A+ A-

Dear Billy Green Community,

It is hard to believe that we have made it through the month of March already.  As I reflect on the last week as the new Principal of Billy Green, I cannot help but feel a sense of privilege for being part of it.  Over the course of this last week, I have spent time getting to know our community and our students.  I have enjoyed meeting some of you on the playground in the morning, chatting daily with our students and reading welcome letters that I received from Mrs. Mitchell’s class.  Each day I interact with many of our students, and I consistently am amazed at the kindness, compassion and warmth with which I am greeted.

I have always believed that the greatness of a community is a result of the combined uniqueness of the people within it.  At our last staff meeting, I asked our staff to think about what makes them great:  what is it that makes them be the respected models in our school.  I coined the new HWDSB tag line that is often used by our Director and asked: What makes YOU great and what makes YOU excellent?   In a school, when we are always working as a team and in collaboration, sometimes it feels odd to think about the precise things that WE individually bring to the school that help our students succeed.  Each day our staff come into to the building ready to not just teach curriculum, but to share a passion, to show dignity, to model trust and to build JOY.  Staff was asked to think deeply about what unique parts of them make them the excellent educators that they are.  They were asked to trace their hand on a paper and on that paper to think about what makes them excellent.  The next day, staff was tasked with asking their students to do the same – the only difference is that the students shared their thinking on leaves.  Why hands and why leaves? Well, we like to think about the adults in the school as the ones who cultivate and support the growth of our students.  The ability of our students to recognize their excellence is a result of the hands of the adults around them.

The result of our collective thinking is what you see in the photos below.  Over 325 leaves are presented below, and the bold statement of “Be You Be Excellent” created by Mrs. Lubertino’s class, each leaf and each letter created uniquely by our students who identified what makes them excellent.  In the pictures, you will also see the hands of the staff, who identified their excellence.  Together, we created a powerful visual image of the combined excellence of Billy Green School.

I knew the first day that I arrived that Billy Green students, staff and community was special – but this visual shows us the why.  I am so humbled by the compassion, dignity, trust and joy that I have been greeted with and within which I have the honour to lead and to learn from.

If you are ever at the school, please take a moment to visit our collaborative tree mural that reminds us all to “Be you, Be excellent”

Thank you to everyone for welcoming me

Sincerely,

Ms. Susanna Beatrice

Principal