Centre Mountain Lellum Middle School

School Overview

School Identity and Context

Centre Mountain Lellum Middle School is a new school that opened on November 14, 2022. It is one of five middle schools in the ��ѻ��ý, and it is located on Constellation Ave, just off Westshore Parkway in the new Westhills community in Langford, just north of Victoria, BC. This school is built for 700 students in grades 6-8 and will employ approx. 75 staff members. The opening of this school was a very exciting time for all of us in the Sooke District. The building looks amazing, and we are just now completing the last of the deficiencies on the property around the school. We are very happy with the construction and the layout out of the school. It is beautiful.

The name Centre Mountain Lellum (pronounced Lay/Lum) was gifted to our ��ѻ��ý by Chief Russell Chipps of the Sc’ianew Nation (Beecher Bay) and carries the meaning of ‘House’ and the idea of ‘Community, where we raise our children’. Chief Russell Chipps said, ‘To me it means a place of coming together’. We are thankful we were gifted such a beautiful, unique name.
We are truly excited to bring everyone together, and we look forward to building a strong community with a culture that is safe, calm, welcoming.

We are excited to roll out our school values that were collaboratively created by students, staff and parents. We worked with our local indigenous community to identify our values in SENĆOŦEN language. Together we created a school community that values: SIÁM - Respect, TEṈEW̱ - Land, NA’TSA’MAHT - All together as one, IY, ŚḰÁ��ȻEN - Good feelings.

��ѻ��ý Learners

What do we know about our learners?

Centre Mountain Lellum Middle School consists of students in grade 6 through 8. We welcome students from 4 elementary schools that make up our family of schools. Enrollment for September 2024 is projected at 715, and as our community grows, we will continue to build our vision and values together to create a calm, safe, welcoming learning environment.

Centre Mountain Lellum is made up of a diverse community of learners, including many who have joined us from many parts of the world.

What evidence supports what we know about our learners?

��ѻ��ý Student Voice

All students had a voice in creating the values of our school community. Teachers introduced the definition of 'values' and taught lessons to their students, encouraging discussions about values and provided examples of values. Once the students understood the meaning of values and the importance of the exercise, each student submitted their top three values to their teacher. Then each classroom submitted their top 3 classroom values, and we quickly developed the top four values that were important to our student body. We did the same for our staff and our parent community.

Once we had our top 4 values, we shared the values and designed an exercise that dug a little deeper into the feeling these values create for our school community. It was important for us to involve and recognize our indigenous lands and the incredible name that was gifted to us. Rather than create our values and then translate the words into the Sencoten language, we wanted to understand the feelings behind our values and then involve our indigenous leaders to help us translate these feelings into a Sencoten word or phrase. This coming year, we will introduce our values and practice the language so that every member of our school community will be able to pronounce the words and explain the meaning. We are very excited to create this identity for our school community.

The results of our Student Learning Survey indicate that many of our students feel welcome, feel safe and feel a sense of belonging.

Focus and Planning

What focus(es) emerge as goals to pursue?

Critical and Creative Thinking

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Indigenous ��ѻ��ý

Intellectual Development

Social Emotional Learning

School Goal 1

��ѻ��ý goal is to create a safe, calm, welcoming learning environment so that all students feel a sense of belonging.

Strategic Plan Goal

Engagement

Strategic Plan Engagement Objectives

Develop, expand and implement inclusive and collaborative practices and processes.

Action Plan

1. Introduce the Sencoten language values and understand the meaning behind the words. The values will become our guide in how we interact with each other and represent our school community.

2. On the first day of school, we will continue with our welcoming tradition. All students and staff line up on back field and once our community elders begin to sing and drum, we all walk in a line, one class at a time, past our elders, around to the front of the school, and walk to class. It is a very powerful, moving experience and it sets the tone for the entire year. Once we are in class, we invite our elders to speak to the staff and students and explain the importance of the song, the meaning behind our school's name, and they remind us of the importance of 'One Mind' and 'One Spirit'.

Withing the first week of school, we show the video of Chief Russell Chipps and Chief Gordan Planes where they explain the meaning behind our school's name and the importance of tolerance and the celebration of coming together as one. These videos are played in the classroom, during assemblies, and during parent and community functions throughout the year.

