Dear Parents,
I hope this finds you well. In the midst of our current reality, I hope you and your families have somehow found a way to rest, relax, or if nothing else, spend quality time together over spring break. While the leadership team and teachers here at St. Cecilia have been working hard to prepare for our Continuity of Learning, we have been cautious not to inundate you with emails and information over the last week. Beginning tomorrow, we are excited to roll out to you our
Continuity of Learning Plan - our attempt to provide distance learning opportunities for our students - to maintain the delivery of our curriculum, and to facilitate continued learning for your children.
If you have not already, you will soon be receiving an email from your child’s teacher(s) outlining how best to connect with your child’s teacher, his or her classroom, and expectations for attendance and engagement. For most grade levels you can expect some sort of video interaction (live or recorded) with your child’s teacher tomorrow morning. From there future learning goals and expectations will be communicated to you via the Continuity of Learning Google Site and the Learning Management System your child’s teacher has set up.
We understand that many of you may also be working from home or juggling multiple children’s needs and teacher expectations. You are not expected to “home-school” your child. Our goal is for students to be engaged in learning as much as possible, with minimal direction and supervision from parents - even in our younger grades.
We understand that these uncertain times can create a lot of anxiety - for us, as parents, and for our students. Our goal is to ease into distance learning with high expectations, yet ample empathy, flexibility, and understanding. Your child’s social-emotional well-being is more important to us than the content we hope they will learn over these next few weeks. It is essential for your children to feel safe, confident, and excited about connecting with their community and engaging in learning from home. This first week we hope to partner with you to establish routines, expectations, schedules, learning spaces, and communication loops that will enable our students to feel good about the work they are doing, and be successful in doing it.
As we focus on our children’s (and our) social-emotional well being, let us not forget our physical well-being, and find strength in our spiritual well-being. We encourage you to stay active with your children. Play outside, take walks, go for a bike ride. Our PE teachers will also be sharing activities and challenges to motivate students to stay active and stay fit! We also encourage you and your family to spend time in prayer. While Masses have been suspended, we still encourage families to
follow the live stream of St. Cecilia Daily Masses and select weekend Masses. In fact, every Friday we invite all students and families to live stream the Friday morning Daily Mass - as we continue our tradition of celebrating Mass as a community.
School Campus & Facilities Update
Our school buildings are currently closed. Our maintenance staff spent most of last week cleaning and sanitizing our facility. For the time being, we are not allowing any access to classrooms. We understand that a few families were unable to pick up books or materials before we left for spring break. Teachers are aware of this and will be working with families to overcome any challenges associated with a lack of textbooks or other resources.
Spirit Day - Tuesday, March 24th (tomorrow)
We would like to encourage all students to show their St. Cecilia spirit tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24 as part of our virtual Spirit Day! Students, parents, faculty & staff - are all encouraged to wear St. Cecilia spirit wear and send in pictures of students learning, teachers teaching, parents with their children! We will post updates throughout the day on social media. Please send pictures to
Tim Scalzitti - tscalzitti@saintcecilia.org or post them on your own social media with the hashtag #stceciliadoesntstoplearning!
"Margaritas With Matthews" - Thursday, March 26th
And finally, I would like to invite you all to virtual “Margaritas with Matthews” on Thursday, March 26 at 4PM! This will be a Zoom webinar open to all parents! There will be a short presentation then a chance for parents, via the chat feature, to post questions for me (and other school administrators). This will be a good time for our community to “check-in” with how the first few days have gone with the Continuity of Learning Plan. We will send out the Zoom webinar link later this week. Any parent can join - you do not need a Zoom account. For those who cannot attend the “Margaritas with Matthews” we will record the webinar and share a link to it the following day.
Warm regards, blessings, and health to you and your families.