ARCHIVED—Recipient Bios
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Year: 2002 – Province: British Columbia
Certificate of Achievement Recipients
Linda Picciotto
School: South Park Family School
508 Douglas Street
Victoria, British Columbia V8V 2P7
Principal: Elaine Dolan
School Telephone: 250-382-5234
School Fax: 250-381-3209
Grades/Subjects Taught: Grades 1-2, all subjects
Teaching Approach:
- Children should enjoy school and learning.
- Students should be able to work at levels appropriate for them and be encouraged to progress at their own rates.
- The best teachable moments often occur unexpectedly.
Outstanding Achievements:
Enthusiastically interacts with students, parents and fellow staff to maximize everyone's learning. South Park's alternative school program includes parents closely in the education of their children with a philosophy of developing children's full intellectual, emotional, social, physical and aesthetic potential in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. Piccioto's energy, skilled application of a wide variety of hands-on teaching strategies and obvious love of children and learning plays a central role in the success of the school. Among her many projects are:
- Big Buddies and Rainbow Thursdays, which bring younger and older students together on a regular basis for problem-solving learning activities
- exciting outings, which lead to integrated lessons in science, math, language arts: for example, an annual trip to a pumpkin farm leads to weighing and measuring the pumpkins, counting the seeds, making pumpkin pies, and writing about the experience
- numerous artistic and building projects with recycled materials, which encourage children's artistic expression
- News Time, which shows the close connection between reading, writing and spelling as students write about the "news" of one of their classmates.
South Park Family School has a waiting list of hundreds, excellence attendance rates and the students show high achievement in provincial tests of reading and writing and continue to excel in secondary school.
Rave Reviews:
"Linda's relationship with her students and her parents sets a positive model for the whole school." Former principal
"Linda's method of teaching reading and writing fosters wonderful writers. It was during these important formative years that my girls developed a love of language and an aptitude for stringing words together." Parent