January 31st, 2022
Each year, our Director’s Annual Report highlights our accomplishments, celebrates successes and outlines the progress we have made in supporting our students in their learning, discovery and growth.
The 2021 Annual Report provides a snapshot of our student and staff achievements over the past year. Although these 12 months were, again, affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we remained focused on taking steps towards achieving our operational goals, guided by the principles and directions in our strategic plan.
View the 2021 Director’s Annual Report.
Message from the Director
“As I take some time to reflect on 2021 and its many challenges, I see what has also been a year of continued growth, resilience and many successes. Though we were faced with a number of switches from in-person to remote learning, we saw our staff and community coming together, exercising compassion, creativity and innovation to safely support students’ continued learning, well-being and growth,” said jeewan chanicka, Director of Education.
Read the entire Message from the Director.
Highlights
Grade 10 Student Sets Sights on Global Eye Health
For Hardit Singh, a Grade 10 student at Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute in Kitchener, his journey in improving global eye health began when a friend’s detached retina went misdiagnosed. This sparked Singh’s interest in ophthalmology, a branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the eye.
“That really got me interested — like, if this can happen in a richer and more developed area like Waterloo, what could the conditions be like in other areas which don’t have as much access?” Singh said to CBC Kitchener-Waterloo in September.
This led to Singh’s invention of Speculor and a second-place finish at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists. Speculor is a hand-held portable imager that photographs a patient’s eye, and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to screen for disease.
Read Grade 10 Student Sets Sights on Global Eye Health.
Changing How History is Taught – All Year Long
A passion for history is what brought Chris Ashley to teaching, and it’s what keeps him at it 23 years after he first joined the WRDSB. Ashley’s classroom was never a place where you would receive the traditional, Euro-centric version of history. “You’re going to get more of a people approach, rather than a military approach,” he said.
Students often remark how many new, different parts of history they learn as a result of this method. It fills in the gaps and offers new perspectives on events and time periods already covered in many history courses.
“The more you learn, you realize, there is more to learn,” said Ashley.
Read Changing How History is Taught – All Year Long.
Award-Winning Innovation in Physics Education
Ashley McCarl Palmer, a physics teacher at Waterloo Collegiate Institute (WCI), won the 2021 CAP Award for Excellence in Teaching High School/CEGEP Physics (Ontario). Presented by the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP), the award recognizes excellence in teaching physics in Canadian high schools.
McCarl Palmer made three major shifts in her approach over the past five years, which were part of the reason she was recognized by the CAP: She has gone gradeless in her approach to assessment, she has expanded her students’ physics toolkits and she has adopted “thinking classroom” strategies.
Read Award-Winning Innovation in Physics Education.
By The Numbers
On Wednesday, June 16, 2021, WRDSB trustees approved a balanced budget comprising $803.2M in expenditures, including a capital budget of $87.9M for the 2021-22 school year.
See more information and view a visual representation of our budget: By The Numbers.
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Categories: News Tags: 2021 · annual report · Director of Education · Director's Annual Report · jeewan chanicka
