Doing Good for the Sake of Doing Good

Want to start this blog with some great news. The security cameras and all the wiring have been ordered and have arrived at school. The installation of the security cameras begins tomorrow morning! I'm looking forward to having the cameras in place to better protect everyone on campus. I'm also looking forward to the next step in making our campus more secure by adding the speakers to the hallways, gyms, cafeteria, and kitchen. After that, we will work on replacing the door locks.

My style of leadership is one where I work with people to get their input on what needs to be done. I don't lead in a vacuum. I want people's input and help in making decisions. When things go well, everyone gets credit. I think that is very important. And, I will take the blame when things don't go the way they are supposed to go. Hey, that's part of leadership. I'll throw myself under the bus, but I will do my best to never throw anyone else under the bus.

I say all this because there are some times where I have to make a decision without getting everyone's input. I don't like doing that, but I will make those decisions every once in awhile and move forward with that decision.

Select Members of the SAS Band
Performed at CBHS.

One of those decisions I've made recently has to do with the Extracurricular Exploration (EE). As part of the Advanc-ED accreditation process, I reviewed, reviewed, and reviewed our students' ITBS and easyCBM scores. I saw individual strengths and weaknesses. I discovered where our students can benefit from extra help and those who will benefit by giving extra help.


So, in organizing this latest EE, I added tutoring to the EE

classes. Except, I did not make this class an optional class for students. The middle school teachers submitted a list of students who need extra help in different subject areas. I confirmed the names on the list with the test scores. I did not ask the students on the list if they wanted to be in the tutoring class, I pretty much mandated it. But, I mandated it for a purpose, and that is to give our students another opportunity to improve academically. Student academic success is part of my job.

There is something else I did with the EE tutoring class. I reviewed the test scores and got the students with the highest test scores, who I felt would do a good job of tutoring classmates in helping those classmates improve academically, and made them tutors. I did not ask those students if they would tutor, I assigned them as tutors for that EE class.

I have several reasons for doing this. So, here's my explanation. Let me start off by saying that assigning these students as tutors is about as high a compliment as I can pay any student. If I know you have the academic ability to help other students succeed, and I believe you have what it takes to help other students succeed, you have won my confidence and trust. There are plenty of adults out there I wouldn't want tutoring in my school, but these students that have been selected to tutor, I want them to not only share their knowledge, I also want them to use the talents God has given them to help others. "To whom much is given, from him much is expected." (Luke 12:48) God gave you the talent, I'm giving you an opportunity to use your God-given talent.

At the school Mass last Thursday, Fr. Bill talked about how teaching is a witness. He even used the example of students teaching students. He said that when students teach students, they are doing God's work. In today's Gospel reading from Luke, we are reminded to "do to others as you would have them do to you." With that in mind, I'm going to do the best I can to help others because I sure hope they will help me when I need it. That's not the main reason I help others. The main reason I help others is because I was taught to see Jesus in all my brothers and sisters. I sure hope they see Jesus in me.

Also in today's Gospel, a part that stands out for me is "lend expecting nothing back." These tutors are lending their knowledge to their classmates, and together, their knowledge will grow. Your reward is knowing that you are doing God's work. In the end, "gifts will be given to you," for you are doing good for the sake of doing good.

I would like to thank Patrick Bennett, Jonathan Clowney, Brayan Garcia, Luca de Jong, James Kargauer, and Logan Wymore, for helping to tutor their classmates. I also want to thank Stacey Griffith and Teresa Ferrante for leading the Tutoring EE. Without all of you, this tutoring effort would be fruitless.

Student Shout Out:
This past weekend Jonah Odum competed in the TN-AAU Region 4 Championship and placed 4th out of 10 wrestlers. This qualifies Jonah to compete in the TN-AAU State Tournament where only the top 4 athletes from each region can compete. During Jonah’s qualifying match, he overcame extreme adversity. He was down four points with 30 seconds left. Jonah was able to flip his opponent and put him on his back where he then pinned him to earn his spot to compete at the state championship.  Congratulations to Jonah and good luck while competing at the state tournament in Knoxville, TN on March 2nd.

Parents, please share student shout outs with me so that we may recognize our students in my blog and morning announcements.

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

I Can Exhale Now!

Sunset in Orange Beach, AL

Thursday and Friday, I worked away from St. Ann so that I could finish the Advanc-ED accreditation process. There is no way I could have worked from St. Ann and met the accreditation deadline for our diocese. I spent those two days completing the narratives, graphs, charts, and surveys that we have been working on for awhile now.  Well, it is done!  About 6:45 pm last Friday, I submitted the final document, which included 33 ELEOT classroom observations; 10 teacher, staff, student, and parent surveys; and 36 attachments of all kinds especially ITBS and easyCBM results.  I'm sure more will need to be done.  But for now, we have met the diocesan deadlines, and the accreditation process has made it to the next level. To all those who contributed in any way, thank you.  I will keep you posted on the progress as it is now in the hands of Superintendent Janet Donato and the Catholic School Office. Please say a prayer that all goes well.  Divine intervention can only help.

