a year in review: 2024-2025

Posted on: June 22nd, 2025 by jnovakowski

This is my final blog post for the Richmond School District on this blog that began in 2013 when I came into a new district role in support of the redesigned BC curriculum framework. I am retiring at the end of June after 34 years in this district.

As of June 30, 2025, the district will no longer be hosting this blog. So if there is anything you would like to download, please do!

This year I was assigned to support five elementary schools as their curriculum, instruction, and assessment “point person”: Byng, Brighouse, Mitchell, Debeck and Spul’u’kwuks.

Along with my assigned schools, I supported many other schools around mathematics and numeracy, CEF (Classroom Enhancement Funds) Numeracy projects, and district Numeracy Foundations Inquiry Grants projects.

Shaheen Musani was in a reimagined Grades 6-12 Numeracy and Assessment teacher consultant position this year and we collaborated together on several K-12 numeracy initiatives, projects, and events. We presented to the board of trustees and to our district’s education committee about the Numeracy Foundations framework and areas of professional learning in our district.

One of the professional learning series we provided this year was series of professional learning burst sessions that focused on CGI and another in Inclusive Practices in Mathematics Education. The Numeracy Playlist on the district’s YouTube Channel is open access and you can find over 50 videos HERE.

Several new district documents were created this included more 20 Days Kits, K-5 Mathematics Proficiency Scales, math strategy posters, supporting documents for our series on Inclusive Practices in Mathematics Education, updating of the learning resources document, and documents for teachers to provide to families to support their understanding of the BC curriculum and to provide ideas for how to support their children with math and numeracy at home.

Along with some science projects in schools and connecting math learning to the outdoors, another curricular project I engaged in at Debeck Elementary was learning with a K&1 class (and Ms Sherwin) about bookmaking, Inspired by the early writing work of Matt Glover, I visited the class regularly and the students made books! Some books were fictional stories, some were personal narratives and others were about students’ interests or passions. We created a bookmaking one-pager to add to our district’s K-2 Pillars of Literacy resources.

SD38-Bookmaking-One-Pager-K-2-Final Download

With my retirement also comes an end to The Studio at Grauer. A space for learning that began in 2015 with my early learning colleague Marie Thom and has moved and changed to the space it is now. The Studio has always been about joyful, holistic and interdisciplinary learning, with mathematics as a focus. We have explored concepts like story, identity, and place through encounters with materials, art, the land, and through issues connected to our local context.

One of the projects connected to The Studio this year was the ICCME (Indigenous Community, Culture and Math Education) project through UBC. I collaborated with teacher consultant Alli Ridley and primary teachers from Grauer (Ms Fotheringham, Ms Sato and Ms Toffolo) and their classes of primary students, We began the project learning about mapping and walked to the west dyke several times with a focus on getting to know this place were we love and go to school. The children were very interested in the plants and animals we found and so we shifted our focus to getting to know local species through observations, field guides, researching through websites and books and representing through different media. A mathematical focus was on size, scale, and measurement.

Over several months, we created a large map with the children to document our learning and experiences in getting to know this place through experiences on the land and connecting to Indigenous knowledge and practices.