Zoe and Sashi Sanchez-Wickland were born in Canada, have a Mexican father and a Canadian mother, and live on Salt Spring Island. Every year, the two sisters go to Puerto Escondido, the place where their dad grew up, to live there for a few months and connect with...
Today is World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development; a day to celebrate different backgrounds. In the weeks that bookend this important day, The Circle Education is connecting the dots between similarities that blend us together in a shared humanity...
Ivanna Darmokhid was thirteen when she moved from Ukraine to Salt Spring Island. The teenage years can be a difficult time to leave your friends and family behind, but Ivanna was excited for this new adventure in her life. She’s grateful that her parents took the leap...
Keshua, Levi and Zyah Welch have a Grenadian dad and a Canadian mom with Dutch roots. They had a Canadian upbringing on Salt Spring Island, with the Grenadian humour of their dad and a touch of Dutch from their great-grandparents. Last year they had the chance to get...
The Circle Education works with children and youth to remove dividers that separate us and make us feel different from each other, when in fact we are inherently the same. Our executive director Janine Fernandes-Hayden learned an important lesson about...
Ask yourself this: Do you feel nervous if your phone is not in your hand or within sight? Do you find yourself wishing you were more creative or had more time in the day to spend on your passions or connecting with friends and...
As a parent of a participant in The Circle’s programs, and as a local educator, Shelly Johnson has a unique perspective on social-emotional education. Our Education Outreach Program Coordinator Adele Mark, sat down with Shelly to hear her take on the benefits of...
The Circle Salt Spring Education Society is offering a new ‘Methods and Tools for Deeper Connections with youth’ course at the end of January 2022. This offering is ideal for individuals who work with youth in a variety of contexts, whether it be formal educational...
Adele Mark, Education Outreach Program Coordinator, at The Circle interviewed Gail Bryn-Jones, a dedicated advocate of social-emotional education and teacher of over 30 years on Salt Spring Island. Gail has a master’s degree in Education and has served as a board...
When Adele Mark was fifteen, she moved with her parents from Los Angeles, a city of 13 million people where she had lived all of her life, to Salt Spring Island, Canada. A place she thought of at the time as a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with more...
Kate Nash has been our Programs and Development Coordinator and the facilitator of the Pass It On and Respect programs for more than ten years. Adele Mark, our Marketing and Communications assistant at The Circle interviewed Kate to hear her reflections on her work...
Do you want to know what our Pass it On Boys program is all about? Participants of last year’s program tell in this video about what Pass it On Boys did for them. “I am able to express myself here, where I can’t always at school or at home,” says Liam Walsh. “I can be...
The Circle Education’s Pass it On Girls Program has been running for more than ten years. Facilitator Kate Nash has created a safe space where young girls talk about topics like identity, body image, relationships and consent. The program helped Mia Oliveira (now 19)...
One of our former Pass it On participants was sexually assaulted when she was nineteen. It was an experience that caused significant mental and physical suffering. Many things helped her find herself again after this event. However, the most powerful remedy came from...
In high school, Natasha Wilson, was a participant in the Pass It On program from The Circle Education. Once a week, she gathered in a circle with other high school girls to engage in open and vulnerable dialogue about their life experiences. Before joining the group,...
Did you make new year’s resolutions for 2023? Most new year’s resolutions are meant to improve your life or lifestyle. These resolutions, based on the social-emotional learning principles that ground the programs we facilitate in schools, are less conventional. And...
Bullock Lake Farm is going into its second year as a host location for the Pass it On Boys program. Zack Hemstreet and Eland Bronstein, the facilitators of the program, look back on their first year at the farm and talk about the (social-emotional) learning...
Monday marked World Mental Health Day, a day to raise awareness of mental health issues around the world and to mobilize efforts in support of mental wellness. Although more and more people are opening up, there is still a lot of stigma surrounding mental health....
The Circle Education has been providing social-emotional learning programs in schools for over more than twenty years. Why is it important to have those programs in a school environment? We’ve asked three educators about their experiences with social-emotional...
This is the last interview in the Connecting the Dots series to celebrate World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. In the weeks that bookend this important day, The Circle Education talks with young people to celebrate different backgrounds....