Our Focus 

We are working towards developing stronger connections with our learners and the school community.  With a focus on the core competency of developing Social Responsibility, we hope to develop, build, and maintain a school culture that provides a wonderful school environment where our students feel valued, supported and an important part of the Dixon school community.

2019/20

As this is our second year focusing on social responsibility continue to scan our learners and learning environment for areas that we need to address.  One common theme we are recognizing is that our students have wonderful knowledge and understanding when it comes to  telling us what behaviours and attributes are needed to ensure we are providing a safe and inclusive learning environment for all Dixon students.  We already understand that more work is needed to have our students develop a more "internal understanding" of these concepts.  We believe that this work will translate in seeing a transformation of student actions, instead of only hearing about "blue ribbon" behaviours.

2020/21

We continue to work with our social responsibility matrix.  Honouring Self, Honouring Others, and Honouring the Environment.  The current situation of being in a pandemic (COVID 19), we face new challenges to create and maintain a community of learners at school.  Due to new COVID protocols, we have group students into two class cohorts (ie 16 divisions = 8 cohorts).  We have worked hard to ensure students and staff maintain physical distancing (2 m) when interacting with others from outside their cohort.  To help create an environment that helps maintain physical distancing, students have staggered lunch and break times.  Students are also assigned a rotational schedule of play areas to help keep cohort students together during less structured times in the day (like Recess and Lunch).  It is challenging to focus on social responsibility when our circumstances limit social interaction with others, especially for students not in the same cohort.  Teachers continue to use and teach with our "Honouring' matrix. 

2021/2022

Our focus continues to be on our Honouring Matrix - honouring self, honouring others and honouring environment. As we move towards new ways of being together in a second year of a pandemic our amazing community as continued to create connecting experiences of our learners. Our 2022 Learning Survey told us most students in grades 4 and 7 can identify 2 or more adults how belief they will be a success, the survey also told us that most students feel they belong and feel safe. As we ended the school year being able to gather once again we are looking forward to continuing to build a connected community where are learners feel they belong - centering around our Honouring Matrix. 

2022/2023

Our focus continues to be our ways of being together in our community : Dixon Pride. Based on scanning and large group activities at the beginning of this year, many students struggle to give examples of the different parts of Dixon Pride.  Students can name all our community activities, however, the connection to our matrix is difficult for some to articulate. 

Through our scanning in our classrooms and in our collaboration time, we wonder how can we support all learners to identify a sense of connection, belonging and positive personal and cultural identity in our Dixon Community?

This aligns with the First Peoples Principles of learning - Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential and relational (focus on reciprocal relationships and a sense of place). 

2024/2025

The arrival of new staff and families always provides an opportunity for “fresh eyes” to see and inquire about things that are happening in a school community.  Over the last couple of years, Dixon has been focused on identifying a sense of connection, belonging, and positive personal and cultural identity.  At the heart of this learning has been indigenous ways of knowing and our ongoing work toward truth and reconciliation.

During the first two months of the school year, we met on a number of occasions and had many informal conversations about our students and what we “see”.  As described in “Our Story” the Dixon community is one that has great pride, and the narrative is that our school is one of the best places for kids to learn and grow in the city.  While these things are true – we are a great school and community, based on our scanning, there are some things that we can improve on.  Most of what we are planning to undertake, ties back to work that was launched in 2021 – creating learners who value and care about themselves, each other, and the environment, aptly named at that time “Dixon Pride”.

Through our scanning, we notice that our students, when dealing with them one-on-one are kind and caring individuals who know what to say and do.  What our students find challenging is being kind and caring individuals who do the right thingwhen left to their own volition.