The Good News

Leadership Message

Lent: Closer to Jesus

This week we begin our Lenten journeys. In our Catholic faith, Lent is a prayerful time in which we prepare ourselves to celebrate the grace of forgiveness, our gift of salvation, and hope in the Resurrection. A time when we look deep within, reflect on those things that turn us away from our faith, from God, and reconnect to the deep love and hope that God is always with us, no matter what.

Lent can be complicated for young ones to understand. Communicating about and modeling for our children what Lent means and why we prepare our hearts for Jesus is very important to our Catholic faith. As a faith community, we focus on three aspects of Lent; prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. During Lent we will pray more. We encourage our students and their families, to also pray together during Lent. The students often are very excited to share some of the prayers they learn at school. While we no longer give “alms” today, almsgiving is the sharing of our gifts with those in need. This could be anything from sharing of their time, no longer used or needed toys, clothes, or books, or even, donating allowance to those less fortunate. Lent is also a time during which the faithful abstain and fast. Abstinence is the act of doing without or avoiding something. Particular days of abstinence during Lent are Fridays, Ash Wednesday, and Good Friday. As canon law states, Catholics over the age of 14 are expected to abstain from eating meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays throughout the Lenten season (Canon 1250-1253). It can be tricky to talk with little ones about fasting. Fasting for kids can be thought of as giving something up and replacing it with something that brings us closer to Jesus. For example, a child may select to give up playing videogames and devote that time to their siblings or parents. Some children may choose to give up a food item that is considered a treat or fasting from gossiping. While there are parts of Lent that focus on sacrifice and repentance, it can also be thought about as adding or subtracting some things in our life to bring us closer to God.

What will your Lenten Promises be? How will you pray, fast, give?

Blessings,

Mrs. Bonnie-Lynne Boehm, Principal

Shrove Tuesday: Pancake Snack on Tuesday, Feb. 17th

In preparation for the season of Lent, we will be celebrating Shrove Tuesday, Feb. 17 with a Pancake Breakfast snack. In collaboration with School Council, Eggcellent P'Eats has graciously offered to sponsor our Shrove Tuesday Pancake Breakfast.

Eggcellent P'Eats will be delivering individually packaged pancakes to our school community tomorrow. This is a special, faith tradition for our school community and we are so grateful to School Council and Eggcellent P'Eats for finding a way to make this happen in a safe way for our students.

Ash Wednesday: The Season of Lent begins

We continue to be so blessed to be able to find ways to celebrate our faith during the Liturgical year. The season of Lent begins this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. Father Danial will lead mass for our staff before school begins and bless the ashes for distribution. Our Chaplain, Mrs. Comartin, and Mrs. Boehm, along with our Grade 4 Faith Team Servant leaders, will lead each cohort in a Liturgy of the Word throughout the day. During our Liturgy, teachers will sprinkle the blessed ashes over each child. Every year, the ashes for Ash Wednesday are made by burning the palm leaves from the previous year’s Palm Sunday.

Report Cards: Where are we at? Where are we going? How will we get there?

Communicating student learning is an ongoing process that involves all key stakeholders; students, staff, and families. Creating quality learning environments that empower students to know where they are, where they need to go, and how they are going to get there is very important at St. John.

Report cards went live on Powerschool on February 3. We hope by now you and your child have had the opportunity to review their report card and celebrate their milestones and growth this year. This is also a great time to reflect and set S.M.A.R.T learning goals for the months ahead. Teachers, parents and students will have another opportunity to communicate the learning progress again in March during our Student Conferences; March 23 and 24th.

If you have any trouble accessing your child's report card, please contact your child's teacher or the school office for Powerschool access and support. If you have any questions or wonderings about your child's learning progress, please contact your child's teacher.

EICS Assurance Survey-Help us continue making our school a great place to be!

Your voice matters! Our Assurance Survey for students, parents and staff is one of the important ways we gather information to collaboratively plan for our school community! Love something we are doing-tell us so we can keep it going! Have a suggestion for enhancement-tell us!

The EICS Assurance Survey gathers your feedback in four key areas:

Faith Formation
Quality Teaching and Learning
Wellness
Engagement and Improvement

EICS Assurance Survey: Our district survey closes February 18th. You should have received an email with the survey link. Our grade fours will complete their survey this week at school. Please contact us if you did not receive or have any questions. Thank you for sharing your voice!