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Around here, not surprisingly, the month of November is known as Philippine’s month. Her feast day is November 18. In line with Philippine’s character, and in honor of her month, I want to focus today’s letter on the value of simplicity.

By simplicity, what I mean is paring down one’s wants. Some might say, living with less. The question is, why would we value less, desire less or seek for ways to live with LESS?

From a spiritual perspective, it is often claimed that each of us has a hole in our heart. The effect of that hole is that we have a natural and deep yearning to be HEART-FILLED. If, as adults, we think that having more things is what fills our heart-hole, or makes us happy, we may want to GIVE our children MORE, presuming that more things will fill their heart-holes. Of course, we want our children to be happy, so why would we NOT give them more?

Christ’s message to us is helpful: Our heart emptiness is not satisfied by things! Despite our intellectual agreement to this, consumer culture lures us to live as if more is better.

So, here is my challenge to all of us. As we struggle with helping our children grow in resiliency, inner strength and deep joy, perhaps we allow our children to experience the “more” of that proverbial “less”!

In so doing, we allow the heart-space to be God-filled. Therein lies human nature’s deepest joy!

Helping to facilitate this space and this experience for our children would indeed be the BEST gift we could EVER give them.

— Maureen Glavin, rscj

A huge thanks to all who attended the General Parent Coordinating Council Meeting this past Tuesday evening. I know that the adjustment you made in your schedule to be present is just one example of the many sacrifices you make as a parent-partner in this education. Please know that a follow-up e-mail will be sent to you with more detailed information regarding how you can participate in helping the Academy of the Sacred Heart to prepare for its second two hundred years! My deep gratitude goes out to Mr. Brooks, Mr. Timmons, Mr. Schaefer and Mrs. Parvis and all with whom they worked in helping to articulate the Long Range Plans.

One point I made in my own concluding remarks on Tuesday is worth repeating:

A Sacred Heart education is
JUST AS, if not MORE, NEEDED
in our world today
as it was 200 years ago.

Our world today is in desperate need of people who can think creatively, reflectively, divergently and synthetically. At Sacred Heart, we work hard to help our students think in these ways.

Our world is in desperate need of people who are confident to BE who they are because they know that they are inherently valuable. At Sacred Heart, we work hard to help our students to understand themselves in this way.

Our world is in desperate need of people who are able to negotiate and collaborate with others. At Sacred Heart we see relationship-building as the foundation of all that we do.

Most importantly, our world is in desperate need of people who have the courage to make choices based on the attitudes of the Heart of Christ. To be privileged to participate in forming children to become such adults is our SACRED TASK.

At the core of all of this, we want our students and your children to be at home in God’s Heart and to make God’s Heart their home. This is my deepest prayer!

 

Blessings,

— Maureen Glavin, rscj

Knowing that communication is the vehicle of our collaboration, we strive to be conscientious and deliberate about our written communication to you. Perhaps the following guide will be helpful:

• Thursday Mail provides all-school information and interesting highlights about what is happening at school. Often this includes upcoming dates such as dress uniform days, important calendar events, parent events, fundraising events and all-school happenings. We do remind parents of upcoming important dates on the left hand side of Thursday Mail. Remember, Thursday Mail is your friend! We push this vital communication out every Thursday afternoon. It is best read in its entirety on a computer.
• Parent Portal Grade-Level Spaces provide a window into what is happening in your child’s classroom. This could be about what they are doing in math, what is happening with their Goal III projects, where they are going on a field trip, etc. We expect parents to check portal spaces regularly, and encourage you to find a routine that works for you.
• Parent Portal Drop-Down Bars provide information that is pertinent to parents, but which is more general in nature: lunch information, athletic information and registration, a parent calendar, school handbooks, archived Thursday Mails, parent organization information, student extracurricular information, upcoming fundraising event information and more. I often recommend printing the school calendar and posting it in your home for easy reference.
• E-mails and E-blasts or Phone-blasts will be sent when the information we need to communicate is time-sensitive or individualized, for example, if we are closing school because of snow or if we need to remind you about an important deadline.

Speaking of communication, face-to-face conversations are always best. With this in mind, we are very much looking forward to two important opportunities next week:

• The General PCC Meeting:  This parent gathering is one of two times during the year when we ask parents to come to school for a general all-parent meeting. The bonus of the meeting (for Classes P–8) is that you will receive your child’s report card, but the content of the meeting (even for our Pre-Primary parents) is always important. The agenda for next week’s PCC meeting is shown below. This is a DON’T MISS event! I can’t encourage you enough to attend.
• Parent-Teacher Conferences: These, of course, are wonderful opportunities to chat about your child’s goodness, graces and growth as they continue to discover their gifts and develop into becoming their best selves. It is an important moment of connecting, collaborating and conversing about our mutual efforts in our shared sacred task—nurturing the hearts and minds of these precious children whom God has given to us as a responsibility.

With joy in the joint journey we share with these children,

Maureen Glavin, rscj