Catholic School Matters

October 12, 2021

Core Beliefs

Last Friday, we gathered at the Basilica to celebrate Mass with Bishop Fisher. We heard him speak about the need for renewal in our diocese and his appreciation for our work in Catholic education.

After Mass, I introduced five paintings (link here) which illustrate our five core beliefs which articulate our mission as Catholic schools. By saying “our,” of course, I’m talking about the Department of Catholic Schools but in a sense I’m talking about all of us. Here are the five beliefs and their corresponding artistic portrayals:

1. We believe that God calls us to service through community. We chose the portrayal of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples to illustrate how service is tied to community and how we’re all challenged to serve, not to be served.

2. We believe that we need each other. This form of collaboration is best portrayed by the story of the lowering of the paralytic to be healed. The disciples worked together to find a unique way to solve a problem.

3. We believe that everyone has value. The painting of the visitation symbolizes belonging and our need for community.

4. We believe that Catholic schools are where students come alive. The painting of the banjo lesson captures the joyful experience of learning. We hope that our schools are joyful places where students are loved.

5. We believe that we all need to be instruments of healing. The need for healing and mercy is perhaps best illustrated by the story of the Prodigal Son. We need to forgive and teach our students that nothing we do can separate us from God’s love.

Last week, I discussed the need for a collaborative culture. We’ll continue to build these beliefs into our programming and our messaging. By doing so, we hope to echo our mission of Catholic education and call us to our fundamental reasons for working in Catholic schools—namely, to form authentic Catholic communities where students will be seen, heard, and loved.

Want to keep up with the conversations surrounding Catholic education? Set up your own Google Alert, subscribe to this newsletter by clicking "follow," subscribe to the Catholic Schools Daily, or subscribe to the Catholic School Matters podcast.

Dr. Tim Uhl

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Office Updates

Safe Environment for Children programs must be completed by November 1st.
The Catholic Charities Help Line is 716-218-1419. This number should be widely distributed.
If you have questions about the Catholic Charities Annual Fund, Stephanie George can be reached at 716-218-1400
Link here for the Catholic Schools Day at the BPO (Jan 18, 2022). Here's the link to the registration form.
Registration has begun for the free annual Religious and Independent Schools Educators (RISE) conference taking place virtually on November 9th and 10th. Here are the Links for more information: RISE Conference | nyscirs and Program. To register, go to RISE 2021 Conference Registration Form (google.com)
October is Respect Life Month. If your school is interested in sponsoring one of the 5 families at the Mother Teresa Home by purchasing Christmas gifts or raising money for gift cards, let us know. This is a great way to promote life issues.

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Kari Buchinger on Academics

Classrooms across our diocese are focused on seeing their students develop as readers. This may be happening in the whole class, in small groups, or during one-on-one support. How exactly do students grow as readers? By reading as much as they possibly can every day. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, how many words per day are my students actually reading? You may be surprised by the answer.

We often find ourselves settling for "popcorn reading" or "round robin reading." This is when the teacher chooses a random student to read a short passage from a text, and then the student or teacher chooses another classmate to read. I'm sure you all can recall a moment when this happened to you in class. If you were anything like me, you started to read ahead to make sure you could read all of the words to avoid the embarrassment of mispronunciation in front of your peers. Due to this anxious feeling, students are focusing so much on fluency their comprehension suffers. You may be wondering, what can replace this strategy? I challenge you to give the following a try.

Choral Reading: The teacher and students read a passage together in unison. This allows readers to hear proper fluency and avoid stigma for those that may be struggling.

Partner Reading: Two students pair up and alternate reading paragraphs aloud.

Silent Reading: Students have an opportunity to read to themselves. This can be very successful when teachers provide vocabulary support upfront and/or provide a plot overview.

Teacher Read Alouds: Students have an opportunity to have fluent reading modeled by an expert, and students' cognitive processes can be focused on comprehension and evaluation of the text.

Echo Reading: Students echo back what the teacher reads, including pronunciation, inflection, and pacing.

These simple strategies also allow students to increase the number of words read per day. In turn, their fluency, comprehension, and evaluative skills will grow tremendously. Let's get reading!

Attention principals! Here is a copy of the diocesan observation form. We will review this in detail when we gather for our meeting on the 28th. This can also be found on the principals’ resource section on our website.

