz7p and select the appropriate amount of time you need when you are available for my call. My phone will show as “no caller ID”
WELLNESS PROJECT NOVEMBER – PHYSICAL HEALTH
We are physical creatures, and as such we need to look after our bodies in a wide variety of ways. I recently discovered a wonderful scientist named Andrew Huberman who has social media accounts and a podcast, and he is big on physical well being in a variety of ways. A few to high light are getting enough quality sleep every day or as often as possible, hydrating well, and eating a nutritious diet. A key to this is consistency well. Check his info out, and I encourage you this month to make your physical health a priority. Each month we have a new focus as found in the student day planner, if you would like a student day planner contact us at EBUSresources@sd91.bc.ca
MENTAL HEALTH MINUTE
The power of laughter cannot be understated at any time. There are all kinds of positive benefits to laughing regularly, especially for your mental health. With the different social media platforms out there, I bet there are 10s if not 100s of millions of possible things on line to make to laugh. Some of my favourites are dad jokes and funny dog videos.
So I encourage you to find a funny meme, joke, or video and take the time to laugh regularly 😊
WHAT ABOUT?
To ensure our full-time high school students have all the information about EBUS Academy needed to be successful, our website contains lots of information vital to student success. In this section of our bi-weekly newsletter, we will highlight some of the elements of EBUS that we get lots of questions about.
Sooo…what about when your dashboard is down?
This one is short and simple so I will do a threefer on this newsletter. If you cannot access your courses, check our social media feeds on Facebook and Twitter, along with the website. We post any interruptions to our courses there and anticipated timelines to course restoration. In the meantime, play with your pet, go for walk or do something away from technology while you have the chance.
For the second what about, sometimes students and families find there are struggles with their learning or course work, what about navigating this?
The first step is to contact your teacher and have a detailed conversation about the issue(s). If the challenge affects more than 1 or all your courses, you should have the discussion with each teacher. Your teacher is the one who knows what can be arranged in their course and how to best support you with completing the curriculum. I am also happy to discuss issues and explore solutions for students and families as well. Depending on the nature of the challenges it may be helpful for all of your teachers to meet together to discuss best ways to support you and your learning. If that is the case, I will likely contact you to fill out some forms to give us more information and then invite you and your parent/guardian to join in a virtual meeting about this. Ultimately, we want to see all our students engaging in learning and being successful in their educational journey at EBUS.
And finally funding is currently provided by the Ministry of Education for full-time Distance Learning students to offset the costs of memberships and lessons tied to the student learning plan. An example of a membership would be a gym membership for a student to help get their activity hours in a PE course at EBUS. Note that the funds can be used for a gym membership even if you are not in PE, we want to encourage all of our students to be physically active as a positive lifestyle choice. If a student is in a Piano high school course with EBUS and wanted to have a few local lessons related to this EBUS course, these funds can be used for this as well. All the details about the funds, how they can be accessed, the plan needed to be approved and how businesses can become a vendor of School District 91, are found here https://ebus.ca/welcome-package/learning-support-funds/ Note students wanting to access the funds need to be 10% complete or more in 4 courses, the Ministry does not allow the funds to be used for tutoring costs for non-Special Education students, and students should have their plan submitted by March 1 to meet Ministry deadlines. The intent of Learning support funds is to support the current year’s learning, so all support funds must be applied for before Spring Break.
UPCOMING IMPORTANT DATES
- Nov 24 Pro D – teachers unavailable, courses open
- Dec 1 work submission deadline – all work submitted on or before this date will be assessed for this report card
- Dec 14 school assembly
- Dec 15 report cards available on student dashboards and parent portal
- Dec 18 deadline to register for January 2024 grad assessments
- Dec 23-Jan 7 EBUS closed for Winter Break – teachers unavailable but courses open
- January 8 2024 EBUS opens
- January 15-26 grad assessment session
- January 19 date for students to aim to finish semester 1 courses and email cmushumanski@sd91.bc.ca to request semester two courses
- February 9 Pro D – teachers unavailable, courses open
- March 1 deadline to request new courses – sooner is better
- March 1 work submission deadline
- March 15 report cards published
- June 14 year end work submission deadline
- June 28 EBUS closed for the school year
- Note that Term end dates are guidelines for students to finish courses, if you do not finish by the November or January term end date you can continue with your studies without penalty. New courses are not automatically added at the Term change, students must request them as they finish current courses.
PARENT ACCESS
Parents, you can access your student’s progress and report cards on the EBUS parent portal: https://my.ebus.ca/parentportal/login.php We recommend parents log in with their student at least once a week to stay actively engaged in their learning and progress. Students, you can access your report cards from your dashboard, look for the A+ icon in the upper right hand corner. Report cards are published 3 times a year; December, March, June and for summer session courses only, September.
As I get asked this often, if your student plans to finish their course(s) in a quarterly fashion, they should be about complete and started their course(s). For Sept starts with a planned finish by the end of semester 1 on January 19, students should be about 60%+ complete. And for students working in a linear fashion to complete by the June deadlines, they should be about 30%+ complete at this time.
PHONE APPOINTMENTS
Currently I am working from home. To book a phone appt with me, use https://tinyurl.com/yyrbnz7p and select the appropriate amount of time you need when you are available for my call. My calls will show up as SD91 for School District 91. EBUS Academy as also set up Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) phone calls so I now have a phone number you can reach me at! I am available at 1-250-567-4413 ext 7409. Booking a phone appt is the easiest was to ensure you will reach me, but I will answer calls during the workday when available.
Keep well, the next newsletter will be Friday December 2.