Due to the high potential for poor weather tomorrow, we will be postponing all activities until next week. This includes the Terry Fox Walk/Walk to Breakfast, and the clean-up. Curriculum night will also be moved with these events. Sorry for any inconvenience. We will notify you as soon as possible on the new date. we look forward to seeing everyone!
Please check out our September Newsletter as there is important information regarding Emergency Numbers, Volunteers, Bus Passes, & Parents/Visitors in the School!
Quick Hits
You can download or view the entire newsletter here: Newsletter September 7
If Parents/Guardians have any questions or concerns relating to student transportation they should use the Central Transportation Inquiry Form. This is the best method to ensure your concerns are logged and dealt with accordingly. The link to the form is below.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdPKRwB8Mkno3do1MRGaWkPq0dpCTDQNtQDR_fVlG4XtZHi_g/viewform
We can’t tell you how much we raised yet…but we can tell you how many people care about Stephanie Freeman and her family. A WHOLE LOT!!! Stephanie is our school secretary and she is loved by all of us. She recently found out that she has grade 2 brain cancer and would have to undergo 6 weeks of radiation and 12 months of chemotherapy. When we heard that Steph was entering into this fight, we knew that we would enter it with her.
As a staff and as a school community we wanted to show our support and EVERYONE came out to help! We decided to have a cold plate sale on Sunday, June 3rd, and we were so happy to see so many orders. 1532 to be exact. We had orders from Arnold’s Cove to Catalina and everywhere in between (and around). At first, we were a little overwhelmed. For those of you who a not familiar with cold plate sales…that is a lot (understatement). Some questioned if we could do it; no one had heard of anyone selling that many as a fundraiser around here before. As a staff, we said we would do whatever it takes and rise up for Steph. And to use a football metaphor…if you are going to throw a hail mary you need the right quarterback.
Enter Mrs Stephanie Smith. While we had enormous support from all our staff, there is no doubt that Mrs Smith spearheaded our initiative and kept us organized. And as we discovered, when you do a sale this big, organization is everything. And again, for those not familiar with cold plate sales, it takes a lot of salad to be made and turkeys to be cooked to do it; we weren’t sure at first if we could get 552 litres of salad made (4 kinds of salad – 138 litres each) and 62 turkeys cooked.
Enter our school community. It was overwhelming how much support we received; how many people volunteered; how many people wanted to help. Salads? check. Turkeys? check. Saturday night Prep workers? Check. Sunday morning making cold plates? check. Deliveries? Check. Staff members and their spouses, parents, students, community members, surrounding community members, all gave their time, money, and energy to make this endeavour a great success! We ended up making 1626 cold plates, but more importantly, we made the statement that we are with Steph during her fight!
Again, there are too many people to thank individually, but we wanted to tell all those that helped that YOU ARE AWESOME!!! We are so grateful and we know that Steph and her family are so grateful for everyone’s generosity. This was a truly beautiful example of what our School community is all about. Family.
UPDATE: After expenses…we are quite pleased to announce that we have raised $14,613.45!!! This will all go to Steph to help her in her fight!!! Once again we have to thank everyone who supported and helped us!!! One small school…one BIG heart!!!
On May 23rd, 10 students from RIA attended MUN Discovery Days at Memorial University, which is an event that is centred on the medical field. This event was organized by the Faculty of Medicine and the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame and they offered a variety of informational sessions for students interested in pursuing a medical career. Each student attended two sessions that addressed a variety of medical fields, from the human body, chemical processes, and pharmaceuticals to name only a few. They also had the opportunity to sit in on keynote speaker Michael Bartellas, who is a medical school resident. To finish off the day students were able to be apart of a question and answer period with some of the provinces top doctors and medical personnel. This experience was a phenomenal opportunity that we hope to attend each year!
We wish to thank Mr Blackmore and Mrs Smith for taking our students to this event; your efforts are greatly appreciated!!!
