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Dear Parents,

Thank you so much for all of you who attended the General Parent Coordinating Council Meeting this past Tuesday evening. And thank you for the wonderful feedback regarding the evening’s program!

Because the feedback indicated that people seemed to appreciate the presentation, I am going to post the evening’s PowerPoint on the Parent Portal, AND I am going to take the content of the comments and periodically include portions of it in upcoming Thursday Mails.

Let me begin here, today, by outlining my assumptions and my thesis.

Included among my assumptions were three points:

1. We all have common hopes and desires for our children.
2. We have common struggles in the difficult task of helping our children achieve what we hope for their lives (more so today than in previous generations).
3. But, we don’t necessarily have the skill set or the knowledge base to make the right moves at the right time to help our children navigate through childhood in a way which allows them to be the kind of adult we hope and want them to be. In fact, sometimes we do things, as parents and as educators, which we THINK will accomplish our goals for our children, but which are NOT helpful.

Why would we do something which is not helpful to the formation process?

This is my thesis: we do not want our children to suffer. We don’t want them to suffer in the short run OR the long run. But our inability to allow them to suffer in the short run, ultimately does damage to them in the long run.

Allow me to make this point in a slightly different way: we, as adults, are too quick to alleviate what we think will be uncomfortable for our children (frustration, boredom, anxiety, angst).  In doing so, we often take away the golden opportunities which help them develop the capacities and insights which will allow them to be who we ultimately hope/want them to be.

Report card time is a particularly key moment for not rescuing our children. To this point, a grade which might be disappointing can be a springboard into a wonderful, self-reflective conversation.

As you engage in these conversations you might consider the following type of questions:

• What are you most proud of?
• What are you most disappointed about?
• What surprised you? Why?
• What do you want to do differently next quarter in order to achieve your personal best?

Conversation starters which I would not recommend include, “I am so disappointed in you” or “I am so proud of you.” Why? Because when we make statements such as these, the focus is on the adult, not the child. We don’t want our children doing or not doing something BECAUSE it makes US happy or proud or sad or disappointed. A child who does things to please an adult becomes the adolescent who does things to please his or her friends (not something any of us want).

When looking at the character traits (a VERY important aspect of the report card), invite your child into a conversation with questions such as:

• Is this consistent with who you are?
• Is this consistent with who you want to be?
• If not, what do you want to do differently to be the person you want to be?

May these days of conversation, reflection and introspection be helpful in the ongoing process of growth!

Maureen Glavin, rscj

Dear Parents,

First and foremost, I want to express my deepest gratitude to each of you who supported this past weekend’s Country Fair! From our Chairs, Tim and Marguerite Stewart, and Co-Chairs, Gregg and Jodie Schneider, to the many and hard-working Committee Chairs to our Advancement Office staff, especially Jan McCosker, to every single parent who volunteered at a booth or helped to set up or stayed to clean up, I, want to earnestly, enthusiastically and wholeheartedly THANK YOU!

As I stated last week, the Academy absolutely needs the funds raised from Country Fair in order to meet our budgeted operating expenses. It is also true that all of us have come to value and appreciate the quality of communal connections which are created through our collaborative efforts working toward this common financial goal. From my humble perspective, the weekend was a HUGE success all around! Thank you, thank you, thank you for helping to make it so!

Now, a word about our special Feast Day which we will be celebrating tomorrow – the Feast of Mater Admirabilis. As most of you know, this image of Mary was painted in 1844 by a young novice in the Society of the Sacred Heart, Pauline Perdrau, who took it upon herself to produce a fresco of the Virgin Mary on a wall in the Trinita dei Monti, a Sacred Heart school in Rome. Sister Perdrau chose to paint Mary as a young woman, sitting in the temple, clothed in a rose-colored dress. Representations of Mater Admirabilis (Latin for Mother Most Admirable) can be found in Sacred Heart schools throughout the world.

But, how does this relate to our students (or to us) today? I have come to believe that Mater may provide one of the most important lessons we can teach our children. How so?

Given the circumstances in which we live, we can allow ourselves to easily be distracted with the exterior noise, chatter and potential exterior influences. Examples might include what people think, what people say, what is written or talked about in the media, and in our own social networks (virtual or personal). If we are not moving through our world with a grounded center, we can be affected by these exterior “factors” in ways that overly determine our interior attitudes, thought patterns, dispositions or emotional states.

This image of Jesus’ Mother calls us to something totally other. Mater, through her contemplative example, calls us to the depth of our own being. She calls us to our own interior space, where, when we are attentive (as she is), where, when we are silent (as she is), where, when we are focused inwardly (as she is), we discover the place in our deepest self where Christ resides WITH us, IN us and AS us. From this place, our attitudes, our thought patterns, our dispositions and our emotional states are NOT affected BY the world, as much as AFFECT the world. Living from this place within, we become Christ in the world without.

This is my deepest hope for our students: that they learn how to live life from the inside-out and affect their world AS the Face of Christ!

Happy Feast,

Maureen Glavin, rscj