Dear Parents,

 

I hope you and yours are doing well!  My letter is late this week as Fr. Chris and I attended the AoD Catholic Schools Symposium on Monday and Tuesday.

Researcher Willard Waller stated that "schools have a culture of their own, with a set of rituals and folkways and a moral code that shapes behavior and relationships.  Parents and students have always detected the special, hard-to-pinpoint esprit of schools."  The hard-to-pinpoint things that makes us, "US" has been referred to by some on the BSCS School Advisory Committee as our "it factor" or our "secret sauce".

Our "it factor" was demonstrated during Spirit Week!  I trust your children had a wonderful week - a week that exemplified our strong school culture.  Teachers, guests and staff noticed that each day the students were enjoying the week more and more as the Race For Education drew near.  This year, we began spirit week with Oktoberblest and ended with the Race for Education.  These two wonderful parish/school events were elegant bookends to Spirit Week.  Each day during the week offered a different theme that brought out the creativity in our students, a sense of confidence, and an exuberance that transcended each day!  Perhaps your child(ren) had a favorite theme day, or perhaps they loved every day; from my perspective, it was hard to tell if there was a favorite theme day because each day seemed to be enjoyed by all.

The Principal for a Day initiative that is auctioned off at the Big Event has evolved into the Principal of the Week!  I thoroughly enjoyed planning activities each day for this year's principals: 3rd grader Evan Delmoro and 4th grader Cash Case.  It was a pleasure to get to know them.  I wanted feedback from their week; so I gave them a four-question feedback sheet.  The first question was what they learned throughout the week: one response was that being a Principal is hard and the other that being a Principal is fun.  Both true statements!  The second question was which activity they enjoyed the most: both said going out to lunch (pizza & ice cream) was the best.  Did we hit anything on the nutrition pyramid with that lunch?  The third question was what wasn't fun about the week: both said all of the Student Council campaign speeches (hmmm)!  The last question was what they wanted me to know when planning next year: rename the activity to Principal of the Week, and not so many speeches!

Another feature of spirit week that is noteworthy is the Student Council election initiative.  It was quite gratifying to see how enthusiastic the students were in the student governance process.  Creativity was evident in the varying ways the candidates chose to campaign.  Congratulations to the candidates and the newly elected class representatives: 3rd grade- Charlie Thomas & Liam Klossner; 4th grade-Abigail Foreman & Cooper Egloff; 5th grade-Emery Bebak & Greta Jung; 6th grade-Katie McCain; 7th grade-Bang Malaul; 8th grade-Connor McCauley.  These youngsters will be collaborating with their peers and representing the student voice.  Look for their first service project...coming soon!

Thank you for all of your support!

Blessings to you and yours,

Carla