Hello Louis Riel families,  

Next week will undoubtedly prove to be an exciting one for many of our students as it includes an annual event that involves dressing up in costume, venturing out into the neighborhood at night, knocking on doors to be rewarded with quasi-edible items, delaying bedtimes, and ingesting vast quantities of sugar in the form of candies of all sorts... and then they go to school again the next day.  If this sounds like Halloween fun for you and your family, and your child is planning to wear a costume to school on October 31st, please take a moment to read through our costume conversation guide. This is also a good time to remind our families that we have school all week this week and that there isn’t a day off for Halloween. 

Louis Riel Halloween Costume Conversation Guide

Is your child's costume consistent with school norms around reasonable attire (i.e.: is there a risk of over-sharing/catastrophic costume failure? Will they be able to safely participate in all their learning while in costume)?  

• Does your child’s costume refer to a sensitive political topic that may impact school community members directly or their families? (This is the big picture idea: be mindful of others) 
• Does your child's costume involve a weapon?  
• Does your child's costume represent a negative stereotype?  
• Does your child’s costume involve a mask that hides their identity entirely? (Although we have may have become more accustomed to wearing masks, we need to be able to recognize if the student in costume is a Louis Riel student.)  
• Does your child’s costume allude to committing acts of violence against others? (this is a tricky one but please remember we are a k-9 school) 
• Does your child’s costume involve excessively gory elements? (Again, we’re a k-9 school) 
• Does it involve changing the colour of their skin? (Shrek green is ok, however emulating another nationality/race is not ok)  
• Does it allude to or reinforce a negative stereotype of a culture that is not the child's own, such as a kimono, a turban, a hijab, or a feather headdress, etc.?  
• Does it mock religious beliefs (nun or priest or cleric or imam or rabbi, etc.)?  
• Does it mock the 2SLGBTQ+ community?  
• Is it based on tragic or violent historical moments, such as slavery, the Holocaust, residential schools or cultural role play?  

If the response to any of these questions is yes, we would ask you and your child to reconsider the costume that they will be wearing to school and perhaps leave those more challenging elements of their costume for another time outside of the school day. If they choose to disregard the above guidelines we may need to ask them to change into attire that meets a more k-9 safe and caring school-friendly standard of dress. It is our hope that with the above in mind, the whole Louis Riel community will be able to safely enjoy any and all Halloween activities without feeling insulted or otherwise upset or uncomfortable. 

Next Louis Riel School Council(s) meeting is November 29  

Each month we will have teachers from different divisions, departments, and programs present to council and community about the teaching and learning going on in their classrooms. Next month’s teacher presenters are still being decided but we have many staff lining up who are excited to share what and how they teach.   

A reminder that all current minutes and agendas are available on the LRPAC website: https://www.wearelouis.ca/ under Agendas and Minutes. 

Child and Youth Well-Being: A Webinar Series for Parents and Guardians

The Calgary Board of Education invites all parents and guardians to join us in an online series focusing on child and youth well-being. These sessions will be hosted in partnership with experts from Alberta Health Services and will explore topics such as vaping, brain development, mental health, and sexual health. The next session is November 16th how to engage in challenging conversations with your young person regarding vaping. 

Click here to learn more: Child and Youth Well-Being: A Webinar Series for Parents and Guardians  

Fun Lunches at Louis  

Fun lunches are a great source of fundraising for the Parent Council, give parents a day off from packing a lunch, and are exciting for the kids to receive! Fun Lunches will continue throughout the year with our regular rotation for Elementary and Junior High students each month. All future junior high fun lunch dates will be the 2nd Wednesday of each month and Elementary will be on the 3rd Wednesday of the month.  

Sign up at www.HealthyHunger.ca. There is also a link on the Louis Riel School website. 

It is important to note, that due to health and safety protocols on food storage, the school will not be able to accommodate storing left-over lunches to the next day if your child was absent. Left-over lunches will be donated. 

Spectator Expectations at Louis Riel Athletics Events 

Last year our division shared common expectations for spectators at athletic events. This year Louis Riel will be maintaining these spectator expectations and conditional attendance policies for spectators to support a positive environment for our student athletes.  

