Ms. Monaghan's Message - June 13
Summer Edition #2
Important Upcoming Dates
June 14 - Deadline to sign up for Color Run and receive t-shirt/color packet
June 17-19 - Ms. Monaghan and Mrs. Nola are out at a conference @ Notre Dame
June 30 - St. Patrick Color Run @ 12:30July 1 -7 - Ms. Monaghan is out of office
July 9-12- Garage Sale
July 14 - 2nd School Paint Day
Aug. 5 - Final Registration Fees due
Aug. 11 - Prayer Walk @ 9:45 (donut meet/greet after)
Aug. 13 - Back To School Night @ 6:00
Aug. 15 - First Day of School
Aug. 15 - Sack Lunch Only (all students must bring sack lunches)
Aug. 22 - PIE Night (parents only)
Supply Lists - 2019 - 2020 - Scroll down for PDF version
Color Run Sign Up Deadline - TOMORROW!
Invite your family and friends to this fun filled way to support St. Patrick Parish and School's Debt Reduction campaign!
THANK YOU!!!
Next up: stairwells, downstairs hallways, and maybe the parish hall??? If you have any artistic talents and would like to lend your skills to our freshly painted walls, we could use your help with a few ideas.
Our next paint day will be held on July 14th! We hope to see you there!
St. Patrick Garage Sale
Donations will be accepted soon, so it's a great time to do a little summer cleaning around the house and donate to a great cause!
2019 Prayer Walk - August 11 @ 9:45
The Prayer Walk is a time to come together as a faith community to pray for students in our community and in the greater community as a whole. We will gather at the flag pole at 9:45 following the 8:30 mass and walk across the campus to pray for students, faculty, and parish/school staff as we begin the 2019-2020 school year.
Immediately following the prayer walk, there will be coffee and donuts in the Parish Hall. We encourage you to come socialize with the St. Patrick community!
Academic Integrity - Part 2
In Daring to Lead, Brown says,
"The reality is that to be effective, learning needs to be effortful. The same way you feel a muscle "burn" when it's being strengthened, the brain needs to feel some discomfort when it's learning. Your mind might hurt for awhile - but that's a good thing."
This struck me, because so many times we try to make learning easy for our students. We want them to succeed, so we break learning down into easy pieces. While our intentions are good, this might be depriving our students' brains of feeling a little discomfort and allowing them to learn, grow, and become problem solvers and creative thinkers.
This is a tough one for us all. We love our students. We want them to be successful, we don't want them to struggle. The reality is, though, our desire to make everything easy is quite possibly clipping their wings and depriving them of developing the "grit" part of their brains. Without grit, our kids don't know how to push through when something is hard. They don't learn how to try and try and try again. They give up when the going gets tough. They complain about everything instead of finding creative ways to solve problems.
To teach this "grit", we have to let them struggle to figure out things on their own. We have to let them fall off the bike a few times before they learn to ride. That doesn't mean we don't stand right there with them, coaching and guiding them along the way, teaching, instructing, offering up resources, and taking time to brush them off when they fall. It means we give them the tools they need to succeed, we give them a trusting place to experiment and seek answers, and then allow them a chance to figure it out on their own.
75% of my children have now graduated from high school and are either in, or getting ready to start, college and managed to graduate with a mostly A average. They were not model students. They didn't earn any prestigious awards, nor were they valedictorians of their classes. Throughout their 13 years of education, they had some late assignments, some failed tests, and some essays that had more grammar errors than a red pen could find. Some days, they'd come home from school with bad news. They'd failed something in someway. I'd be angry, remind them of the importance of doing well in school, remind them that I didn't work so hard for them to slack off, remind them that it was their responsibility to right their wrong, and then...wait for it... I let it go.
Was I being too easy on them? I mean, I didn't ground them or punish them in any way? The thing is, I didn't really have to. Figuring out how to comeback from a failure was punishment enough. Because in our house, I will provide you support (behavioral, financial, physical, emotional), but YOU are responsible for getting your own act together. I can't be with you all day. I can't sit in your classes, I can't hold your hand and help you remember important due dates and deadlines. YOU are the sole person responsible for your successes or failures. Not your teacher, not even your mom. That was my policy from the day they started kindergarten to the day they graduated high school, and you know what....very rarely do any of them make the same mistake twice.
It was never easy standing back and watching my kids screw up. Even harder, watching them screw up and blame someone else for that screw up. Yet, I had to step back (even if everything in me wanted to intervene). I had to allow them to take charge and figure it out. I would offer advice and support, I would be a shoulder for them to cry on, I was, and will always be, their biggest fan, but I am not going to rob them of developing a little grit and perseverance. Without grit, without the ability to stand back up when they've been knocked down, what kind of life will they have?
My hope is that we can create a place at St. Patrick where critical thinkers are born, where problem solvers are the norm, and student accountability is the rule rather than the exception. Our school is a safe place to try...even it it means failing...because everyone here will rally around your child in support. I believe we can teach our students the importance of hard work, perseverance, and grit. I believe we can teach our students to challenge themselves, to inspire those around them, empower them to be creative, and to seek out ways to serve others. That is, after all, the true mission of St. Patrick School!
Challenge, Inspire, Empower, & Serve!
St. Patrick Parish and School
Email: info@stpatrickkc.com
Website: www.stpatrickkc.com
Location: 1401 Northeast 42nd Terrace, Kansas City, MO, USA
Phone: 816-453-0971
Facebook: facebook.com/St.PatrickKC
Twitter: @StPatrickKc