My workstation and a pile of
Advanc-ED paperwork when
I submitted the document.

The cameras have been ordered for the school security system. We hope to start the installation process within the next two weeks. Thank you to the donors who are making this possible. School security is of utmost importance. We surveyed our students on school safety as part of the accreditation process. 96% of the 3rd-5th graders and 98% of the 6th-8th graders feel safe in their classrooms. Those numbers are extremely high, and we want to make sure everyone in our school is safe from any possible harm.

The next step is to work with the installers to figure out a way of putting speakers in the hallways, cafeteria, and gyms. We want to be able to communicate with everyone at the school, especially in a crisis situation. They will have to figure out what type of speakers are needed for this project. I lean heavily on Mike Green to help figure out the best route to take on these projects. His expertise provides a positive difference in making decisions on how best to get these things done.

Once I completed the Advanc-Ed
work, I was able to spend time
with family on our mini-vacation.

For those who have contributed to this project, THANKS! Once we figure out the cost of improving the communication system, we will let everyone know. We will need your continued support for these projects because these aren't budgeted projects. As we see the need for improvement, we start working to make those improvements. If we budget these projects, there would be an increase in tuition, and we do not want to increase tuition. We depend on our supporters for these extra projects.

My 7th grade class sampling
Middle Eastern cuisine.

Now, for a not so pleasant topic:

The spike in teenage depression and suicide we have seen nationwide is scary. I had a conversation with one of the lead counselors from Lakeside last week. The conversation was about the huge increase of depression, harmful behavior such as cutting, and suicide with our youth today. My one word question, “WHY?” was answered with her two-word reply, “SOCIAL MEDIA!”

The following is a quote from an article on social media and depression by Caroline Miller, the editorial director of the Child Mind Institute.

"Is using social media making our kids unhappy? Evidence is mounting that there is a link between social media and depression. In several recent studies, teenage and young adult users who spend the most time on Instagram, Facebook and other platforms were shown to have a substantially (from 13 to 66 percent) higher rate of reported depression than those who spent the least time. Does that mean that Instagram and Facebook are actually causing depression? These studies show a correlation, not causation. But it's worth a serious look at how social media could be affecting teenagers and young adults negatively."

Hanging out with my favorite
person at Picnic Beach in
Gulf Shores.

Below is just one of many videos that deals with social media and depression. If you perform a search on social media and teenage depression, you will be shocked as to the amount of information and research there is out there. Just watch this one video, and you can decide for yourself if you, as a parent, need to do more research on this topic.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2018/11/24/study-social-media-increases-depression.cnn

I bring this up because many of our students have Instagram and Snapchat accounts. Few young people are on Facebook because that form of social media is for old people. Parents, if your child has a social media account, and you have access to your child’s social media accounts and monitor those sites; fantastic! You are ahead of the game. If not, please do not be naïve about the dangers of social media. As you know, I’m all about communication and transparency. Spend valuable time communicating (listening) to your children. They need to be heard, and social media is a way for people to hear what they have to say.

Support St. Ann

Follow your children on social media. If they don’t have a social media account, as my Irish friends would say, “Good on you!”

God bless you,

Didier Aur, Principal

St. Ann Catholic School

St. Ann: Our Mission and Vision

St. Ann Catholic School Mission and Vision Statement

Mission: Our mission is to provide a Catholic education through faith, service, and love.

Vision: We envision a thriving school for all children that will provide a premier education in the Catholic tradition.

This message goes out to everyone who is part of the St. Ann community, especially since our accreditation process takes place in less than two months. I want to share these statements so our greater community is informed. I want you to be aware of the mission and vision statement the St. Ann staff created during the first days of in-service last August. The staff came together to examine and update the school's mission and vision statement, which should be reviewed every year. The last time it was updated was in 2013 when the school was going through the last accreditation process.

7th Graders Taking Geography Test

Our goal in developing new statements was to write an honest statement that could be understood, lived out, and memorized by everyone at St. Ann, especially the students. The previous mission statement was inclusive but too long to be memorized, especially by students. The mission statement answers the question of why we exist. Well, we exist to provide a Catholic education through faith, service, and love. The vision statement is future-casting in guiding us to where we hope to be five years from now. As we look to the future, our goal is to improve the quality of education we offer our students to the point we are offering a premier education to all our students at every level. At present, we provide our students a very good education. We aren't premier yet, but I do believe with a lot of hard work, we will get there sooner than later. What I ask from every teacher, staff member, student, family, parishioner, alumni, and supporter is to help get to where we need to be. Let's become a premier Catholic school for all our students together.

