By Sharon Fischer, Principal Stettler Elementary School
We have had another fun and exciting week at Stettler Elementary School (SES). On Sept. 20, 80 young athletes in Grades 2 - 6 boarded the bus at 8:15 a.m. and made their way to Camrose where they participated in their first cross country run of the 2018 - 19 school year. This week our X-Country Runners are heading to New Norway where they will participate in the Spartan Run. We are very proud of how well they all ran last week and look forward to hearing the results of this week’s race. I am confident that our athletes will once again put forth their best effort and represent themselves and our school in a very positive manner.
We are fortunate to have so many caring and responsible students in our school. They make their parents, our staff and the entire community very proud. Two of these students are in Grade 2, and these girls planned and organized a very thoughtful fundraising event at our school. On Oct. 26, Leann Schrijver and Miley Pybus gave up both of their recesses to sell juice boxes and suckers in the front foyer of our school. After hearing about the destruction that Hurricane Florence caused in North Carolina they felt they needed to do something to help. So these girls put their heads together, came up with this idea, and are sending all of the proceeds to the Red Cross to be used to help the people who lost their homes. It was a pretty heart-warming Wednesday at SES.
It was also picture day at SES, so our students looked all shined up and beautiful buying their suckers and juice boxes. Picture day started just before 9 a.m. and took until the final bell of the day to get through all of our classes. We started with our first class of play school students right at nine and then worked our way up through the grades, somehow managing to capture all 623 smiling faces before the end of the day.
You will see more smiling faces if you stop by the school on Friday afternoon. On Sept. 28, all classes will meet in the gymnasium at 1:50 p.m. to hold our annual Terry Fox assembly before proceeding outside to the track where we will participate in the annual Terry Fox Run. This event grows every year and we are thrilled at the number of parents, grandparents, siblings, and community members who come out to join us for this event. If you find yourself with nothing to do on Friday afternoon, come join us. We always have fun and it is an amazing cause. The students at Stettler Elementary School have consistently done an incredible job of fundraising for this extremely worthwhile cause. Cancer research is a cause that is near and dear to all of us, and SES has raised more money for the Terry Fox Foundation than almost every other school in the province. SES was awarded a plaque last year as the second highest fundraising school in Alberta. Our students and families truly are amazing.
Something else you will notice, if you stop by on Friday is the large number of staff and students who are wearing orange shirts. Orange Shirt Day is a day each year that we intentionally dress in orange as a statement that “All Students Matter.” The reason for wearing orange is to bring awareness to the inter-generational impact of residential schools, and we participate to symbolize the importance of everyone in our schools. We look forward to an exciting last week of September.