Update #6 -- Friday, October 16th, 2026

Principal's Message

Hello Teston Village PS families,

Thank you for another wonderful week at TVPS!

Our character trait for October is responsibility, and this week we are talking about responsibility when packing lunch and snacks!

There are children with allergies, especially life-threatening allergies, in our school. While it is impossible to create a risk-free environment, parents can help by checking what is sent to school for kids to eat.

• DO NOT send any foods that may contain PEANUTS and/or NUTS. 

• Please check the list of ingredients for peanut butter, peanut sauce, peanut oil, mixed nuts, ground nuts, artificial nuts, and macadamia nuts.  Examples include cookies, chocolate, granola bars, some cereal bars

• Please NO Nutella or chocolate spreads for sandwiches 

• Avoid products that say “may contain peanut/nuts."

If you are unsure about a chosen product, please do not send it to school. We thank you for your cooperation.  

DECE Appreciation Day

Ontario will recognize ECE Appreciation Day on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. This is a day to celebrate the important work of Early Childhood Educators and childcare staff. At Teston Village, we are grateful for our three wonderful DECEs, Ms. Bassi, Ms. Cerullo, and Ms. Stankus, who work closely with our Kindergarten teachers. They play an essential role in supporting our youngest learners as they begin their school journey, helping to build emotional, social, and academic skills. Thank you for your dedication, care, and the positive energy you bring to our school community each day.

“How can I help my child with learning at home?” This is one of the most common questions we hear from families.

We know how much you care about supporting your child’s growth, especially in math! To help make learning at home engaging and accessible, our school board has put together a collection of activities and helpful resources tailored by grade level:

📐 Activities & Resources (Kindergarten and up): Supporting Math Learning at Home

❓ Answers to Common Questions: Frequently Asked Questions About Math

Whether you're playing simple counting games with your youngest or exploring concepts with older students, every little bit helps build confidence!

How can I support my child with literacy?

Parent guides and resources to support your child’s literacy at home can be found on this Ministry of Education website.

The Language Grades 1-8 Guide for parents gives information about the revised grades 1-8 curriculum. The guide includes:

• A summary of the changes in the revised curriculum

• And outline of the knowledge and skills students need to learn at each grade

• Strategies to support your child’s literacy learning

TVO Learn provides resources for students in Grades 1-8.

• A Parent's Guide to Literacy and Mathematics in Full-Day Kindergarten

• Supporting Multilingual Language Learners in Kindergarten through Home Language

We hope these resources give you some fun ideas to try together. 

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Week 3 -- Cyber Safety: Generative AI

What Has Changed? Traditional cyberattacks were easier to spot. Poor grammar, generic greetings, and suspicious links were reliable red flags. Generative AI has largely eliminated those tells. 

Attackers now have access to tools that can:

• Generate fluent, personalized phishing emails by analyzing publicly available writing samples, social media activity, or even prior email chains obtained through a previous breach.

• Clone a person's voice from as few as three seconds of audio using commercially available AI tools, then use that clone to impersonate a principal, superintendent, or board executive in a live or pre-recorded call.

• Produce deepfake video in real time during a call, overlaying a trusted person's face and voice onto an attacker's feed to deceive staff into approving transactions or disclosing credentials.

• Automate targeted attack campaigns at scale, allowing a single threat actor to run thousands of customized attacks simultaneously at a fraction of what it previously cost.

How to Protect Yourself

• Verify unusual requests through a second, independent channel.

• Treat urgency as a warning sign. Attackers deliberately create time pressure to prevent verification. Legitimate internal requests will withstand a brief delay.

• Never approve payments, reset credentials, or grant system access based solely on an email, phone call, or video, regardless of how convincing the request appears.

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend and another great week ahead!

Sincerely,
Ms. S. Mediratta