Back to School Nights

Immaculate Heart of Mary School

September 15, 2008

Agenda Items

• Prayer Fr. Robert
• Introduce Sr. Mary Ann Ambrose – Pastoral Associate
• Introduce Alice Leesha – CCD, Youth Minister, Young Adult Minister
• Para liturgical Halloween
• Introduce Jason Janel of Knowledge Wand - new school wide technology that can be accessed from home
• Introduce Ed DiTorro – band recruiting – Paul Effman School of Music
• Introduce Diane Leconte – Home School Association President
• Monthly masses are no longer only on 1st Fridays but are centered around liturgical celebrations
• We need your help – Parents are the primary educators of your children -Parent Report Cards indicate areas you can best assist kids
• Handbooks to be signed for in classrooms – eldest child only
• Review uniform policies as stated in the Handbook
• Review cell phone/electronic policies
• Dismissal areas– Pre-K & K in yard E 3rd Street
• Parent phone blocks – can’t get calls from teachers if you block your phone from unknown numbers
• Private driveways on E 3rd Street being blocked - Let's be good neighbors
• Parents of 8 kids see me BEFORE going to rear of room to see upper school teachers - extend invitation to entertain at the Futures In Education Dinner

Immaculate Heart of Mary School

September 20, 2007

Educating for a Lived Catholic Faith

I’d like to welcome all of you and thank you for coming tonight.  It is a particularly exciting evening for me since it is my first school year as the “real” principal, not the acting principal and I am so happy to be here.

I’d like to introduce Sr. Mary Ann Ambrose, the Pastoral Associate, and ask her to lead us in prayer and then say a few words.

I want to introduce a number of other people to you this evening as well, but before I do that, I want to take a few minutes to share a bit of my vision for the school this year.

The Diocese has been involved for the last year in writing a Strategic Plan for Education.  All of the principals and pastors have been involved in a number of meetings with the Bishops and the Superintendent’s office.  While there are 5 main elements of that plan, the one that is of primary focus right now is Catholic Identity within our schools and discerning what that actually means.  This was my opening theme with the faculty at the beginning of the school year and what I would like to briefly talk about with you tonight.

I think that the best way to begin is to ask the question “How is Catholic education different from public education?”  I wish we had more time tonight because I would love to hear from all of you on this question, but knowing that you want time with the teachers I will simply offer some thoughts.

• Catholic education reinforces the values that are taught at home –You, as parents, are the primary educators of your children.  So what is it that we here at IHM hope to be reinforcing?
• Religious formation and moral guidance
• Student recognition of the presence of Christ in themselves and others
• The belief that all children can succeed and reach their potential spiritually, intellectually and socially
• The understanding that the whole child must be educated – body, mind and spirit
• The knowledge that a child’s faith learning must occur in an atmosphere of love, respect and patience

• Catholic education supports positive social and character development –
• Students engage in positive social interactions with peers
• Students learn to respect themselves and others regardless of race or faith
• Students learn to be of service to others – this will be a big focus this year for the entire school, not just the 7th graders getting ready for confirmation.  As witness to that, we have 3 8th graders providing babysitting tonight and we have 3 roving photographers recording the evening for our website and yearbook.

• Catholic education is a success
• 2002 Harvard study shows that Catholic schools out perform public schools in reading and math
• 2001 NYU study showed that Catholic school kids have higher levels of achievement.  The longer a child is in the Catholic school system, the greater their achievement
• the single best indicator of college and graduate school entry for black and Hispanic students is having attended Catholic schools
• 99% of all Catholic school students graduate and over 90 % go on to higher education

These are significant differences that you cannot find in other academic environments.  When they are combined with the strong academic focus that we have here at IHM, it is no surprise that our Class of 2007 was awarded over $85,000 in high school scholarships and that we had acceptances into Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech high schools as well all of the Brooklyn Catholic high schools and some of the Manhattan ones as well.

The Catholic school finds its true justification in the mission of the church.  It is based on an educational philosophy in which faith, culture and life are interwoven and brought into harmony or unified instead of remaining as separate elements. 

The presence of Faith is the essential ingredient.  It is both a gift of God and an authentically human response.

