Recent Posts

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

First of all, I can’t write about anything else without first thanking each and every one of you for your participation at Country Fair. It takes all of us to put on an event of this nature, so, it goes without saying that YOU (every single parent at this Academy) have my deep and abiding gratitude.

Truly, it was a GLORIOUS weekend – from the mass on Saturday, through the Chili Cook-off on Saturday night (with the great atmosphere hanging out with the young alum bands) to the Sunday morning 5K and Fun Run, to the beautiful day on Sunday, up to the last drawing of the last raffle at 5:00 on Sunday afternoon! Thank you for donating items, thank you for helping with set-up, thank you for signing-up to ‘man’ a booth, thank you for bringing your extended family and friends to enjoy the festivities, and thank you for helping support this education with your financial support, your sponsorships, your participation and your presence.

A special and HUGE thank you goes to event chairs, Jodie and Gregg Schneider. I could not be more grateful for their thoughtful, strategic input, not to mention their generous gift of time and attention to so many details. The Schneiders were graciously assisted by co-chairs, Terri and Larry McClain for whom I am also deeply grateful.

My hat also goes off to each of the committee chairs. This amazing group of parents and alums took on the responsibility of being point-persons for various portions of what needed to be accomplished. I am so thankful that some are able to take on such leadership roles. Your generous ‘yes’ is noticed, noted and truly appreciated beyond my capacity to even articulate.

Behind the scenes at our big events is the Advancement Office. Our new events coordinator, Silvia Dadian-Smith, survived with grace! It is clear she has the organizational ability, the energy, the graciousness and magnanimity to not only survive, but to help us move forward in our event planning and execution. Kudos, Silvia!

Finally, and most importantly, I thank God for the grace of such splendid weather! The day could not have been more perfect. I credit two new citizens of heaven for their powerful prayers of intercession – Sr. Anna Mae Marheineke (an alum and long-time faculty member at the Academy) and Sr. Pat Steppe (the Headmistress of the School for 12 years, from 1972 – 1984). Thank you Sr. Marheineke, thank you Sr. Steppe and, THANK YOU GOD!

With a heart overflowing with nothing but gratitude,

At this time of year I always find myself walking around the school with deep and abiding gratitude.

First of all, I am filled with gratitude for the amazing skill, the phenomenal hard work and the beautiful hearts of the educators who surround our children. I wish you could see the engagement, the substance and the joy I see as I walk around the Academy. It delights me to watch our mutual charges grappling with ideas that lift their hearts and minds to new levels of thinking, understanding or awareness – whether the conversation is about rhyming words, algebraic expressions, electrical circuits or God’s great love for us! I also wish you could be a fly on the wall and hear the gentle re-directions and the lofty invitations our teachers provide, always lovingly leading our children to growth in goodness, grace and God.

Secondly, I am filled with gratitude for the amazing generosity of YOU, our Academy parents. At the end of a full day at the office, I see you here helping us in a multitude of ways: cutting tablecloths in preparation for the table set-up, making signs, counting raffle tickets, creating items for the Market Place! Others of you are here during the day, generously giving of your time. And, I am CONSTANTLY AWED! I know that in addition to your own work and then helping out here, you still go home, put dinner on the table, ensure children are fed, follow-up to see that homework is accomplished, teeth are brushed and bed-time routines are accomplished. YOU truly awe me!

My heart is overflowing MOST OF ALL because at the bottom of all our collective hard work is the intention to DO exactly what we hope we are educating our children to:  to know (experience) God’s Love, to develop one’s God-given gifts and to inspire them to BE God’s Goodness in the world!

Thank YOU, for being God’s Goodness here in this place where God’s Love is Alive in YOUR generous hearts and hands!

With deep and abiding gratitude,

Maureen Glavin, rscj

If you read my Thursday Mail letters faithfully (and perhaps have been doing so for a few years) you may recall the names of a few books which I have loved. One about which I was effusive a few years ago, is Mindset by Carol Dweck. I know that some of you have read it because it was originally suggested to me by a parent. You might even recall that we chose the book for faculty summer reading a few years ago. Well, what is happening in the world of education is that the ideas in great books such as these are being distilled and disseminated in journal articles and at conferences – educating educators and parents to the same ideas.

Why am I telling you this? I am doing so because, as a happy consequence of all this distillation and dissemination, much of this helpful information is now easily accessible for all of us who perhaps might not have time to read the books that are out there!

With this in mind, as we find articles and resources we love, we will be putting them on the Parent Portal. When you go to the Parent Portal, scroll down and you will see parent resources on the bottom right hand portion of the page.

We have just added three more opportune reads:

True Grit
by Jennifer L. W. Fink

Handle with Care: A Conversation with Maya Angelou
by Amy M. Azzam

Parenting Your Strong-Willed Child
by Dr. Laura Markham

We each will take something different away from these resources because we all have different starting points. I especially loved the first one! My big take-away: Praise Actions, Not Traits.

“Give praise for efforts, strategies, focus, and perseverance,” Ms. Fink says. “This kind of praise focuses kids on the processes they engaged in to be successful.” It also encourages the kinds of behavior that are correlated with true success.

Regardless of my ‘starting point,’, let me reiterate my big message for today: None of us was provided instruction booklets when God gifted us with our beautiful children. Yet, it is true that task of raising these children is probably the most important and sacred task we will be given in our entire lives. So, it behooves us to support each other with our communication, collaboration, and sharing of resources with open hearts and minds as we all continue to do our best raising these children – children whom we hope will become reflective of God’s Goodness and Grace in the legacy of their future lives and loves,

Maureen Glavin, rscj