Previous "Academic Corner" posts from Kari

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Chris Riso on Government Services

Important Dates:

10/13/21 Emergency Connectivity Fund Program Application Filing Window Closes

10/15/21 NCEA Updates/Corrections Due to our Office

10/29/21 Register for Albany RISE Conference – Online Conference

11/1/21 Title I Letters Sent to Each Public School District w/Poverty Students

11/19/21 BEDS Report Due to NYSED via Business Portal IRS-Data Exchange

12/1/21 Fire Safety Inspection Must be Completed; Report Due 12/15/2021

Previous posts from Mr. Riso

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Save the Date!

Weekly principal Zooms at 9:30 am on Wednesdays. This week we'll have an open Q & A.
Diocesan Advisory Council meeting October 21st.
School Administrators meeting (in person) October 28th at OLV, 8:30-2:30
School Visit Schedule
Diocese of Buffalo Catholic days at the BPO Jan 18th

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Feast of St. Francis

Bishop Fisher joined the Timon HS community for their All-School Mass on Monday, Oct 3rd

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St. John Neumann

A tribute to St. John Neumann at St. Mary's in Lancaster, one of the parishes he founded

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Carpooling

The staff at Ss. Peter & Paul in Hamburg tailgated and carpooled to the All-Schools Mass last Friday!

Resources

"Principal Task List." This is organized as a living Google Doc by month.
Here's a link to the forms on our website.
New Policy Manual
New Operations Manual
Administrator Goal Sheet and the new Administrator evaluation form

Articles for Your Reflection

Atoning for sins against Indigenous people begins with confronting the past. Red Cloud Indian School is showing the way.

When Holy Rosary Mission was founded on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1888, many of the Jesuits and Franciscan sisters who established the mission learned the Lakota language. The missionaries believed this method of inculturation would be pastorally effective.

americamagazine.org

Existential Isolation

I was recently assigned to read an article about loneliness and existential isolation for a class in my graduate program in clinical mental health counseling. The article presented a view of the human person that closely reflected the Catholic understanding...

wherepeteris.com

The Hot New Back-to-School Accessory? An Air Quality Monitor.

Parents are sneaking carbon dioxide monitors into their children's schools to determine whether the buildings are safe. When Lizzie Rothwell, an architect in Philadelphia, sent her son to third grade this fall, she stocked his blue L.L. Bean backpack with pencils, wide-ruled paper - and a portable carbon dioxide monitor.

nytimes.com

Cardinal John Dearden wanted to give lay Catholics influence after Vatican II. Pope Francis' vision for synods could finally do it.

Archbishop (later Cardinal) John Francis Dearden of Detroit (1907-88) played an exceptionally significant role in paving the way for what Pope Francis is trying to do in reviving the ancient practice of including all the baptized in the work and mission of the church.

americamagazine.org

Second-Order Thinking: What Smart People Use to Outperform

The Great Mental Models Volumes One and Two are out. Learn more about the project here. Things are not always as they appear. Often when we solve one problem, we end up unintentionally creating another one that's even worse. The best way to examine the long-term consequences of our decisions is to use second-order thinking.

fs.blog

California will require all students be vaccinated once approved by FDA

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is mandating that all eligible students be vaccinated against COVD-19 once fully approved by the FDA. The requirement could take effect as early as January of 2022. SCOTT SIMON, HOST: California's governor has announced a first-in-the-nation requirement.

npr.org

What is your compelling reason? #MindsetMonday

As I have shared before, ideas will pop into my head, and I tend to jump in without much planning and figure out where things will take me. I heard this in a podcast one day, and although I do not ...

georgecouros.ca

Helping Our Students Achieve 'Post-Traumatic Growth' (Opinion)

The new question-of-the-week is: How do you think the pandemic will affect our students in the future? What, if any, might be positive impacts? What might negative ones be, and how can we mitigate them? In Part One, Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey , Michelle Shory, Amber Chandler, and Caitlin O'Connor shared their projections.

edweek.org

Edge.org

1. A university needs to replace its aging hospital. Cost estimates indicate that it would be equally expensive to remodel the old hospital vs. to demolish it and build a new one from scratch. The main argument offered by the proponents of the former is that the original hospital had been very expensive to build and it would be wasteful to simply demolish it.

edge.org

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