A Little Bit Can Go a Long Way...

I know it can be a bit of a struggle getting back in to the grind after a long break. I hope your Monday began a little better than mine, though.

To be honest I am not even sure how one's tie ends up in a coffee mug but it did, so hopefully I get a Tervis top in my stocking!

My day quickly got better with two messages: one being the announcement that our Diocese now has a new Bishop -- Most Reverend Bishop Gregory L. Parkes. You can read more about him by the following the link in the newsletter. 

The other message was from our contact at the St. Vincent de Paul Society Food Pantry thanking our students and families for their participation in the food drive two weeks ago. Here is her message:

"The CTK School Food Drive was an amazing success. There were 7400 pounds of food collected and donated to the SVDP Society Food Pantry.  This surpasses the previous year's collection. We were touched by the children's letters requesting donations from neighbors which helped make the Food Drive such a success.

Please convey to all involved, our appreciation. Many families in critical need and the homeless will be helped due to the generosity of CTK School families.

Thanks for caring and sharing and providing Thanksgiving blessings according to the gospel message to feed the hungry."

I shared this message with our students this morning. I pointed out to them the HUGE difference that can be made when our community puts their individual efforts together. Bringing 20 cans may not seem like a big difference, but when combined with the contributions of their classmates it equaled more than three tons of food to feed the hungry in our community. 

As we prepare our hearts during Advent for the arrival of Christ at Christmas, I hope our families can find more ways to combine their individual efforts to make a positive impact on our community.  

Gratitude = Great Attitude

I hardly ever use the phrase "Where did the time go?" Having lived most of my adult life on a school bell schedule, I know exactly where my time has gone. This morning, however, when I looked at the calendar and realized that we have only FOUR weeks of school left in this semester, I did say, "Where did the time go?!"

I am thankful for a job that brings me so much excitement and fulfillment that the time moves more quickly than a second grader on his way to recess. The CKS community has much to be thankful for and here are three events that have me showing my gratitude:

Retreat

I know many of us lamented having to come in last Friday, which was previously a scheduled holiday. Our 8th graders and some of their teachers were excited though, because we had a retreat and team-building day. We took our 8th graders to a scouting camp where they were able to rappel, zip-line, and play team games. It was a great day of relationship-building with our students and staff. We hope it's the beginning of a new CKS tradition. 

Food Drive

A current CKS tradition is our generous participation in the St. Vincent DePaul Thanksgiving Food Drive. Every year this organization counts on CKS to stock its food pantry for the holidays. I set a goal for the students of 10,000 food items. Breaking that down on a smaller level, each student needs to donate just 20 food items to surpass that goal. Individual classroom teachers have set their own classroom incentives to encourage participation and spark generosity. I know our families will respond to the challenge. 

Admissions Open House

The generosity and enthusiasm of our families is one of our greatest strengths. This week we have our EC4 and Kindergarten Admissions Open House on Wednesday at 7PM. At this event, and on subsequent tours, I am often asked what I think is our greatest strength, and I always respond that it is our families. Our best marketing is word of mouth advertising of our families. Thank you for spreading the good word and be sure to check out our latest marketing video on the school website later this week.

CKS Roars! Again

Take a moment and think back to your time in school.  Whether your fondest memories are of your time in elementary, middle or high school--imagine that someone at that time told you in the future you would walk around with the world's information in your pocket. Younger me would have thought no matter how small writing gets for encyclopedias or how many pockets they add to cargo shorts,  that is crazy talk. We all know, however, with cell phones, tablets and the internet, our students have exactly that--a world's worth of information in their pockets.

As we prepare our students for the future, it is not enough to simply KNOW information.  They must be able to evaluate which information is worth knowing and how to use it. Enter CKS Roars. CKS Roars is a school-wide writing assessment of our students' opinion and argument writing--see the featured post at the left where I explained the difference between the two different types of writing. In both of these types of writing, students must take a position and use information to support their position. Tomorrow, all of our students will participate in this writing task through their language arts class.

The complexity and expectations vary by grade level, from an EC4 student drawing or telling the teacher that God's greatest gift is _________ because of __________, to 8th graders using 45 minutes to support a claim about the appropriate amount of screen time for teenagers. Our teachers worked together to create common rubrics and will double score student writing pieces. Much of this first round of writing is to help calibrate our teachers and set a standard for what great writing looks like. It will help them plan instruction for the second semester and our next prompt in the spring. After both prompts, we will share information with parents about what we learned from the writing assessments.

I am proud of the work our teachers have done to create this program and feel it will be key to the continued success of our students. This type of demand-writing helps prepare for the writing expectations in high school and college. Most importantly, though, the type of thinking required by these tasks will prepare our students to become more discerning consumers of information, helping better prepare them for life.