Special thanks to Kim Hancock for joining the students and staff at St. Benedict’s Catholic Secondary School today and accepting the $814 cheque to MADD Canada. The money was raised during our first annual ball hockey tournament in honour of her son DJ.

DJ graduated from St. Benedict in 2014 and his first passion was hockey. Sadly he was killed by a drunk driver the year of his graduation.

Kim, his mother now works closely with Mothers Against Drunk Driving (or MADD) to spread the message to not drink and drive. She shared this timely message with students today as prom and graduation season quickly approaches.

Fifteen year-old Aivan Apan is used to cooking for his family but he’s about to take his passion for experimenting in the kitchen to a whole new level.

Apan is heading to the northern qualifier of the Skills Ontario competition this coming weekend in North Bay at Canadore College.

The menu is pre-set and is comprised of minestrone soup to start, followed by a pan seared beef top sirloin cap steak, milk boiled garlic mashed potatoes and a combination of roasted root vegetables such as parsnip and bell peppers. It would not be complete without something sweet – a lemon tart meringue.

Apan took Foods class last year and enjoys watching cooking shows so the competition seemed like the perfect fit. He says he sacrificed part of his March break to cook and even came in this week on a snow day when buses were cancelled to practice one last time.

He says his parents are cheering him on and excited to see where he ends up in the competition.

Apan’s mentor and Foods teacher Mike Sipos says “cooking is straight forward but you have got to nail it in competition. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Know your movements.”

He says the same student can be entered two years in a row and seeing as this is his first time at the competition, he feels this is an opportunity to watch, listen and learn.

Students are scored on sanitation, presentation, taste, menu components, prep work and organization. The top 3 winners will move onto Skills Ontario in Toronto.

There are two more students from St. Benedict who are also attending the Skills competition in the area of carpentry under the direction of Mr. John Doyon.

Chemistry (elements, compounds, and atoms) can often be a tricky concept but not when you have jube jubes to help you along. Students in grade 9 Science at St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School have been using the sweet stuff to demonstrate chemical bonding.

Grade 9 Science teachers Ms. Loretta Cuda and Ms. Tessa Jewell feel that the learning has become more solidified and that bringing manipulatives into the science classroom reinforces and allows students the opportunity to visualize and understand concepts.

The two teachers have started a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) club at the school. So far this year, the STEM students have looked at environmental projects in the Sudbury area as well as competed in the PEO bridge building competition held at Dynamic Earth.

Upcoming events include the Living Wall competition presented by Clean Air Sudbury, Science North, and supported by Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations. In addition, students will be building and testing catapults, roller-coaster, lunar landers, and Tomatosphere in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency, HeinzSeeds, Let’s Talk Science, and the University of Guelph, just to name a few.

Students at St. Benedict Catholic School wanted to remember DJ Hancock.
Hancock was a graduate from the St. Benedict class of 2014 and his first passion was hockey.

Today, the student council organized the first-ever teacher versus student buyout ball hockey game to remember DJ.DJ was killed by a drunk driver in 2014 and his family works closely with Mothers’ Against Drunk Driving (or MADD). 814 dollars was raised by students who attended the buyout.

The teachers put on a lot of pressure at the start of the game, but that fizzled and the student team grabbed a 2-1 win.

To commemorate National Flag day, students and staff at St. Benedict raised the Canadian flag at the site of its new flag pole.

The flag was blessed by the school Chaplain, and together the students and staff smudged with the Indigenous Support Worker, Carla Petahtegoose.

It is a great day to be Canadian.

The grades 7/8 Aware Bears organization at St. Benedict supports charitable causes in the community.

This year, a lot of the funds raised will go to Northern Ontario Families of Children with Cancer, NOFCC.

With more than 25 hundred dollars raised already, Mrs. Trowbridge, a teacher at the school got an idea to duct tape teachers to the walls of the gym as a means to raise even more money for the cause using the house system.

All students in the school are grouped into houses as a means to build spirit and friendships at the school so the event became even more of a challenge worth winning.

Mr. Posteraro and his house, Mkwaa won the challenge by keeping him taped up to the gym wall for the longest period of time.

An additional 732 dollars was raised during the challenge.

Mrs. Trowbridge says the event was “an awesome show of spirit and support with the best teachers and student body going.”

Today, students in the grade 7 and 8 wing at St. Benedict planned for a tough conversation they might experience in the future.

The students completed response texts in the event that someone reaches out to them about their mental health to look for support.

The students also talked about taking negative and unwanted words out of their vocabulary when it comes to dealing with mental health.

Visit the website https://letstalk.bell.ca/en/ for more information such as videos and helpful tips

Need to talk to someone or know someone who needs to talk? Here is a good place to start: http://www.mentalhealthhelpline.ca/