Chess Extracurricular Exploration

At this point, the accreditation process is taking most of my time. With so much yet to be done, the accreditation process hangs over all of us. As the head of school, this is the fifth time I've led a school through the accreditation process. This is nothing new to me. Every five years, the accrediting agency changes the accreditation process to keep up with the changing times. The idea of the process is that work is done on a yearly basis to achieve a five-year goal. There are steps that need to be put into place to be able to reach goals.

Scholastic Book Fair

One of the goals from 2013 was to improve math scores on the ITBS by five normal curve equivalent (NCE) points. This is a great goal to achieve. I wasn't at St. Ann five years ago, so I commend those who set that goal. A five NCE point improvement makes sense; one NCE point for every year of a five-year process. The first year, 2014, huge improvements were achieved, only to drop back near the original scores. The five NCE points were not achieved by any grade after five years. These scores are from the ITBS, which is administered late April or early May. The other two goals dealt with increasing the amount of technology used in classrooms and in classroom instruction.

Scholastic Book Fair

The goals we are setting for this new accreditation process will not be five-year goals but one-year goals. After accomplishing these three goals, we will set three more goals for the following year. If we achieve three goals on a consistent basis, our test scores will improve; everything will improve. In the words of Fr. Ernie, "Improve the quality of the school." That's what we are doing. Sustainable improvement cannot happen over night and cannot be done in a vacuum. Improvement is going to take time, and is going to take us working together.

Library Volunteers

St. Ann Improvement Goals:

1. St. Ann needs to add a school counselor to the staff. The hope is that the school counselor will also be qualified to work as the school’s assistant principal.

2.  St. Ann would like to become a one-to-one school with iPads for grades 2-4. We are already one-to-one in grades 5-8.

3.  St. Ann would like to develop more individualized lessons geared toward the individual students to better serve them.  This is where a counselor and assistant principal would help, especially in breaking down the data and helping teachers create more individualized lesson plans.

Kindergarten Free Play

All the Catholic Schools of this diocese minus the Jubilee Schools are going through the AdvancED accreditation process together. The visiting AdvancED team will be here April 1st & 2nd to meet with all the school leaders. One of their meetings is with parents from all the schools. Lori Locke and Jimmy Crews will be the parents representing St. Ann.

Members of AdvancED School Improvement Plan committee are: Didier Aur (principal), Angela de Jong (development director), Annmarie Ghio (teacher), Teresa Ferrante (teacher), Mike Green (technology coordinator), Susan Hunt (parish administrator), Lori Locke (Home & School president), Liz Wehmeyer (parent and Apple certified teacher), and Fr. William Parham (associate pastor).

Thank you to everyone who completed a teacher, staff, parent, or student survey last fall. These surveys have come in handy in developing goals for the school. We hope to use annual surveys to keep the improvement process going.

Support St. Ann

If you have a little time, please say some prayers for a successful accreditation process. We need and appreciate those prayers.

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

Catholic Schools Week: A Week of Celebration

Pajamas for Catholic Charities

I write my blog on Sunday evenings, and today being Super Bowl Sunday, I did the same thing today as I do every Super Bowl Sunday, I watched the last two minutes of the game. I do that every year, just the last two minutes. Evidently, that's about all I needed to watch this year. Congratulations to the New England Patriots and the Patriot fans out there.  Super Bowl Champions times VI!

Student Trivia Contest

This has been a great Catholic Schools Week for St. Ann filled with days of celebration. It started off with the school choir singing at Mass, and an extremely well attended St. Ann Preview Day last Sunday. Monday was Pajama Day. You wore your pajamas to school if you donated a new pair of pajamas to Catholic Charities. Well, Catholic Charities received a car load of pajamas to give to children needing pajamas to keep warm at night. Tuesday, we wore our favorite sports team jerseys. Cannot believe how many Steelers fans we have. I wore my São Paulo

My São Paulo Soccer Jersey!
But I'm Playing Volleyball.

