Next Saturday evening, May 5th, is our most anticipated event of the school year, Boogie Blast! I wanted to write this note to personally invite each of you to come and support us and see some familiar faces from the past. RSVP HERE. For those of you that follow us on Facebook, I hope you have enjoyed the Facebook Posts over the past month or so, especially the “Throw Back Thursday” showing what school was like at SJS over the past 50-60 years.
We are in the midst of the next phase of learning at St. Joe’s. We all know it as C-STEM learning. What we may not realize is that this transformation plan is a multi-year plan. We are finishing year 4 by the way. The speed of the continued transformation of our school greatly depends on the continued support that we receive from great events like Boogie Blast. As we continue to move forward, I’m hopeful that we all can continue to be excited about being in the middle of the beginning of the transformation that will undoubtedly impact our children for the next 50-60 years!
I can’t emphasize enough that we no longer are teaching and learning the way we did even 10 years ago. The world is changing so fast and our kids are going to need skills and strategies that none of us can fully grasp.
Self-driving cars, virtual office spaces, and artificial intelligences that we can’t even dream up yet will be realities for them and us in our lifetime. The soft skills that we need to teach are game changers for our children. We are looking to transform our classrooms so that they can begin to meet and acquire some of these needs and skills that will help inspire and empower them to be successful.
This is why we are looking to create new learning environments. Environments that empower a different style of learning. Environments that can enhance both the academic skills that we champion as well as promote and develop relational skills that companies desire and all human beings need. The world of technology is making us information rich. The world of technology is making us relational poor. Our desire is to create classrooms that give students relational skills as well as academic skills that will make them into the faith-filled leaders of tomorrow. This is no small task!
The transformation of our classrooms is meant to develop environments that will give our students rich opportunities to be engaged with one another as they learn. Not only will they be learning content, they will learn how to effectively collaborate, communicate, be creative and to think critically.
I hope you will catch the excitement for this upcoming Boogie Blast and our Fund-a-need efforts. We are hopeful that we can raise over $100,000 this year. We have reached far and wide to our alumni and we are excited to report that we are receiving some nice contributions (over $1000 from some alum) to help support this cause.
I ask that no matter where you are in your St. Joe’s journey that you prayerfully consider a generous contribution for the Boogie Blast this year.
Here is a short video about classroom transformation.
Catch the flame, share the Fire! Let’s build it!
Bruce Richards
