kindergarten kids take a break from class. The food is free for the kids – Holy Trinity has donated money to keep this going.

Last week, you all made a very significant decision.  You agreed to allow some of the fundraising money we have raised to go to Nelson’s school in San Jose las Flores.  Eventually, we will be sending over $1000.00 to the school.  The great thing is that we already have a strong connection to this community.  Nelson and his students have visited us and I have been lucky enough to stay with Nelson in El Salvador.

You would be amazed how much these people do with few resources.  Salvadore, the new English teacher is responsible for teaching English to all the students in the school.  His schedule doesn’t allow him to get to all grades, so he volunteers his time after his regular teaching schedule.

Many of these teachers first learned in schools in the forests surrounding the town.  During the war, San Jose las Flores was abandoned and many families retreated to the forests to avoid the soldiers.  Students even had trenches and caves to hide in if the soldiers got too close.  One of their teachers still teaches at the school.

My hope is the money we have raised will go to new curriculum materials, but we leave that up to Salvaide and Nelson.  In the past, Holy Trinity donated money for a computer lab, but a substantial portion had to be diverted to build a retaining wall to protect the new kindergarten building.

Whatever is decided you will hear about it.  I truly hope this is a partnership we can keep along with Kakinada for years to come.  Maybe some of you will get a chance to visit the community!

mural at the school depicting classrooms during the

Power Versus Love
Meditation 34 of 49

There are always two worlds. The world as it operates is largely about power; the world as it should be, or “the Reign of God,” is always about love. Conversion is almost entirely about moving from one world to the next, and yet having to live in both worlds at the same time. As you allow yourself to loosen your grip on the ego or bad forms of power, you will gradually see the inadequacy and weakness of mere domination and control. God will then teach you how to tighten your grip around the second world, which is the ever-purer motivation of love.

Any exercise of power apart from love leads to brutality and evil; but any claim to love that does not lead to using that as power for others is mere sentimentality and emotion. I must admit, it is rare to find people who hold both together in perfect balance—who have found their power and use it for others, or people who have found love and use it for good purposes. I think the Reign of God includes both love and power in a lovely dance. I think that is what Jesus means when he tells us to be “cunning as serpents but gentle as doves” (Matthew 10:16). It is a beautiful combination of both authority and vulnerability.

Adapted from Jesus’ Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount, p. 41  Richard Rohr

 

Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids

Child prodigy Adora Svitak says the world needs “childish” thinking: bold ideas, wild creativity and especially optimism. Kids’ big dreams deserve high expectations, she says, starting with grownups’ willingness to learn from children as much as to teach.

St. Greg This Week

Tuesday, May 21

Paul Out (AM) Board Office

Wednesday, May 22

transitions meetings at Frank Ryan am only

all Pita Pit envelopes need to be in!

Thursday, May 23

Yanya away – Caitlin in

Peace Festival St. Paul H.S. (Paul away)

Pita Pit Day

Athletic Banquet 6:00 PM start

Friday. May 24

Jenn away – Shauna Healey in

Karen away - Yasmin in

Caroline out – Janet Roy in

Peace Festival(East) St. Paul H.S. (Paul away)

Dance-a-thon for Vienna

Hot Dog Day

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
– Theodore Roosevelt

Communication with parents

We will stop publishing the monthly newsletter as of now.  In its place, we will be using an enhanced version of Constant Contact.  It will come out on Sundays at 7:00pm.  I want to include much more information on what is going on in your classrooms for the week ahead.  So – I will do my best to visit all of you on Fridays to see what you want advertised in the Constant Contact.  It would be really nice if you sent me the information, but I will come and see you anyway.

PM and CASI

Up to two grades done 2/3 and 4 are now done and on the chart.  Please make sure you get yours in by the end of the day tomorrow.

San Jose Las Flores

Thank-you very much for agreeing to share some of our fund-raising money with Nelson’s school in El salvador.  I spoke to Salvaide yesterday and Rene, the director will be in contact with elson to see where money should be spent.  I put Rene in contact with their English teacher, Salvador – he has no curriculum materials to teach english, so I am hoping the money we are raising will go to new curriculum materials – they have a huge need in this area!