3. Celebrate Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the classroom, during grade assemblies, during full school assemblies, and during community events throughout the year. We want all people to feel safe and welcome, so we will recognize cultural events, display visual representations and provide resources that represent diversity.

4. Providing materials and resources to teachers and students that are intentional around the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion.

5.Supporting teachers in providing educational opportunities that reflect our diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

School Goal 2

To continue to improve literacy and numeracy development.

Strategic Plan Goal

Learning

Strategic Plan Learning Objectives

Provide opportunites for learners to develop critical and creative thinking skills.

Action Plan

How can the district support your goals?

Na’tsa’maht Indigenous ��ѻ��ý

We will continue to learn from and work with our Na'tsa'maht Indigenous ��ѻ��ý Department and our NIE Teacher and support worker every day. Continue to support funding to access elders and role models to learn from and work with, not only in school, but in their communities (examples - tidal energy projects, solar power energy)

We are trying to find creative ways to cover fees for artwork, celebrations and other projects we are working toward, so maybe our NIE Team could help us get creative to raise funds for further projects.

ELL

As the student population continues to increase in its diversity, 16% are identified as ELL, we want to ensure that all students feel safe, welcome, and a sense of belonging in our school. We want to ensure that our ELL and newcomer students feel seen and represented, and experience success in their learning. We will continue to, and grow, the way we showcase and reflect our school's diversity in visual displays, in learning resources, in books purchased for the library, and in opportunities offered within the school (ex. clubs, extracurricular, outings, fieldtrips, etc).

We hope the ELL department can support us by providing professional learning opportunities for teachers that provide strategies for language learners in classroom teaching, and we hope to work closely with SWIS workers to support our newcomer families feel connected and supported in our school.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Centre Mountain Lellum Middle School is a new school, and we are very proud of everything we have done to create a safe, calm, welcoming learning environment in such a short time. However, we know there is room for growth and improvement, so we would like to invite or District Leaders of Inclusive ��ѻ��ý, NIE, ELL and SOGI into our building to get further advice as to how we can improve the work we have done to create a safe place and welcoming environment for all people coming into our building.

Inclusive ��ѻ��ý

Safe & Healthy Schools

Reflect, Adjust, Celebrate

Indicators of progress

Indicators of progress connected to Goal 1

1. Sometimes we can base our progress on what people say about our school or how people feel in the school. We can judge the engagement level based on the participation levels of staff and students. We can look at the numbers of clubs we run, the number of sports teams we have, the number of events we run in the school and the number of community events we base out of our school. According to this theory, we are doing remarkably well in this area. Many staff and students are engaged in different activities around the school and students have many opportunities to feel a sense of belonging.

2. During our School Planning Day in September, our staff focused on the results of our Student Learning Surveys from the 2022-23 school year. Knowing that these students are now our leaders in the school this year, we felt it was important to analyze the results of our student voice. Staff at each table reviewed the results of one page of the Student Learning Surveys - approx. 4 questions each. They discussed what stands out from the results, where we need to put our attention and any action plan we could develop to help improve the results. Each group recorded their work on one piece of chart paper, posted it on the wall and then took time to walk around and see the work from all other groups.

A few indicators of progress were:

Is school a place where you feel like you belong?

73% of students felt a sense of belonging 'sometimes, most of the time, and all of the time'.

How many adults do you think care about you at your school?

66% of students think one or more adults care about them at school.

Do you feel welcome at your school?

85% of students felt welcome at school 'sometimes, most of the time, and all of the time'.

Do you feel safe at school?

86% of students felt safe at school 'sometimes, most of the time, and all of the time'.

Students from different cultural backgrounds are welcomed by other students in school.

43% responded neutral or unsure.

50% agree or strongly agree.

We realize that most action items fell under the category of relationships. ��ѻ��ý staff (teachers, EAs, admin) looked at class lists for all our students and identified those they felt they had a connection with. There was approximately 10% of students that no staff felt they had a connection with. Next year we will continue with this process and follow up with those students to match them up with an adult they feel close to in the school.

Indicators of progress connected to Goal 2

How will we communicate and celebrate our progress?

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