The CKS Difference

As I enter my 5th year at CKS and we prep this week for PTC on Thursday, I am reminded of one difference between my experiences in public and private school -- PTC night.  It was called PTSA in public school and the purpose was the same, foster collaboration between parents and teachers, but that is where the similarities stopped. I think our PTC nights are unique, even among private schools.  Mrs. Lowrey and teachers on our staff who have come from other schools will tell you how impressed they are by our PTC night.

Here are my top three things that make our PTC meetings the best thing to do with your Thursday Night:

Teachers 

You may be thinking to yourself, "I just met the teachers on Friday, do I really need to see them again on Thursday?" PTC night is more than just a meeting, our teachers use it as an opportunity to showcase the work they have been doing with our students over the quarter. This is your opportunity to see your child's work, leave them a note and do a quick check-in of the classroom.

Attendance

During my tenure in public school, our quarterly PTSA meetings averaged around 30 people. Other private schools often hold meetings during the day, averaging even less people. In many cases this makes the meetings more of a formality than an event. We strongly encourage our parents to attend and use PTC as a night to communicate important information. It is easy to become overly focused on the happenings of only the grades in which your children are enrolled. PTC allows us to communicate the bigger picture and vision for our school.

Fellowship

I won't make any assumptions, but I think our strong attendance may be influenced, slightly, by the refreshments we serve--you'll have to show up Thursday night to if you want more detailed information!  We serve adult refreshments because this encourages fellowship and that is really what we try to accomplish at PTC.  This fellowship is necessary to build the strong relationships essential for a successful school.

I am convinced we have something very special here at CKS -- the only other time there are lines this long on campus is at the Carnival beer tent!

I thank you for your continued partnership and will see you this Thursday night!
Classroom visitation begins at 6:45 pm; meeting begins at 7:30 pm in the McLoughlin Center.

I Bet You Learned It Wrong...

On Monday, our teachers attended a Professional Development workshop. One of the presenters was Dr. Jeff Borden, the Associate Vice President for Teaching and Learning at St. Leo University. He delivered some shocking news to teachers: most of us have been tying our shoes inefficiently for most of our lives. There is even a TED talk to confirm this:

Click Here for the TED Talk

Alright, this is not the most shocking news to rock the educational world in the past century. Dr. Borden used it as a lead-in to how the brain is wired and how education in today's classroom should be the place where neuroscience, educational psychology, and educational technology meet. For a much deeper--and better--explanation in Dr. Borden's own words, check out an article he wrote for Wired about Education 3.0. Without quoting much heavy science, here are the three things I learned when I tried this shoe-tying experiment on my own this morning:

1 - Learning--and especially re-learning--takes time 

I fell into the large category of people who tie their shoes inefficiently, so this morning I was determined to right the wrong that had become an automatic part of my day. The result: tying my shoes the proper way added about 5 minutes to my morning routine. I had to stop and think about each step of the shoe-tying process. Hopefully I can make up the time by not having to re-tie my shoes throughout the day. So far, so good. 

2 - Learning takes perseverance over failure

Part of the added time to my morning was spent in futile attempts to actually make a knot. I sympathize with all our kindergartners learning (and probably re-learning after their parents read this) how to tie their shoes.  Just when you think you've followed all the steps properly and you pull the bows expecting a tight knot, failure. Let's try again. 

3 - Learning takes repeated experience

It will take continued practice and experience with tying the knot for this new learning to stick and become automatic. This is the KEY take-away for educators. When students learn material in isolation from REPEATED practice that applies the learning, it is forgotten. 

As we all reflect on the end of the 1st quarter and look ahead to the beginning of the 2nd quarter, I am encouraging our teachers to create learning experiences that are meaningful for our children. Although it may take more time, as well as perseverance through failure, it will ultimately make our children better prepared for the changing world in which we live. 

At the very least, they will know how to properly tie their shoes!

Rainy Day PE

Imagine the situation: You are gathered--closely--with 60 students in a classroom designed to comfortably hold 30 students. It has been raining continuously since the morning and all the students really want to do is go outside but you can't --  the fields are flooded, the pavilion floor is wet and lightning has been detected. What do you do? 

Increase your Annual Fund gift, so we can build a gym! Although our coaches would love that idea, they became creative last week and declared September 28th Attitude of Gratitude Day in PE. Before jumping into a game of Silent Speedball--the greatest rainy day activity since Heads-Up, 7-Up --the coaches asked the students to take some time and write a "thank you" to someone on the staff who has helped them this quarter. 

They gathered these notecards together and delivered over 200 notecards to 24 different staff members. Look below to see some pictures. It was amazing to see the reactions of the staff members after receiving these and the reaction of the students when they found out their message had been delivered.  Just a simple message of gratitude that only took a short time to create had a clear and immediate effect. 

Take a moment today and say, "Thanks" to someone.   You'll be amazed at the impact those two words can have on someone's day!

The Hidden Curriculum

The picture below, from Catholic Boys High School in Arkansas, was making the news rounds in early August:

In addition to the published curriculum (i.e. math, language arts, science, social studies, religion, etc) all schools have a "hidden" curriculum (i.e. problem solving, social interaction, following directions, responsibility, etc). Although teaching the "hidden" curriculum is less direct, it is almost as important as the published curriculum. 