Based on the athletic events we hosted all week this week and spectators that attended the school after hours, we need to remind our students of our expectation around adult supervision: 

If you plan to attend as a spectator after the first game of the evening you need to have an adult with you who is a parent or is willing to act as your chaperone. If you have a parent or chaperone in the gym, you must be seated with them for the duration of the game(s) you choose to attend.   

Please keep in mind that our main goal is to maintain a safe and fun environment for students. 

• The players are kids. 
• The coaches are volunteers. 
• The referees are human. 

Thank you for supporting our students and our spectator expectations 

Lost and Found at Louis Riel 

Please remind your student(s) to walk by and locate any lost or misplaced clothing and lunch container items and take them home. If your student regularly loses items at school, please also consider sewing nametags on their clothing items.  

Volunteers Support Our Program 

Volunteers are often required to meet supervision ratio requirements for off-campus field experiences. Without parent volunteers to help meet the required supervision ratio, off-campus activities and field experiences cannot proceed. Please volunteer for some off campus activities and field experiences this year to support your student and their class.  

Interested in volunteering this year? Please fill out the following form: https://cbe.ab.ca/FormsManuals/Annual-Volunteer-Registration-Form.pdf 

Digital Citizenship at Louis Riel – TIK TOK Edition 

We are an Away for the Day school. Student brains need a break from mobile devices, and they all benefit from opportunities to engage in other ways of communicating, creating and exploring. Part of our work is to promote safety, lessen cyberbullying, and to foster and sustain focus on learning. How our Away for the Day policy supports this is simple: 

• Cell phones/personal electronic devices are powered off and go into lockers as you enter 
• Cell phones/devices do not come out until you’re exiting after the final bell at 2:50 pm 
• Cell phones may only be used for learning tasks during the school day with teacher permission 

As educators and parents, we see our children learning new things in classroom lessons and in social situations throughout the day. We regularly help our students navigate relatively simple and occasionally complex social situations and challenges as they arise in classrooms, hallways and on the playground. When it comes to online activity, we don’t always see what our children are learning or how they’re choosing to navigate social situations of varying complexity. We have an Away for the Day policy that confines the more challenging online interactions between students to the part of the day when students are not learning with us because they don’t have access to their phones. In an excerpt from an article for Psychology Today, Pamela Rutledge wrote: 

Online devices are a portal to the kids' social world. Social media is social currency—it's how kids keep up with pop culture, trends, and their friends. It's how they know what's going on in their world. Pew Research found that the three main uses of mobile devices by teens were: passing the time (90 percent), connecting with others (84 percent), and learning new things (83 percent). 

Recently, it has come to our attention that one of our students has created an account on Tik Tok with the school’s name that is known as a shipping account. For those of you who may not know what this means, it’s yet another interesting appropriation of a word used in a totally different context by young adolescents. [ ship ] verb. to take an interest in or hope for a romantic relationship between two people, whether the romance exists or not. This isn’t an uncommon type of account and, in the mind of the account owner, may have been intended as a relatively harmless thing to do. The challenge that this account creates is that it involves posting a picture of a student without their consent, suggesting a romantic relationship with another student, and it’s all shared on a social media platform that is widely subscribed to by students of this age. If you don’t make it a regular practice to discuss social media use with your student, please consider incorporating this topic into your regular conversations or check-ins with them. Ask your student about this account and encourage them to make good choices about who to follow and to not follow as a way to help peers within their school community feel safe and welcome.  

Upcoming Events  

October 30 & 31 – Grade 8 & 9 GATE Abacus Lessons 
November 1 – Grade 7.2 Zoo Trip 
November 3 & 4 – Bison Bawl Junior Basketball Tournament 
November 7 – Grade 6 Presentation City of Calgary  
November 7&8 – Senior Basketball Invitational 
November 8 – Picture Retake Day 
November 8 – Grade 7.3 Zoo Trip 
November 9 – No School – Non-Instructional Day 
November 10 – 14 Fall Break