Weekend Warriors

As many of our students prepare academically for midterms this week and spiritually for reconciliation tomorrow, some had an opportunity to test other skills honed through the fires of preparation in other ways this past weekend.

On Saturday, our Girls Basketball team successfully completed their run and repeated as champions of the Hillsborough Catholic Youth League. This is their fourth championship in five years--forget about the Belichick and the hoodie, it cannot compare to Kroll and the brooch.  

However, no matter how talented the coach, the players still need to play the game and our girls did an excellent job. They were losing at halftime and quickly came out to take the lead in the 2nd half and withstood a late run by Nativity at the end of the game to win 35 to 31. The difference in the game was the team work and toughness of our girls diving after loose balls, getting back up after hard fouls and keeping calm during the intensity of the game--all attributes we hope to instill in all our students. Attributes that will make them champions:

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to see our students participate in a different kind of performance--a musical one. In addition to the vocal music instruction our students receive during music class at CKS, many students receive instruction on musical instrumentation from Matt Jeffries both at school and at his studio. Yesterday, he held three different concerts, one of them just with CKS students. 

It was amazing to see students from 5-15 years old enjoying their time in the spotlight--from banging on the drums to the White Stripes, playing Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite," and even one student writing his own guitar solo. I was proud of them for sharing the gift of music they developed through practice and preparation.

CKS 4th Grader (on left) Performing his Original Song

CKS 1st Grader Getting Set for a Drum Solo
Click Here for video

Advent is the season of preparation for Jesus. As we head in to Christmas, thank you for all you have done this semester to contribute to our success. Enjoy the break and time of preparation for the 2nd semester. 

Advent: Preparing Mind, Body and Spirit

Advent is a time of preparation. Spiritually, we are preparing for Christmas and the arrival of Jesus. Physically, we may be trying to squeeze in an extra workout or eliminate certain foods to prepare for Christmas and New Year's feasts. Mentally, our oldest students are preparing for another mid-term tradition--exams.

In 5th through 8th grade, these cumulative assessments count as a large portion of the 2nd quarter grade. The 1st and 2nd quarter grades make-up a student's semester grade. In addition, our 8th graders take three high school credit classes--Spanish, Algebra and Physical Science. The exams in these high school credit classes are averaged with the 1st and 2nd quarter grades to determine a semester grade that may go on their high school transcript.

While we have modified and made more age-appropriate the exams our students in 5th through 8th grade take, this can still be a stressful experience for our students. Aside from prayer, here are three tips to help your students properly prepare for exams and avoid stressful study times:

Study in Small Chunks of Time

The brain needs time to process information. Hopefully, your child has been studying, learning and reviewing information all semester long. If so, the study guides should be just that--a guide to what information needs to reviewed--not relearned--before the exam. However, whether the time this week is spent relearning or reviewing, make sure your student studies in short increments. The brain can only hold so much information without taking time to process. 

Be Tech Free

When students do take a brain break to process, keep them away from their mobile devices. It may seem like an obvious stress reliever to let them play a game or catch up on social media, but research has shown that while technology provides a break from thinking about the material you are studying it does not let the brain rest.  In fact, game play and social media actually stimulate the brain. Therefore, the brain does not have a chance to rest and process information. 

Take It Outside

A great alternative to turning to the screen is turning to the outdoors. Encourage outside physical activity during study time. Physical activity promotes the production of endorphins, which can help with sleep--the ultimate stress reducer and peak time for brain processing. Get involved with your child and go on a bike ride, jog or walk with your student. Ask them to tell you about what they are studying (a form of processing) while you enjoy being outside. 

I don't think these tips are anything parents don't know or haven't learned. Hopefully they are just like a study guide--pointing out important information for your review. 

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.

A Halloween Treat: Guest Blogger

One of Halloween's biggest appeals, I think, is that for a day we get to be something different--a TV character, something from a movie, or a superhero. We have a real life superhero on our staff, Coach Nancy Kroll, who returned from a mission trip to Sainte Suzanne, Haiti last week. Here are some of her thoughts about the experience: 

To start, I want to thank my husband who was the one to give his blessing to go on quite a unique adventure.

