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St. Marys School
Easing into the
School Year
By Kathy Ayette
Hard to believe that summer vacation is now just a pleasant memory and
we are already in our third week of school. I should add
the third loooong week of school. We eased into the year with two
four-day weeks. Normally I complain about four-day weeks.
Yes, I can hear your gasps. The reason I really don’t like
four-day weeks is that most of the programs I teach are built around
the traditional five-day week, and it takes some fancy footwork to work
everything in. However after this week, I certainly see the
wisdom in easing into the school year. It’s a toss-up, who’s more
exhausted, my first graders or me. I have nine first
graders and seven second graders, which is a very nice size for a
combined class.
This year we welcomed several new members to our school family.
Miss Ashley Borchers is our new kindergarten teacher. Mrs. Nancy
Nottingham is teaching keyboarding to the kindergarten through fourth
grades. Tim Nealeigh is teaching music to the fourth through
eighth graders, and will be getting them ready for the spring musical.
September 8 is the date that the Catholic Church celebrates the birth
of the Virgin Mary. Since she is the patroness of our school, it
was very fitting that we celebrated her birthday. Students and
staff attended Mass in the morning and after Mass were treated to
birthday cake and beverages. I noticed that there were four
candles on the cake. I figured each candle represented five
hundred years, give or take.
On September 11 the students and staff gathered around the flagpole for
a short prayer service remembering those who perished during the
attacks on September 11, 2001. We prayed for all those affected
by this terrible tragedy. For many of the staff, the memory of
that day is very fresh. Our principal noted however that none of
our present students had been born at the time. Even though many
years have passed, the need to pray for peace hasn’t.
The eighth graders went to Fort Campbell Gard later that day for
the rope course. By helping one another through the course, the
students build community. Also completion of the course builds
confidence.
St. Mary’s had a float in the annual Greenville Homecoming
Parade. Students, dressed in retro clothing from the fifties,
sixties, seventies and eighties, rode the float to show their support
for the Green Wave. Reading what I just wrote, I realize
how old I am. I wore clothes from all those decades…during those
decades. (Sigh!)
I have heard from a reliable source that pirates are once again going
to swarm through the halls of St. Mary’s School. I am writing
this column on September 14, so by the time you read this, the pirates
may have already come. Every year on or around “Talk Like a
Pirate” Day, which is September 19, my sweet, adorable first and second
graders are replaced by a motley crew of scurvy pirates. They
spend the majority of the day, scowling and saying things like “Aaaar!”
and “Avast ye landlubbers!” In the afternoon they wreak havoc
throughout the school searching for pirate treasure. (OK, it’s a
controlled wreaking of havoc.) The second grade pirates work out
the clues left by some other pirates. Oddly enough to break the
code, one needs to know a bit about addition and subtraction.
After the clues are decoded, the first graders lead the scurvy lot
using their knowledge of ordinal positions, and left and right to track
down the treasure.
We have a new electronic grading system this year. I have been
rather proud of myself. After taking a good thirty minutes to
enter five minutes of grading the first week of school, I think I
finally have the hang of it. The company offers many online
workshops to help teachers navigate the site. Of course, I prefer
using my own tried and true system, the “by guess and by golly!”
system. Like all things technological, I have a love-hate
relationship with it. I like the fact that when I enter
assignments, they are automatically sent to the parents’ email, so they
know all about the homework. It is nice having a running grade
average for each child in each subject. Although some days I
really long for my little green gradebook. It never crashed and I
was always able to open it. I thought that as well as I was doing
with the new gradebook, that my computer and I had finally achieved
concord. Not so. Today my document camera was doing
undocumented things and my SmartBoard was not being smart. Looks
like it’s going to be business as usual this year!
Until next month, may your electronic devises treat you kindly.
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