January 16, 2014  

Dear Notre Dame Families, 

Wow! This winter reminds me of my childhood. Lots of snow!!! I hope that your children are able to get outside and enjoy sledding, making snowmen, and snow angels among other fun winter activities.

As I visit the classrooms I am constantly amazed at the great work going on. This past week just a few of the lessons I observed were in Mrs. Ledvina's first grade, Mrs. Weiss's MS English Language Arts, and MS Mrs. Westhoven's Religion class. Mrs. Ledvina taught the first graders describing words. She modeled the lesson using a picture of herself and asked the students to describe her eyes, hair. etc. The students were given pictures of themselves and asked to use "describing words". What fun, and a great way to learn about adjectives.  Mrs. Westhoven's eighth grade religion class learned about praying to Mary and compared the moon (Mary) and the sun (Jesus/God). Ask your children what they learned?  Mrs. Weiss's Seventh Grade language arts class learned about plagiarism (how to write honestly and creatively) and paraphrasing.  Every class the children were highly engaged and there was great learning.  I witness this every day at school but wanted to share with you some of the great lessons that I see on a daily basis.

Notre Dame will be the pilot school for a new program that GRACE would like to implement in technology. Next week the 7th grade class will be given Chromebooks to use throughout the day during school hours. This is an exciting opportunity to display the use of our Chromebooks (made by Google) and how we can use 21st century technology in the classroom. This would not have been possible without the 'Hard Drive' fundraiser last spring that allowed us to purchase the Chromebooks.

MAPS testing is  being done on a limited basis for students from January 13-30. Students will be tested based on teacher recommendation. Homeroom teachers will notify parents prior to the testing.

Believe it or not Catholic Schools Week is coming up and begins on Sunday, January 26th with a Mass at St. Francis prepared by school families and children.  There will be an "Open House" and breakfast that follows to thank parishioners and invite potential new families to join NDofDP.   I will be attending Mass at St. Mary at 4:30 P.M. on January 18th and 10:00 A.M. January 19th to thank the parishioners of St. Mary and invite them to the Open House. So, if you know of someone that is interested in NDofDP please invite them to join us and potentially join the NDofDP community.

A quick update on the church (recently their was a gas odor prior to the school Mass and for safety reasons the Mass was canceled).  The DePere fire department, WPS, and St. Mary's insurance company have all re-tested the church. All three groups report that there are no problems with the air quality in church. Carbon Monoxide detectors have been put into the church and we will continue to monitor.  Thank you all for your understanding and patience with this unusual circumstance.