While policies like the one pictured above may seem extreme, there is great value in policies that do not permit lost items to be delivered to students. I wrote about the impact of these policies, called "No Rescue" last year (see that featured blog post on the left navigation bar).  Granted, it is a Monday, but as of 10:13 am today, this was the mountain of forgotten items delivered to school and burying Mrs. Nesmith:

When I asked if this was a normal occurrence, she replied, "No, this is a light day." While I am certain Mrs. Nesmith doesn't mind--and is too nice to ever admit it if she did--these forgotten items represent the constant, numerous disruptions to the classroom. 

To minimize those disruptions, we will only deliver forgotten items that a student NEEDS.  These include lunches, eyeglasses or medications. Please consider that students' grades are NOT significantly impacted if they forget their PE clothes; there are enough water fountains on campus to soothe the thirst of a forgotten water bottle; there are enough classroom computers for a student to use if a Chromebook/Surface is forgotten at home; and we even have emergency lunch for those that forget them at home. 

This is a great lesson in responsibility for our children.  If an item is forgotten, our staff will help your child through the day, so there is no need to drop everything you are doing and rush the item to school. I promise, based on experience, students only need to face the consequences of a forgotten item once or twice to remember it the next time!

Thank you for being our partners in teaching our children some of life's most important lessons.

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24 years ago...

This past weekend, I celebrated my Plant High School 20 year reunion. More importantly, though, that also meant celebrating my CKS 24 year reunion! Rather than regaling our students with captivating stories from my childhood, I gave them the top three things people really want to know after not seeing someone for a long time:

What do they look like now?

Looks, of course, are not the most important thing, but we are human and that is the first thing we notice about others. To help our 8th graders figure out what they would look like in 24 years, I told the boys they just need to look at their 8th grade yearbook photo, subtract hair from the top, add hair to the face and mix in some gray--I think the example below justifies my advice: 

For the ladies, I told them to take their picture--and leave it alone--because they will not age and will still look the same! 

What are they up to now? 

For just about everyone, the common answer to this question was "not what I was doing 24 years ago." Pictured below, I thought I was well on my way to a career as a professional athlete: 

At NO point in my CKS career--or high school one--did I imagine I would ever be at CTK for anything except Sunday mass, let alone be the principal of the school! My friends were very surprised. My career, however, was not the biggest surprise of the night. That honor went to my 4th grade best friend, J. Ben Hooks--or as he is referred to now, Father Hooks. He is a Jesuit priest, teaching Spanish in Dallas. 

Although neither of us saw the path our careers would take us, we were well prepared because we gave our best effort in everything we did. My advice to the students was that no matter what you think you will be when you get older, put in the preparation now so you can be whatever you want to be. 

How will people remember me? 

The final thought on everyone's mind was how will people remember me. As I told the students, people did not remember the clothes I wore, the type of car I drove, the type of backpack I owned or some embarrassing thing that happened at lunch. I encouraged our students that while these things may seem like the world to them now, they are less important than what people really remember: how you make them feel. The only regrets shared were for not keeping in touch or wishing that they were nicer to some people. 

I know how I must have sounded to the students and hope that at the very least they remember the two most important things I told them about CKS: learning how to better love God and better love each other. If we do that, then we can look back with pride on our days at CKS. 

CKS Roars!

Typically when we think about the roar of a lion, we think of the sound produced by its voice. One other way we would like our students to think about their roar and voice is in their writing.

CKS has a long tradition of producing students who are strong writers, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that one of our school-wide projects this year is the implementation of a new writing program we call CKS Lions Roar.  This standards-based curriculum provides a strong, age-appropriate foundation on which to build each year and gives us an opportunity to prepare all of our students for continued success with the rigor and challenge of timed-writing tasks.

Why an emphasis on writing?  Here are three main reasons:

1. Preparation for High School--8th grade students wishing to go to area private schools or public magnet or IB schools must submit a writing sample as part of the admissions process.
2. Preparation for the SAT and ACT--You can see a sample SAT prompt here and a sample ACT prompt here. These sample prompts indicate the type of writing expected of college students, hence their inclusion on these college readiness exams--a type of writing that focuses on students compiling and evaluating information on a topic, forming their own ideas, and being able to articulate those ideas to others.
3. Preparation for College--Most universities require an essay to be submitted as part of the application process. Other universities strongly encourage it--which we all know really means "if you want to be accepted you better submit it." An example of the writing prompts for UF can be found here.

I know high school and college may seem like a long way off, especially for students like the writer pictured here:

Writing, though, like any skill, should start with an early foundation and be built upon with continued practice. Plus, if you ask Mrs. Fogarty in KB, everything worth learning is learned in kindergarten anyway!

   

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Joy in Others

As I am sure most of you know, this past Sunday Pope Francis canonized a new saint: Mother Teresa. This morning at assembly, Father Bill shared a few of her more famous quotes with our students:

"If you spend time to judge people, you have no time to love them."

"I am a little pencil in the hand of God who is sending a love letter to the world."

"If you can't feed 100 people then just feed one." 

When I think about the different components of our Lion Joy this school year, I can think of no better patron saint for "Joy in Others" than Saint Theresa of Calcutta. In fact, I am sure she must have whispered in the ear of one of our 1st grade students last week. 

The student, pictured below, teamed up with his brother to sell lemonade. Unlike most children, who look to turn a profit for a new toy or video game, the boys donated half of their money, $22, to our mission collection, which we take up during school mass on Wednesdays. 

This money will go to our sister parish in Sainte-Suzanne, Haiti for the purchase of Christmas presents for children of the parish. These students, and I am sure there are many more in our community like them, are living Joy for others and making sure God's "love letter to the world" is being sent.