Dear All Saints Families:

It is amazing that we are in the last week before our Thanksgiving holiday.  This week we are finishing up our Thanksgiving Food Drive and Boxes of Joy. Please see the schedule and specifics for these events on our website.

Last week at Cardinal Newman High School, our faculty was privileged to listen to a wonderful guest speaker, Dr. Tammy Palowski. She serves as Professor of Education and Director for the Center of Excellence to Prepare Teachers of Children of Poverty at Francis Marion University. She spoke to us about how poverty affects learning in our children.  However, she defined poverty in a much broader sense than economically.  She defined poverty as the lack of access to resources which include spiritual, role models, finances, emotions, physical health, and cognition.  One of the most interesting facts that she validated, with numerous studies, is that most children today are not provided with their proper physical needs.  This includes proper nutrition and sleep.  Fast food and our need to eat out with busy schedules often do not provide proper nutrition for the brain.  Most importantly, regardless of economic status, children are not getting enough sleep.  We have over-booked our children with activities that require late nights.  With reduced sleep, students' attention, behavior, and ability to solve problems decreases.  Stress increases with the lack of sleep as students feel out of sorts.  Please make sure your child gets sufficient sleep. Check out the Mayo Clinic's Sleep Center's recommendations - you may be shocked at how much sleep our children need and are not getting ( Mayo Clinic Recommendations).

 

When we return from Thanksgiving, we will only have three and a half weeks before our Christmas break.  I do not know where the first semester has gone. During this time the school will be very busy with Advent (begins 12/3), Reconciliation, the Christmas show, Santa Shop, sports, and of course most importantly, academics.  During those last few weeks before Christmas, teachers will be working hard to finish up their required lessons and preparing our middle school students for exams.  It is critical that since the Diocese gave our families the entire Thanksgiving week off, those students are not taken out for further holidays.  We seem to have more families increasingly taking their children out of school for Disney trips, extended holidays, and general reasons.  These last few weeks are very stressful for our teachers who have so much going on in the classroom.  Further, they are parents as well with much to prepare for their own families.  When students are absent, missed work cannot be easily organized before or after the time.  Exams are scheduled such that the content material is covered prior, reviews are completed, and there is ample spacing among exams is provided.  This may not seem like too much if one child is away, but at times there have been multiple students out.  It is further a difficult time for illness.  Please be appreciative of the value of your child being in the classroom on regular scheduled days.  Thank you for your understanding.

Like other public and Catholic schools, we will be closed all of Thanksgiving week to offer our families time to travel for this special holiday.  All of us at All Saints Catholic School wish you and your entire family a blessed Thanksgiving filled with love, thanks, and faith.  We have so much to be thankful for and truly need to stop the busy lives we all lead and appreciate what God has given us. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Mrs. Jill Broz

 

Helping Hands:

THANK YOU TO OUR MANY VOLUNTEERS!