Futebol Clube soccer jersey. São Paulo is my favorite soccer team from my hometown in Brazil. Yes Battle Boys, they are much better than Chelsea. And yes, Tottenham is also better than Chelsea. Just saying. Tuesday was also the Staff/Student Volleyball Game. The students put up a good fight, but they were no match for the likes of Deborah Harty, Tracy Angotti, Billy Gage, James Newell and Ryan Cooper. Just in case you didn't hear, Deborah Harty was voted the game's MVP for her total court domination, Wednesday was  Pep Rally Day and Red, White, and Blue Day. Everyone came to school dressed in Red, White, and Blue. USA! USA! Thursday was Career Day and Grandparents Day. This was probably the best day because of all the Grandparents who attended

7th Grade Student Ambassadors

Mass with their grandchild. There are few things in life as wonderful and special as a grandparent/grandchild relationship. Friday was School Spirit Day, Faculty Appreciate Day, and the Student Trivia Contest. As you can see, it was an action packed week for which I'm still trying to recover. Now, I'm hoping for a few days of nothing but normal school days just to try to get caught up. I'm adding a lot of Catholic Schools Week pictures to this blog.

Winning Volleyball Team!

Now, for all the updates, and we have lots of them.

Volunteer Tutors: We have a whole bunch of wonderful people volunteering to tutor our students who need extra help. Now, we have a group of students from CBHS and SBA who want to perform their service hours tutoring our students after school. What better way to use service hours than by helping other students: Students Helping Students! Teresa Ferrante and Annmarie Ghio are in charge of scheduling the tutors with the St. Ann students. We are in constant need of volunteers. So, let us know if you are willing and able to help.

4th Grade PJ Day

I have asked Sally Fillion and Tracy Angotti to put together a St. Ann Bowling Team. They have followed through on this request, and they formed a St. Ann team with 17 students having signed up! I think more students will sign up as word spreads about the team. I encouraged forming a bowling team because bowling is a lifetime sport. I believe lifetime sports are very important. I play a lifetime sport in soccer. I'm 57 and still play. Not very well nor very fast, but my friends and I still play.

3rd Grade PJ Day

The next activity I want our students to participate in is in skeet and trap shooting. I want to form a St. Ann Shot Gun Team. The high schools have them. This would help our students make their high school shot gun team. The problem is, we need some coaches to teach our students. I might have to get the Bartlett Police Department involved somehow. Hey Captain Sones, I need your help on this one.

The Chess Club is coming together nicely. The Club now has nine members! My hope is that the Chess Club will also continue to grow as students learn more about Chess. I might be the worse chess player in the world, so it would be best if I just stay away when they are playing.

Band at Pep Rally

The next Extracurricular Exploration classes will start in a couple of weeks. We've come up with new EEs with the first being a tutoring EE. It is not for students who need to be tutored. It is for our middle school students who would like to help tutor the younger students at St. Ann. This is another form of Students Helping Students! We are also considering an IXL/Khan Academy EE for students who would like the opportunity to advance their studies. We have academic EEs, athletic EEs, and fine arts EEs. The middle school students are getting a lot of choices in doing different things outside of their regular class time.

One of Our Trivia Teams

I think we need a Hunger Games EE. No, we are not going to hunt each other down in the Arena developed by the Gamemakers. This would be a Hunger Games Book Club. Or, we could have a Harry Potter Book Club. Quidditch anyone? Accio! If you've read Harry Potter, this would make sense.

We are going to have a Gardening EE for the next two EE sessions. Mr. Gage will lead this EE. If you are interested in helping with the Gardening EE, please contact the school office. We sure could use some master gardeners or just some regular green thumb type people.

Students at the Pep Rally

We have some great St. Ann folks who have stepped up to donate the $2,098 we need for the security cameras. I plan to get together with Susan Hunt to get the project moving forward. Another item I want to add to the security system is speakers in the hallways. The intercom messages cannot be heard in the hallway. If there is an emergency, students and staff in the hallways need to know what's going on. When we asked for the speaker donations for the classrooms, we received more speakers than we needed. Now, we can use those speakers in the hallways (I hope). We will have to wire them to the existing audio system. I'm then going to buy an Amazon Echo, and have Alexa play classical music throughout the whole school all day long. I'm just kidding. Maybe. Once the cameras are in, the door locks will be next.

Student/Staff Volleyball Game

St. Ann Trivia Night is coming up on Saturday, March 2nd. I hope to have a room full of St. Ann supporters answering all kinds of crazy questions. Now that Catholic Schools Week is over, I'm going to focus on maxing out our trivia night. The Aur Family is entering a team. Our goal is not to finish last. We don't have very high expectations. We just want to support St. Ann and have fun.

If you would like to sponsor trivia night, please get in touch with me for sponsorship opportunities. All proceeds go to the Sr. Connie Scholarship Fund. This scholarship fund goes to St. Ann parishioners who need financial assistance to attend the school. This is a great way to make the school more affordable for families in our parish.

Click To Support St. Ann

Hey St. Ann alumni! We need you. Please put a team together for trivia night, and don't forget to attend our Fat Tuesday Alumni Party on Tuesday, March 5th. Yes, it is a weeknight. Come out anyway. St. Ann is a great place, and we want you to be a part of it.

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