Grade 9 students in English class

St. Greg Today

Hot Dog Day

Jersey Day for Vienna

The Future Of Technology: What You Can Expect In The Next 50 Years

Technology is growing at such an exponential rate, it can be difficult to visualise what the next five years will look like, let alone fifty. We wanted to see just how the future is going to shape up for us. So we compiled all the best predictions for digital technology, mobile, social media, and big data over the next fifty years into a timeline so you can see exactly what’s in store. ( Click above to see more )

Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work — hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss — loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.

-Jean Vanier

Adding images to Google Forms

Applications for Education
Inserting images into Google Forms could be a great way to create quizzes in which you ask students to identify people, places, and things. From Free technology for teachers – a great blog

This feature has not been rolled-out to all users, yet. If you’re a Google Apps for Education user who still has the old Google Forms layout you won’t see this option.

St. Greg Today:

Please continue to hand in CASI scores and PM’s – if they are a few months old and you are going to update them, give me the old ones and I will take the new ones later.  I find this a really interesting (and quick) exercise to do so please let me have them.  You can see the current Grade 4 CASIs and PMs right now  All teachers can now enter their own scores if they choose.  Please have some scores in by this Friday unless you have already spoken with me- thanks

TWO teachers have put in app requests, if you want to keep your apps, please fill in the form today
you can access it here also

Paul

Karen out (PM) Teresa in

Today:

Yvonne Whalen – observation day

Pita Pit Day – new envelopes going in mailboxes by Friday

Catherine Olmsted – Psychologist in for assessments

Important note:  The monthly newsletter is now a thing of the past – we will be creating an updated Constant Contact starting next week.  I will be coming to you each week to find out what you are doing that is special in your class for the following week – this will go in the weekly Constant Contact which will become our primary way of communicating with parents and Simone.

Also, next year, we are taking over pizza as a fund raiser – it will be offered every week and will be administered by me.  This starts in September!!

Paul

Apple Configurator will soon be ready – we are up to 25 iPads.  If you are interested, you can see all the tutorials here

Christian hope frees us to act hopefully in the world. It enables us to act humbly and patiently, tackling visible injustices in the world around us without needing to be assured that our skill and our effort will somehow rid the world of injustice altogether. Christian hope, after all, does not need to see what it hopes for (Heb. 11:1); and neither does it require us to comprehend the end of history. Rather, it simply requires us to trust that even the most outwardly insignificant of faithful actions — the cup of cold water given to the child, the widow’s mite offered at the temple, the act of hospitality shown to the stranger, none of which has any overall strategic socio-political significance so far as we can now see — will nevertheless be made to contribute in some significant way to the construction of God’s kingdom by the action of God’s creative and sovereign grace.
-Craig Gay

prayer of the day

Lord, you did not withhold even your life for our benefit. If nothing is too much to offer you, remind us that nothing is too much to sacrifice for our brothers and sisters in need. Amen.

- From Common Prayer

 

St. Greg Today

Please keep the Evidence room locked at all times.  If I see it open I will lock the door.  With over $40,000.00 worth of equipment in the room we cannot afford to ‘lose’ machines.  Tanya and Jennifer will let you know when the machines are ready for use.  Please remember to back up you iPad of photos etc before you habd over your iPad.

Please also see the Google form where you can add your favourite apps.  If you don`t fill this out – you lose and will have to wait for the next update of all iPads to get yours on.  You may add it to an iPad, but it will be wiped out when we do our next back-up.

We will start adding instructional videos to this blog to help you through some of these steps.

Paul

SIP Planning St Pius FOS: Wednesday May 15 8:30 – 11:00 am  - Je( Margaret Lanctot) , Laurie (Ellen) and Paul – Derry Byrne

Teresa out (PM – Yasmin in)

Pauline out - Patrizia Giustiniano in

Linda out (PM) - Sofia Syed

Rosary closing ceremony in the gym – Sarah to confirm this

Use of assessment tools:

For all those who did not read the earlier memo from Brenda Wilson, I have copied it for you below

To:  All Elementary Principals

I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know. God may call any one of us to respond to some far away problem or support those who have been so called. But we are finite and he will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.

