Welcome, and thank you for joining our Stevenson-Britannia Adult Learning Centre (SBALC) community. At SBALC our mission statement is:
Educating with empathy,
Learning through community,
Growing in knowledge.
We value respectful speech and action, the recognition of the essential humanity of all students and staff, and the pursuit of excellence in academic studies and personal growth.
Stevenson-Britannia Adult Learning Centre is a United Nations, Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) member school. This means that we also commit to the UNESCO mission to:
“…help build a sustainable world with just societies that value knowledge, promote peace, celebrate diversity and defend human rights…” (www.unesco.org).
As a UNESCO school, we have made a whole school commitment to engage in the ongoing work of Reconciliation. We are resolved to gain knowledge about and to act on the educational recommendations set out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and to establish a reconciliation process that is “based on the principles of mutual recognition, mutual respect, and shared responsibility…” and which, “build[s] student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect” (Calls to Action, Reconciliation, 2015).
As adult students, you have come together in our school from different life experiences, different cultures, and different ways of understanding the world but you all come with hope, courage, determination and with a strong desire to effect change in your lives. We look forward to getting to know each of you this year as you enter this new beginning.
Dave Johnson
Education Director
“We live by stories; we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted – knowingly or unknowingly – in ourselves…
If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives”.
– BEN OKRI –