My expectations began very mixed.  As Hurricane Matthew devastated western Haiti, I was nervous and apprehensive. However, educating my loved ones to the geography of Haiti and the fact that we were flying to Cap Haitien relieved some of their nervousness--and mine.

My first impression was the contrast of the country's physical beauty to the devastating level of poverty. After making our way through Customs, we took a very bumpy ride to our St. Suzanne church "compound."  We were greeted with welcoming arms by Father Volvick, Mrs. Boehm and Mrs. Tanis, who had arrived two days earlier. The women's quarters were apartment-like with a living room, small kitchenette and two bedrooms with an adjoining bathroom.  The men's quarters were on the top floor of the rectory. The rooms were equipped with several bunkbeds and mosquito nets. No alarm clock needed--the church bells are rung heartily at 5:30 am and 6 am, accompanied by dogs barking.

One thing I dreaded and was warned about was the food. Breakfast was served at 7 am and dinner around 6 pm.  I tried everything cooked and was very pleasantly surprised... Delicious. Refrigeration is a luxury so we did not have any milk or cheese products. We did have fresh mango, papaya, avocado and banana at most every meal. Rice was a staple at all dinners, and I tried the fish, chicken, goat and beef. 

Throughout the trip I grappled with many different emotions and thoughts swirling in my head.  I had the opportunity to tour two schools and received royal treatment--a creole welcome song (see the photos below), with visitation to each classroom. It felt like home and was fun to interact with the kids. One thought: it does not matter where you travel or the level of wealth, kids are the same. They are just kids. They do not know they are missing electricity and many other "necessities" of our Americanized way of life.  To me: unimaginably disadvantaged; to them: just another day at school.  

The students were extremely well behaved and polite. I told a few of my PE classes we could learn from their example.  Our CKS 3rd and 5th graders wrote pen pal letters to the students and each one was answered back. They exchanged their favorite classes, their favorite meals and their favorite way to play--futbol, tag, hide and go seek were very popular.

     

The medical/dental mission trip was also a success, especially when you look at the numbers -- and we are all impressed by numbers! We served close to 1000 men, women, and children in the medical and dental offices and chairs. I assisted the pharmacists with 677 prescriptions being filled. This was over the course of three and a half days. At the end of each day we were exhausted by the heat and happy to have a fan or two in the evening. We were buoyed each day by the people we served, who very appreciative and gracious.

My overall impression and the very shortened version of my trip: It's like the story of the boy on the beach with the starfish. Thousands and thousands have washed ashore and an old man is watching the boy throw the beached starfish back in the ocean. He finally says to the boy, "It doesn't make a difference; you can't possibly throw them all back in." The boy looks at the man and answers, "It made a difference to that one."

We did make a difference! Thank you to all our students who filled our suitcases with supplies and prayed for our safe trip and who continue to support our missions!

Red Ribbon Week at CKS!

We begin our celebration of National Red Ribbon Week today at CKS. The campaign, which began in 1985, was created to raise awareness of the destruction caused by illegal drugs and substance abuse. At CKS, it has been a tradition for our Student Government to plan activities to educate our students during this week. 

Many other worthy causes have used a ribbon to raise awareness over the past 31 years, as you can probably tell from your vast collection of different colored ribbons!  That is why, this year, we have expanded our focus at CKS during Red Ribbon Week to encompass making good decisions in all aspects of life, not just related to drugs and alcohol abuse. Here are the themes for each day this week:

Monday

"Have Clear Vision and Make the Right Decision" 

Tuesday

"Being Kind vs Being Mean"

Wednesday

"Be All God Wants You to Be"

Thursday

"Make Studying a Habit"

Friday

"Good Choices = Good Health"

We will have activities for the students throughout the week, culminating with a field day on Friday!