Faith is living and active:

it grows and develops over time;

it learns from experience;

it adapts to changing conditions while maintaining its essential identity;

it goes through seasons, some apparently dormant, others fruitful, though wherever faith is present, the Holy Spirit is at work in the life of the disciple.

Faith has many dimensions:

cognitive (thinking);

affective (feeling);

behavioral (action);

and is a life long developmental process.

There are six principles for passing on the faith which will accompany the student through the various dimensions of faith to its ultimate integration of the thinking, feeling and action components into the spirit of the faith.

• Faith is not something one person gives to another.  Faith is infused into the heart and mind by God.  This is also called the Religious Sense.  A teacher can exemplify it, sacramentalize it and inspire students to desire it, but they cannot give it.  However, the word of God must be conveyed by others
  (teachers) to make it explicit and give it form.  We use doctrine, liturgy, and formal prayers to do this.
• The teacher of faith is a storyteller.  The proclamation of faith is a narrative.  Before the doctrines and moral precepts there must be a story, an experience.  One of the greatest challenges is to help children discover that the Church’s history is their biography.  God gave man his only son in the form of a man.  The historical fact of this and what happened to Jesus of
  Nazareth and the Christian community that started under the Portico of Solomon is the method that continues today.
• Students must be introduced into communion with the saints.  This means that not only do they need to learn what they said and did, but they must be shown how to ask questions, challenge the premises, accept some of what they said and even reject some of what they said.  In short, they must learn how to be in relationship with their history as a way to embrace it as their own.  In other words they need to find the correspondence between what is taught and their own hearts.
• The communicator of faith must be a facilitator of conversation.  All successful communication is conversation.  Going back to Plato and Socrates, all real learning happens through conversation that allows for questions, challenges, and contemplation.  From this, the association with one’s own experience is what allows for verification for the student.
• Joy must be one of the essential elements of the communicator of faith.  St Augustine said that the only way to hold onto one’s enthusiasm for teaching is to center on one’s students.  Communicating faith is not about the speaker; it is about the students.  Simply put, love what and whom you teach.
• Teachers must remember that the primary resource for their teaching is their students.  St Augustine talked about the longing, restless heart in all of us that drives us towards God.  Teachers simply give name to this experience.  Man’s deep abiding hunger, that restlessness of heart, that ache for God is the teacher’s greatest ally. 

So what does all of this have to do with IHM?  In essence, as the principal and therefore primary educator of the school, this is the challenge I face everyday with the faculty and with you as the parents and primary teachers of your children.

Most of us are the product of the American culture or for those from other countries, you very much want to assimilate into it.  As such, we are driven by fast food, easy answers and the protestant culture that bombards us with the message that man is the center of his own existence.  The tenants of our Catholic faith recall us to the fact that God is the center of everything and everyone; He is the starting point, not us.  This is not always very convenient when faced with the demands of the common culture.  

On the outside of our building, there is a beautiful reminder of the reason why this school exists.  I will read it to you:

Be it known to all who enter here that

Christ

Is the reason for this school.

He is the unseen but ever present teacher in its classes. 

He is the model of its faculty

and the inspiration of its students.

                                                                                   Author unknown

My personal challenge as a person and as the principal, is to live this awareness as fully as possible, as consistently as possible within myself.  The education/re-education of the faculty and yourselves as parents, as we come together as a community charged with educating our young, comes from this example and this conversation of our shared experiences, repeated over time.  Slowly, as we all are moved and if we are successful, the students will become attracted to this possibility as a way of being and living for themselves.  Ladies and gentlemen, you know that no public or private school, regardless of their academic strength, walks with you in providing this type of formative experience for your children.  The faculty and staff of IHM are committed to living with you in this way.

