The first week of February was a whirlwind of activity at St. Mary’s Elementary School as the school community celebrated Catholic Schools Week 2017 themed Communities of Faith, Knowledge, and Service.
The opening of Catholic Schools Week was marked by special events starting with a Mass on Sunday. Students attended in uniform, and also served as altar servers and lectors. The St. Mary’s Elementary School “Winter Wonderland” book fair, which ran all week long, officially opened and was packed after Mass with families from the school and the parish. Students and parents could be seen perusing the book fair all week long. At 12 p.m., St. Mary’s Elementary School hosted an Open House for Admissions, with student-led tours of the facilities and current students and parents on hand to welcome the prospective families.
Special activities marked the week long celebration. St. Mary’s Elementary School parents
were invited to an open house to visit their children’s classrooms. Students were allowed to wear blue or white shirts for Frozen T-shirt Day. Distinguished Guest Day allowed students to bring a grandparent, aunt or uncle, older sibling or another family member to spend the morning getting a taste of the St. Mary’s experience. They engaged in regular classroom activities, such as storytime in the Early Childhood Education classes or deconstructing the
parts of a sentence in a middle school-level class. Special Distinguished Guest Day projects, such as a classroom scavenger hunt, dressing up as and presenting the life of a saint, and doing arts and crafts. St. Mary’s closed out the week by attending First Friday Mass as a school and having
Buddy Day, when upper classes pair with younger classes to read books together and build student bonds across grade levels.
“This week, we celebrate Catholic schools,” Father Robert Romeo said during the Opening Mass. “Our mandate is not just to educate in academic excellence. It’s not just to create and encourage the athletic abilities or the arts. It’s to do something more, something deeper. It’s to create a moral code. It is to raise and teach
and form young people, not just in good works, but to form them in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the head of everything that we do. He is the unseen visitor in every classroom, in every action and every function. So we’re able to form them into something greater, something more wondrous.”
