It happened on
Today was our first ISABC GSA Pride meetup for 2022 (in person!) hosted by Island Pacific School on Bowen Island on Wednesday, June 1st, 2022.
It was a fun filled day with many schools joining Island Pacific School participating in activities, performance, music, and lots of opportunities for our GSA students to connect.
Leading the event was Kari Marentette (she/her), Island Pacific School’s grade 6 homeroom teacher. Kari also teaches Language Acquisition French to our grade 6-9’s and our grade 6 Individuals & Societies course. She worked behind the scenes with the Genders & Sexuality Alliance club (GSA) and ISABC in creating this awesome day.
How IPS is honouring the LGBTQ2S+ movement:
This year, Island Pacific School is celebrating Pride Month to honour the LGBTQ2S+ members of our community. Pride Month provides us a chance to recognize and celebrate the diversity of our community in our student, faculty, and family population. This is an opportunity to reflect on the challenges that this community has faced over time and implement new ways of supporting our LGBTQ2S+ community.
As part of our commitment to supporting the LGBTQ2S+ community in our school, Island Pacific School created a GSA (Gender and Sexuality Alliance) club in the 2020-2021 academic year. This club hosted events such as a Pride Halloween Dance and Pride trivia. We made pronoun buttons available to all students, and have put a Pride flag at the entrance of every classroom as well as a Progress Pride flag in the front of the school. Our communications team created an official Pride logo that can be seen on much of our community outreach and media.
Our educators diligently explored their curriculums to look for opportunities to include LGBTQ2S+ history and stories, for example, in our Grade 8 French class, we explore a variety of French music from LGBTQ2S+ artists. Our library has revamped their offerings, including many new books with LGBTQ2S+ stories.
This year, Island Pacific School will also be hosting a Pride Celebration event with other ISABC schools’ GSA clubs from Vancouver and surrounding areas. The event will include speeches about the importance of celebrating Pride Month, and an opportunity for students from many schools to hear each others’ stories and have fun together.
We would like to thank everyone in our Island Pacific School community for their support with these initiatives.