-C.S Lewis

Please see an important memo from the Director of Education regarding the New Brand Framework – we have been asked to share this with you today

St. Greg Today

all day training on iPad management system – Jen, Tanya (Guy Racicot) and Paul (Evidence Room)

Tennis all day – schedule in the staff room – thanks Caroline for setting this up!

Staff Meeting – 3:45 see agenda here

School Council – 6:30 – Anne and Paul

Look at this week – Hardly anything planned except tennis and the Challenge Cup on Friday.  This is a great opportunity to try to get things back to ‘normal’ if that can exist in a school.  This week, you are free to focus on teaching your kids or preparing for EQAO if you are in Grade 3 or 6.

Even in a quiet week we have a number of significant events taking place:

• a staff and school council meeting on Tuesday –  always interesting occasions for dialogue and possibly growth
• SIP planning – three of us to plan for the entire school.  We will rely on the message you gave us on our last PD day – keep with the Triads concept, just add robust tasks and keep Rights Respecting Schools
• Motley Crew – well that speaks for itself
• Jersey Day – another opportunity to fundraise for Vienna (does anyone  have an extra jersey??)
• full-day training on how to manage apps for 20 new iPads that will be released to you as soon as we understand how to manage this system!

Worshippers hold candles as they take part in the Orthodox Christian Holy Fire ceremony at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters

St Greg This Week

Monday, May 13

Anne away – Ellen in

Linda out (AM) Matthew Legassick in

Lunch Lady in

Tuesday, May 14

Tennis all day

Jenn away all day – OPEN

iPad training  -  Paul, Jen and Tanya all day

Staff meeting – please add agenda items on Drive

School Council – Paul and Anne attending

Wednesday, May 15

SIP Planning St Pius FOS: Wednesday May 15 8:30 – 11:00 am – Jenn (OPEN), Paul and Laurie (Ellen)
Rosary closing ceremony in the gym – details to follow on Monday

Thursday, May 16

Pita Pit Day

Friday, May 17

Breakfast at Rockwells

Challenge Cup

Jersey Day – Donation for Vienna

Hot Dog Day

5 Awesome Techniques to Build Strong Twitter Connections

The reasons for me to be on Twitter aren’t to send one tweet back and forth or to follow someone and to leave it at that. Like in real life it takes time and effort to build something meaningful.  See some interesting techniques here

St. Greg Today 

Field Trip JK/SK/ AM only Experimental Farm

Choral Celebration – Massed Choir (including St. Gregory) sings about 12:00 p.m.  Friday, May 10 | 12 noon – 1:30 p.m. | Jennifer in for Cathy

Reading Buddies – Donation for Vienna – noon

Teresa out – Matthew in

Zita Sevcik in (EA) covering for Vanessa and Tracey

Eucharist As Focused Truth
Meditation 23 of 49

I believe that the primary healing of human loneliness and meaninglessness is contact with reality itself, natural reality, and especially in its concrete forms (instead of just ideas and concepts). But, as T.S. Eliot said in the Four Quartets, “human kind cannot bear very much reality.” What human existence often prefers is highly contrived and costumed ways of avoiding the real, the concrete, the physical. We fabricate artificial realities instead, even religion itself. So Jesus brought all of our fancy thinking down to earth, to one concrete place of ordinary incarnation—one loaf of bread and this cup of wine! “Eat it here, and then see it everywhere,” he seems to be saying. Get it in one shocking moment—and universalize. If you can comprehend the sacred in one moment, know it is in all moments too. As St. Augustine essentially said in an Easter sermon, “You are what you eat.”

If it’s too idealized and pretty, if it’s somewhere floating around up in the air, it’s probably not the Gospel. Jesus gave us a marvelous touchstone for orthodoxy in the Eucharist. The first incarnation in creation personifies in the body of Jesus and is spread out in space and time as Eucharistic meal in ordinary food. Note how John almost embarrassingly keeps insisting on the fleshly physicality of it all (6:53-66), and even admits that “many left him and stopped going with him” (John 6:66).

