Sunday marked the start of Catholic Schools Week. All school staff attended the 9:00am mass where the middle school choir performed and two students spoke about the reasons they love our school. After that we hosted an open house between the 9:00am mass (which ran long) and the 11:00am mass. To entice people into the school building, coffee and donuts were moved into the school building. It was an easy open house with students showing off their work posted in the hallway, potential families walking through, former students stopping by to chat, and older people without school age kids enjoying the chance to peek in classrooms. When the 11:00am mass was well underway, teachers filtered out and many met up for a boozy brunch. It was the perfect start to the week ahead.
Yesterday was parent appreciation day. The students wrote cards or letters last week to their parents telling them why they like attending our school to take home yesterday. I told them to put in at least one sentence that would make their parents say, "awww!" - and many of them did. The school also sent home a gift for each family (a mini tape measure with the logo for this year's theme "Growing Together in Faith"). Staff even made thank you videos last week that were sent out to the parents.
Today was staff and teacher appreciation day. Students were encouraged to dress up as their teachers. I had a former fourth grader dress up as me. She asked if any of my current students, eighth graders, had dressed up as me. I told her they don't like me and she was aghast! I had to amend and remind her that I replaced a beloved teacher who had taught social studies to the current eighth graders last year, so they wouldn't have liked any teacher to take her place. Also, the older kids really enjoyed dressing up as the male teachers, girls included, so they could wear basketball shorts and create facial (and in one case, chest) hair. I would like to think that last year and next year both I would have had more students dressing as me.
Tomorrow is going to be a doozy of a day. It's grandparents' day, and there are over 220 confirmed grandparents coming for mass and brunch. The eighth graders will be practicing to sing as the choir for mass from the start of the day until mass. Then they will be serving the grandparents during the brunch, which will conclude as their lunch begins. As a result, I'm teaching exactly one class tomorrow. But I'm sure I'll be support for the performances during the grandparents' brunch, which include the band, a song from our upcoming musical, a speech team duo, and preschoolers singing.
It is a crazy week full of festivities and interrupted schedules. Two days in and three to go... I'm looking forward to it but am also glad there is a professional development day on the Archdiocesan calendar for next week, so we have to plan and teach for only four days.
