As the 2019-2020 School Year comes to a close, we take the time to reflect on the many accomplishments achieved by our staff and students. It was certainly a memorable school year as we continued to focus on our values of faith, respect, community, innovation and learning. Student voice continued to be a focus, as evidenced by our Student Senate which organized several events, including a coat drive and a fundraiser to support the Australian bushfire relief. In living out the value of innovation we saw our Grade 4 teachers and students participate in the CS First Coding Program by Google which provided tremendous learning opportunities and engagement for our students and staff.
During March, COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic which resulted in the closure of our schools. Our Board quickly responded by developing the Learn@Home program. Though not without its challenges, I am so proud of each and every staff member that was involved in deploying necessary technology to families, creating learning platforms and resources and continually finding ways to support our families and students during these difficult times. My gratitude also goes out to our Trustees, Senior Team, school administration and all of our staff and students for working together as we all navigated these challenging times. As I look back at all that was accomplished and at how quickly we were able to adapt we can all be very proud of our resilience, creativity and our openness to trying new things.
In preparing this blog, we asked our schools to share a highlight of this past year. Below is just a glimpse of the wonderful events and activities that took place at Sudbury Catholic Schools.
Highlights From Our Schools
St. Albert Learning Centre celebrated all of their students’ hard work and dedication during the Learn@Home program. Students were awarded gift certificates from Great Lakes Pizza. The school will have awarded 40 gift cards by the end of the school year – that’s 40 outstanding students doing their best during this difficult time.The entire St. Anne school community gathered at the Our Lady of Peace site of St. Kevin’s Church for their annual Advent mass with celebrant, Father Jackson and the OLP parishioners. The angelic voices of 375 children rose to the rafters and filled everyone with the Christmas Spirit!St. Benedict Staff delivered convocation care packages to Grade 12 graduates in order to celebrate this special moment. Each graduate received a souvenir package that included a personalized lawn sign and cap/gown as a keepsake. We are very proud of the Class of 2020 graduates! Congratulations! Bishop Alexander Carter had many fun times throughout the year including the Memorial Walk, Village families, many athletic successes like our City Championship in Basketball, PENDO and Christmas campaigns to help those in need, and the Sudbury 5 Basketball Game where the school raised $1025 for Easter Seals Sudbury. While their Cards Crush Cancer event was cut short, St. Charles College Cardinals came together in the Fall of 2019 to collect 71,000 cans for the Sudbury Food Bank along with a cheque for almost $12,000 to help those in need. The annual canned food drive could not be done without the collaborative support of feeder schools like Holy Trinity, St. John, St. Paul, Pius XII and St. David as well as the collaborative efforts of their student councils!
This year, when faced with challenges during distance learning, St. Charles staff and students stepped up! Teachers made home deliveries and personalized videos, while students and staff also participated in weekly video conferencing and learning sessions.A big congratulations goes out to Mrs. Toffoli and her grade 3/4 class at St. David School for being selected as an honourable mention and receiving a $1000 grant for the 2019-2020 OTIP (Ontario teachers Insurance Plan) Sponsorship of school projects and Initiatives. This money will now help support in extending their STEM and Coding Club materials at St. David. Check out their wonderful video submission HERE.St. Francis School has started a student led news team that produces a monthly news show that features all of the exciting events and programs happening at the school. The students are responsible for selecting the stories they want to cover, writing scripts, filming the news stories, filming the news desk, and editing the videos to publish their monthly news report. Great work! Once again, Holy Cross School served as a host school for a class of students from Hangzhou Green Town School, China. These students were paired up with host families within the school community, and participated in many school-based and community sponsored activities. Holy Trinity School was very proud to host the Hangzhou Changyang primary school from China in October. It was a wonderful cultural experience for both the students abroad as well as the school community.Every day at Immaculate Conception School, two different students take on the leadership role of helping us out with morning announcements. Pictured here are Carter and Nova, sharing the gift of their beautiful voices by leading everyone in prayer and the pledge of citizenship. Well done!St. James School students along with students from Pius XII School sang the National Anthem in Ojibwa at the Sudbury Wolves hockey game loud and proud!St. John School is very proud of Grade 2FI student Nicky Steinke, their very own superhero! Check out Nicky’s story of courage and survival featured in the June 2020 Superhero Calendar, a fund-raising benefit in support of Northern Ontario Families of Children with Cancer. View and order the calendar HERE.This year, St. Joseph students celebrated Family Literacy day with a Cozy theme. They wore PJs, read books, and made s’mores and snowmen with students and their families. What an awesome day to celebrate literacy!St. Mark School students worked together as a group to create different routes and challenges for their mini robots. They absolutely loved learning how to code by creating routes for their robots.Students at Marymount Academy braved the cold temperatures to participate in the Warm Hearts for Warm Soup initiative in December. The students and staff covered Elgin Street and formed a human chain to pass over 200 containers of soup to the Samaritan Centre to help feed those in need. View a video of their efforts HERE. On Thursday, November 28, 2019 St. Paul the Apostle school council hosted a Skip the Dishes night for families in our school. A beautiful pasta dinner was catered by the Colonial Inn and members of the Coniston CWL came to help the council serve the food. Great entertainment was provided by the Marymount Academy and St. Charles College bands. A great time was had by everyone who attended.Pius Penguins had a blast participating in their annual Winter Fun Day! They participated in a variety of games, interacted with many peers across all grades, and worked as a team to support each other. Way to go Penguins!
Highlights From the Board
Our Finance/Payroll team was the proud recipient of the Sparkrock Innovative award this year. This award goes to a client whose innovative use of technology has benefited the organization in many ways and has led them to become a technology leader in their sector. The Sudbury Catholic District School Board placed second in the 2020 Sustainable Schools report from the Climate Change Network. The report recognizes the most energy efficient school boards in Ontario. Our Facilities department endeavors to incorporate energy management in all decision making whether it be for maintenance, capital projects or operations.During the uncertainty of the global pandemic, two Learn @ Home websites were created and populated by the staff in our Learning Support Services (LSS) department. Everyone worked collaboratively to create a staff website where all educators would have access to on-demand resources for teaching and learning. The LSS team also created a parent/student website where our families could access resources and materials to support the learning at home!In order to facilitate the transition of staff and students to distance learning IT lead the deployment of over 950 devices (both iPads and laptops) to students, provided internet connectivity to 25 families that didn’t have adequate internet services at home, and ensured staff were provided with devices to be able to continue to do their work from home during the closure.