It is still an embarrassment intellectually and theologically, so we high churches surround the scandal with all kinds of pretty gold, flowers, and candles and lovely ministers in brocade and lace. The non-liturgical churches, who purportedly love Scripture, just avoid the whole thing altogether. I am not sure that either of these groups are ready for the hard contact with reality that Jesus offers in full incarnation, and in his passion, death, and resurrection.

Adapted from Eucharist as Touchstone (CD, MP3) – Richard Rohr

“What Teachers Make,” by TAYLOR MALI

The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as ‘Christians’ will become disciples — students, apprentices, practitioners — of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.

-Dallas Willard, who passed today, from The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus’s Essential Teachings on Discipleship

verse of the day
Give justice to the weak and the orphan; maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.

- Psalm 82:3

 

St. Greg Today

Paul at Board office 9:00 – 11:00

Dairy Farmers presentations – 9:00 – 11:00 am

Pita Pita Day

Jump Rope for Heart – Block three activities outside – students return inside for oranges block four

This post looks interesting – here is the link

In honor of Catholic Education Sunday we bow our heads and pray:
Our faith is a celebration; a joyous event. We are part of a family that dances in the light of God’s love
for us. Let us rejoice in this fact. And like all good dances, we must invite others to dance with us. Our
faith is a wonderful, and the most celebratory, aspect of our lives. When we open our hearts to the joy
that it can bring in our lives and in other’s lives, our faith comes alive and we see it enriching all of those
around us. So as the popular song goes:
“Dance, dance wherever you may be
I am the Lord of the dance, said he
I will lead you all where ever you may be,
I will lead you all in the dance, said he”
Let us take a moment to give thanks for the opportunity that we have to dance and celebrate the gift of
faith in our lives and the chance that we have to share it with others. We give praise in your name Lord,
Amen

St. Greg today

Open House – Block One

Pizza Day!

Destination Imagination Demonstration 2:15

Purse sale for Vienna – all day

Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, “They don’t pay me to like the kids.” Her response: “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.’” A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.

Rita F. Pierson has spent her entire life in or around the classroom, having followed both her parents and grandparents into a career as an educator

I would like to thanks all staff for a very memorable birthday celebration yesterday – you have outdone yourselves.  I really enjoyed the day and I am looking forward to reading all the notes from the kids!!

Thanks very much

Paul

Sometimes, when what is officially the law is wrong, you try to get the law changed. But if you can’t, you break it.

-Rev. Dr. Thomas W. Ogletree

 

You hear our prayers whether they are full of thanksgiving or full of complaints. Your mercy is unending. Even in your discipline you restrain yourself in ways we cannot know. May our mumbled words of gratitude and our fleeting praises find crevices where they can grown within your presence, Lord of light and morning. Amen.
- From Common Prayer

St. Greg Today

Tracey’s birthday today – Happy Birthday Tracey!!

Mass at St. Maurice – students walking over for mass

12:05 -Can we meet  at 12:05 in the gym to practice singing with the choir and also figure out how we’re going to arrange ourselves on the stage?

Lit Cafe - 2:15pm – 3:15pm  - Gym

The 27 Characteristics of A 21st Century Teacher

didn’t know there were 27!

“21st Century Educator” is probably the most popular buzzword in today’s education. There is a growing and heated debate whether or not to label educators as 21st century and each camp has its own concept and arguments, however, for me personally I see teaching in 21st century as having undergone a paradigmatic shift. This is basically due to the emerging of the ” social web” and the huge embrace of technology and particularly the mobile gadgetry  in our classrooms. It would be unfair to ignore these huge transformations and their impact on education. Therefore, and as a result of these changes teachers now are required to have digital skills that were not called for before. It also becomes imperative for teachers to adapt their teaching practices to the developing learning needs of their students  if ever this teaching to be effective. Our students are digital natives and live in a digitally focused world and they need to see part of their life inside the class. So, whatever we want to call ourselves 21st century educators or not , we are definitely not the same teachers of last century and if you think you still did not change than you need to look for another job in another sector.

Having said that,  I am sharing with you  today an infographic on the 27 ways to be 21st century teacher. Check it out below and let us know what you think of it and of my previous discussion ?