One of our favorite traditions each year is when our former students come back to walk through our halls as they prepare to graduate from high school!  This year, former students Crystal and River, came back to take their final walks before graduation from St. Pius High School this weekend!  

We are so excited for all of our 2022 High School Graduates.  Your St. Patrick family is rooting for you!

The STEM program at St. Patrick School has grown tremendously in the last few years.  Our students in grades K-8 attend STEM class 3-4 times per week where they create, problem solve, investigate, and learn about programming.  Today, I had the opportunity to visit the 4th grade STEM class where our students were learning how to calculate measurements needed to program their robots to perform tasks.  It's amazing that even our youngest students are able to do this complicated work with just a little bit of guidance!

Service is a big part of the education at St. Patrick School. We believe in giving back to our community and work to offer as many opportunities for service as we possibly can.  On Friday, our 8th graders spent the day doing yard work for two of our parish families.  It was a great day for them to give back to the St. Patrick community and have a little fun, too!

This week, we honored our 8th graders who were preparing to go off on retreat.  Our 7th grade students created beautiful personalized crosses for each one of them and Father Matthew prayed a special blessing over them at the end of our school mass.  We are truly blessed with a wonderful group of 8th graders leading our school this year!

Last weekend, our second graders and one of our sixth graders celebrated their First Communion!  We want to give a special shout out to Miss Mindy and Mrs. Hamilton for guiding them throughout the year and to Fr. Matthew for creating such a special day for them! 

As a really special addition, one of our school parents also came into the church on this day along with his second grade daughter!  I can't think of a more special way to celebrate the day! 

Today, our 8th grade students served as lectors, our 3rd grade students served as the choir and cantors, and we had 8th grade servers and cross bearer.  Father Matthew talked about how hard it is to accept that we, and others, can change for the better.  He read us the story of the Big, Bad Wolf who worked really hard to prove to everyone that he wasn't scary and he was, in fact, good.  Father Matthew reminded us that we should never give up on being our best, because it's never too late to change for the better!

This week, our PTO is spoiling our teachers and staff in so many different ways!  There are breakfast treats and lunches, ice cream, drinks, and prizes!  It never ceases to amaze me how much our parents spoil us at St. Patrick School.  All throughout the year, our families go above and beyond to make us feel appreciated in many different ways.  We are incredibly grateful for each of our St. Patrick families!

Today, our 3rd grade students had the chance to experience school life in the 1800's at Mount Gilead!

For the past semester, our middle school students, under the direction of Mrs. Nolan had the opportunity to join the "Escape Room" elective class in which they design, plan, create, and build and Escape Room from the ground up.  This year, using the theme "Inside Out", our students crafted a fun and challenging room for our students, staff, and parents to enjoy!  They even got our own Father Matthew involved in building some of the sets needed to make this room authentic 

This is one of the fun classes our middle school students have the opportunity to take each year!

Yesterday at our school mass, Father Matthew talked with us about how people know we are a Catholic school when they walk through our doors.  Our students said things like:  "Because we have crosses in our classrooms", "Because we have religious statues", "Because we pray", "because we have religion class", "because we go to church", and "because we talk about God." Father agreed these were all great parts of our Catholic identity, and reminded students that the most important way people can tell that we are a faith filled school is that they see the way we treat each other, the way we care for each other, and the way we care for our world. 

We are especially proud of our sixth grade students who led our mass, along with a 7th grade cross bearer, and our third grade students for serving as a choir and cantors!