I Asked. You Answered!

St. Joseph Catholic Church
York, PA

Want to start off by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. Hope your Christmas was wonderful, and filled with happiness, family, and a time to reflect on your faith. I also hope you have made time to just exhale a bit.

Kelley and I have taken advantage of this break to visit friends and family in York, PA. This was actually my first time in Pennsylvania. Wish we could have stayed for awhile longer but it was just a quick trip up and back. I want to come back here in the summertime. This place is beautiful in the winter. Cannot imagine how beautiful it is in the summer.

St. Ann Staff Christmas Luncheon

In my last blog, I asked that you share your expertise with our school to help make St. Ann better for our students, and you have answered the call! I asked. You answered! Here is a way several people have stepped up to help.

An issue many of our students are facing is reading comprehension. You ask the students to read out loud a passage from Harry Potter, an article from ReadWorks, or a story in an English book, they can read it. They just don't know what they have read. Ms. Ferrante in the LIFE

Christmas Dinner with
Family in York, PA

program has made huge strides with her students in reading comprehension. The problem is we need more adults reading with our students one on one. Ms. Ferrante, Ms. Williams, Ms. Ghio, and I have met to organize a team of reading volunteers to work with our students. Currently, we have nine volunteers who will come in at different times to work with our students one on one on reading fluency and comprehension. If you are willing to help our students become better readers, please call the school office to volunteer your services. The more volunteers we have, the more we can help our students. We are no different than any other school in that we have students with Dyslexia, students with reading difficulties, students a grade or two below in their reading level, students who are reading at a college level, and your average students who are reading at grade level. All students can benefit from reading one on one with reading volunteers. All volunteers will have to go through a background check, and receive Virtus training (Protecting God's Children).

Thank You Note On My Computer!

It has taken awhile but student council is finally getting under way. I will be the moderator for the student council starting January. I have met with Blake Arey, student council president, to start putting a plan together. The other members of the student council are:
Luca de Jong- Vice President
Abigail Adams- Secretary
Joshua Parker- Treasurer
Landon Willins- Director of Publications
Zach Griffith- Chaplain

Blake plans to contact the other members of the council to get their ideas on what they would like to do. My first suggestion is they work with PK3 and PK4 on setting up a plan of chaperoning the little ones at school Mass every Thursday. We did this at Resurrection and it worked out well. The 8th graders can chaperon the PK3 students. The 7th graders can chaperon the PK4 students. The 6th graders can help chaperon both grades. This will give the middle schoolers more responsibility, and give the little ones a Mass mentor/buddy. We will soon see what else the student council plans to do for the spring semester.

Extracurricular Exploration (EE) classes have ended for the first semester. For the fourth session which begins in January, we are offering seven classes in five sessions. Sign up for EE will take place the first day we return from Christmas Break. Here is a list of the next EE classes:
1.  Sewing/Art
2.  Volleyball/Basketball
3.  Chess
4.  STEM Building- This includes a competition on Feb. 23rd at Southwest Community College.
5.  History of Pop & Country Music
Sewing and Basketball are student led with a faculty member supervising.

Support St. Ann!

Our annual giving campaign is underway. So far, we have had many new/first time donors! Having spent many years raising money for different schools, getting new donors is hugely important. Even more important than that is to get donors to become recurring donors. If you are doing good work, it is easier to keep a donor than it is to find new donors. Our development department, led by Angela de Jong, sent out annual giving brochures to our parents and grandparents. We have been receiving gifts for the school every day. We are excited about the support, and how people are stepping up to help make the school better for our students. Once we get back from the Christmas break, we plan to reach out more and more to our alumni.

Brett Skydiving!

For all you alumni out there, don't forget to save the date: Tuesday, March 5th for our St. Ann Alumni Fat Tuesday Party! For more information about this party, please contact Angela de Jong at angela.dejong@sascolts.org.

Brett After Skydiving

I want to send a huge shoutout to St. Ann 7th grader, Brett Battle. On  Saturday, December 22nd, Brett became one of only 50 people his age in the whole world who has been skydiving. Rumor has it that he is ready to go skydiving again. Maybe I'll find the courage to join him or maybe not.

God bless you,
Didier Aur, Principal
St. Ann Catholic School