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As report card are being reviewed and prepared for distribution at next week’s General PCC meeting, we want to remind you to make sure you have it on your calendar:

General Parent Coordinating Council Meeting
Thursday, January 23
7 p.m.
Rauch Memorial Gym

As always, we highly encourage and expect your presence and participation at these meetings. It may help you to know that the teachers will not be assigning any homework that day which would be due on Friday.

In preparation for next week, the following might be helpful to read and reflect upon.

1. Report cards provide objective information.

A report card is information. It might report that any one particular concept is mastered while other concepts are not mastered, or that certain skills are developed and others are in process, or that some learning habits or social behaviors might need some tweaking while others positively enhance the dynamic of the class environment. It is information—mere information.

2. Report cards are meant to be a tool used for growth.

When report card information is used as a springboard for reflection, growth can occur. Perhaps I am a B student who received a C because I didn’t hand in four important homework assignments. When this data is reflected upon, the insight might be that if I really want the B, I need to get the assignments in on time. Perhaps I don’t take time to organize my materials for class, or perhaps I do not actively engage in the classroom learning with my comments or questions. When reflected upon, the insight might adjust my behavior and thus strengthen the habits I develop as a learner.

3. A child’s inherent value does not depend on the report card feedback.

Every child is inherently valuable. A child is valuable because he/she exists. One of our deepest desires at this school is to communicate to each and every child that he/she is indeed inherently loved, lovable, precious and valuable.

4. Communicating honest feedback while also communicating reassuring messages to children regarding their inherent value requires conscious, ongoing conversations with them from both the school personnel as well as from the parents.

This is the great educational challenge—being bravely honest as we extend our invitations to growth while compassionately affirming value. What makes this particularly challenging is that children can quickly place upon themselves the message that they are not valued or valuable because of what they consider a less than perfect “mark” on this thing we call a “report card.” Our collective message needs to be consistent: that report card information is merely data which upon reflection is intended to facilitate growth and is NOT intended as a message regarding inherent value.

Report cards are an important communication tool to begin the reflection process for growth. As a springboard into that process, they require us to work together to support that growth.

The point in all of this, of course, is that what is important is the GROWTH, not the grade!

Looking forward to seeing you next Thursday,

Maureen Glavin, rscj

 

As most of you know, the season of Christmas lingers through to the celebration of the Epiphany. I love that word because an epiphany is a “new insight” or an “awakening.” What was the epiphany of the Three Kings from the East? Upon seeing the Christ Child, they saw the Child’s divinity shining through His humanity and so with great humility and generosity these men paid homage to the Child.

What is the message for us?

I hope that, like the Magi, we are:

1. Attentive to following God’s Light (as they followed the star)
2. Open to see God’s Light (this was the work of Advent for us, preparing our hearts so that we could more clearly “see” and “receive” God’s Truth once it was before us)
3. Respond to God’s Light wherever we find it shining forth (just as the Three Kings responded even though they found God’s Light shining in an unlikely place).

May we experience our own epiphany as we look at each other, as we look at our children and as we look at anyone in our world, especially those most in need.

The epiphany to which I hope we awaken is, that shining through OUR humanity and shining through the humanity of those before us, IS a participation in God’s Divinity. The Body of Christ was not just in that manger in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago (though it was so in a very unique and special way), but the Body of Christ is within us, between us and among us NOW.

If we could actually engage with ourselves and with each person before us with this insight (this ephiphany), we, too, like the Magi, would respond to life and to all people with humility and generosity.

Just as importantly—and the reason I am so passionate about Sacred Heart education—our education is meant, more than anything else, to awaken our students to this truth. One could say that our education is meant to be an ongoing epiphany!

May it be so!