And so, how does this rather academic, philosophical and theological overview actually translate into our day to day lives here at IHM?  Well, we have made some changes already and will continue to do so as time continues:

• The day now begins for everyone at 8 AM so that we can gather as a school community and begin our day with morning prayer
• I am asking that you find times to pray together as a family.  The children will most easily model you and the importance that you place on prayer and worship.
• Life is busy and our schedules are hectic, but I ask that you commit time for worship as a family on a weekly basis.  Baseball, soccer, basketball, dance, karate are all important and offer their own elements of development.  However, the gifts and talents that they develop come from God who greatly appreciates a weekly thank you.  If you are not Catholic please attend the services associated with your faith.  If you don’t make a special time for God, your children will struggle with understanding the place that God holds for them.  Remember that here at IHM there is a Children’s Liturgy during the 11:45 AM Sunday mass for 3 year olds thru the 6th grade.  7th and 8th graders are asked to remain with the adults for the mass.
• Please hand out the yellow forms
• Our revised Parent/Student Handbook.  When you visit the classrooms you will receive a copy.  If you have more than one classroom to visit I ask that you only take one copy, unless of course you are wallpapering your bathroom and need extra copies for the wall!
• I would like to draw your attention to several sections of the Handbook.  There actually is a dress code that is alive and well.  The uniform pieces are very specific and spelled out for you.  Historically, there has been a laxity about things like length of skirts, number and types of earrings, fingernail extensions and polish, shirts being tucked in, shoes and not sneakers except on gym days and generic golf shirts and gym outfits.  That time is now part of our history. 
• Children are expected to arrive on time and in full uniform and in compliance with policy concerning jewelry, make-up, etc. Bishop Ford HS has generously given us a box of forms that have their name on them which we will begin to use on Monday if the children come to school out of compliance.  If your child is given a form we expect you to sign it, have it returned the next day and then work with us to ensure that they comply going forward.  I feel sure that I can rely on your help with this.
• Next week we will begin using a new learning tool called Parent Report Card.  I am sure that the kids will have fun “rating” you…. But please understand the point of the report card is for the kids to learn what an academically supportive environment looks like, so that over time they can participate in creating that environment for themselves.  We will also use it as a tool if a student is struggling academically.  It will be a non threatening way for them to tell us about things that may be interfering with their study habits.  We will certainly share the feedback with you as we work together to raise performance.
• Homework – it is a fact of academic life and excellence and as such counts as one of the elements in determining grades.  Last year we had some 8th graders who were in serious jeopardy of failing and not graduating because of missing homework.  As the new acting principal I seized it as an opportunity to work personally with the kids and do some educating about how to problem solve, how to approach authority figures when you have to ask for a second chance, about taking responsibility for your own decisions and about study habits.  It had a wonderful outcome and everyone managed to make up the work and to graduate, but graduation was not a given and there were no “free rides”.
• I asked for volunteers and 40 of you have responded.  I am amazed and totally enheartened.  Thank you!  The HSA is organizing the list of people for each event and will be in touch.  Please note, all people who are around the children in a volunteer role need to go through the VIRTUS training program.  If you have not been trained, I ask that you let us know and I will schedule a training here at school.  Also, please just remember that you volunteer to help the school, not take care of your child during the school day; that is really inappropriate.  If you are asked to help in a different room or different way, please understand that is where you are needed in the moment and your help and cooperation is appreciated.
• I love the fact that many of you are joining us for Morning Prayer in the school yard and that you are on time for pick up at the end of the day.  However, please do not wave and yell “good-bye” once the children are lined up.  It distracts their focus from their teachers and presents a safety hazard as they walk down the stairs to go into the building.  Please say your good-byes before they come into the yard.  At dismissal, please stay on the street near the place where your class dismisses and not in the breezeway.  We are getting a bottleneck in the breezeway that interferes with the flow of classes exiting the building.
• Finally, I ask that if you are happy with the school that you talk about it everywhere, especially public places like the grocery check out line, the gas station, the local gym etc.  We need to continually get the word out and you never know who is “ease dropping” on your conversation.  It might result in a new enrollment!
• If you are not happy with something, I ask that you make an appointment to speak with me.  Let us try to problem solve together.  If you are disgruntled and talk about that in the grocery line, again, you don’t know who might be listening and therefore choose to go to another school.
• Now I would like to introduce some of the other essential people in our school community:
• Denise Collins and Diane Leconte, the HSA co-presidents who will introduce the other officers and say a few words.
• Lorraine Kammermer, school nurse
• I’d now like to ask all of the faculty to step forward (line up in grade order with specialists at the head of line – Ed, Raquel etc.) – Please give your name and grade.

While they are not here, I would like to thank our 8th grade babysitters and our roving photographers.

At this point I would like to thank you again for coming this evening.  You can follow your teachers and go to the class rooms where you will hear the plans for the coming year!