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Yesterday we celebrated Ash Wednesday. It was a beautiful liturgy! From my perspective, the children were participating, singing and reverent. One can never know what is happening in each child’s heart, but, if the exterior milieu is conducive, there is a better chance that children will “risk” opening their hearts and actually “allowing” God to fill them. If God fills any one’s heart, if one opens oneself and is vulnerable enough to be touched by God’s Spirit of Goodness and Love, one’s life becomes a Life-filled, Love-filled, Goodness-filled life and one’s heart will be ultimately reflective of God, or as we say, transformed into the Heart of Christ!

To educate to the living of lives which are reflective of
God is certainly the overarching goal at this school!

Here is the good (and hopefully encouraging) news: progress DOES happen.

I know progress happens because I see and hear about how our students step up to the plate and ACT in God-like/Christ-like ways! Allow me name three examples from yesterday alone:

1. Some prospective parents with whom I met in the late afternoon spent a fair amount of our conversation time praising the confidence and poise of our student ambassador tour guides at our January Admissions Open House. These prospective parents were not only astonished by the tour guides’ behavior, but they were also impressed at how polite ALL our Middle School students were as they passed them in the hallways. 
2. A parent/coach shared with me how the members of his basketball team responded to an experience of unsportsmanlike actions and words from the opposing team in this past weekend’s game. To our students’ credit, they responded to bad behavior with GOOD sportsmanlike behavior. It is not easy to do in the heat of the moment! Yet, in the face of adversity, these young men did the difficult thing, managed their emotions, thus consciously choosing to display great emotional maturity.
3. I observed our Social Justice students busily collecting donated items for the Ash Wednesday collection from the various homerooms, and I observed our Fourth Class students practicing being leaders as they continued to steward the WHOLE school in learning about the needs of the people of Haiti and helping us respond to those needs with generosity (manning their Hearts for Haiti stations).

These are three very real and very positive examples of the kind of thing I hear about or observe on a daily basis.

But, this is what I really want to share with you today:
this wonderful behavior does not happen magically!

Raising children takes effort, thought and work.

I could also name three examples from yesterday of GOOD young men and women who made some poor choices. How we handle and manage the poor choices is where the rubber meets the road. It is where the education occurs. It is when the great lessons are really learned. It is when we (you at home and we at school) are provided the opportunity to really HELP our children become their best selves and become, at some point, ABLE to choose to be the face of God in the world. For this to happen, we must collectively and consistently do the following:

1. Stay connected with our children! Keep the lines of communication open. Reassure when necessary that they are inherently precious. Eventually that message will be internalized.
2. Reframe their anxieties and worries by minimizing exterior reference points. (What others “supposedly think” is NOT what we want to be the determining factor of behavior.)
3. Set high expectations of behavior. (Examples: don’t interrupt adults, say excuse me, sit at the table while we finish dinner as a family, make your bed before you leave the house, make your lunch the night before, don’t put photos on the internet, etc.) Then, whatever your expectations are, be clear about them.
4. If the expectations are not met, be clear about consequences. (Example: if you choose not to pick up your toys, as we agreed, then you will be choosing not to use them for a week.)
5. Agree on the consequences. They ought to make sense to the child.
6. Follow through with consequences in very respectful ways. (“Gee Mary, I am so sorry you chose not to pick up your toys today, as we agreed, they will now go into a box and we won’t use what was left out for a week. Sorry you made that choice, but I trust that, if you really want to use them, you will make a better choice the next time.”) Then, don’t say it again. Move on! No nagging, no repeating and no belittling.
7. And remember – it is not about us. It is not about how we look to our friends or colleagues. It is not about our ego. It is not about our pride or our disappointment. It is about our children’s growth.

Setting high expectations, taking time to agree on consequences, and having the courage to follow through with consequences all take time, work, energy and effort. We here are committed to putting in that time, work, energy and effort with your children. You have often heard us say that this aspect of our education is HALF of what we do! But, we would be doing you and our children a disservice if we did not engage in this work. What makes it difficult is that the process, as you well know yourselves, creates some angst in our children. But, in the end, we will have achieved our goal:

To educate to the living of lives which are reflective of God!

Let us pray for each other as we continue this very important work together―for the sake of our children and for the sake of the world.

United in the Heart of Christ,

Maureen Glavin, rscj

Next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, which, of course, is the first day of the liturgical season of Lent, a period of 40 days set aside by the Church to provide time for engaging in activities which promote spiritual growth.

Given the approach of Lent, I would like to propose some (perhaps unique) categories to think about in our conscious choices as we begin our Lenten Journey of Growth. My suggestions all fall under the following rubric: 

Be attentive to our footprint!

 Allow me to explain.

Each of us leaves our mark wherever we go. I would like to toss out an idea which uses our physical footprint as a symbol of the effect we have in our world through our choices, our actions and our thoughts:

Leave a smaller carbon footprint.  Perhaps we could consider being attentive to the resources we use, waste and perhaps misuse. 

Leave a kinder virtual footprint.  Perhaps we could consider being attentive to the messages we send using the tool of technology. Maybe we could even consider fasting from the use of technology at certain times of day.

FAMILY TIP SHEET from Common Sense Media: Protecting and Respecting Privacy

Leave a gentler emotional footprint.  Perhaps we consider the emotional landscape of a room because of our presence. Do others feel inspired or empowered or encouraged because of our words or deeds? 

Leave a saintly spiritual footprint.  Our thoughts and prayers have an effect in the world which is more difficult to see, but just as real. I honestly believe that the peace we experience as we walk around this school is the effect of the spiritual footprint left by our dear Mother Duchesne!

Whatever mark we leave, on the physical world, the virtual world, the emotional world, or the spiritual world is there forever. What we do, the choices we make, the actions we engage in and the very thoughts we think have consequences which reverberate into the universe and have an effect (either positively or negatively) on others.

As we consider our Lenten resolutions, let us consider what might minimize the negative effects of our footprint and enhance the positive effects of our footprint. Let us choose consciously to make a good mark on the world! This Lent, perhaps we could all make the choice to…

Be attentive to our footprint!

United in the One Whose Spiritual Footprint lingers in each of our Hearts,

Maureen Glavin, rscj