November 23, 2014
Dear St. Raphael School Families and Parishioners,
We are in the middle of a cold snap as I write this letter, and I’m starting to understand how our daughter Grace feels at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin! In Grace’s words, “Mom, it’s so cold that it hurts to go outside. But the snow is really pretty!” Let’s hope that more normal November temperatures have returned by the time you are reading this letter!

A quick note about communicating with teachers at school – we are trying to use only our SRA email accounts for email communication with parents. There are a few times when using the Fast Direct message system makes more sense, but our primary communication tools are our school email and Flock Notes. SRA Teacher and Staff email addresses are all available in the Parent Student Handbook, and on the SRA School Website at straphaelarchangel.org. When you email a teacher with a question or concern, and you ask for a response, please allow one full SCHOOL DAY to receive a response back from the teacher. We know that your questions and concerns are important, but teaching jobs are unlike many professional positions. Teachers do not sit at a desk with their computers on for hours at a time. In most cases, teachers don’t have time to even open their emails until after school is dismissed. They spend all of their time at school with the students, which is exactly where they should be! If you have an emergency situation, please call the school office at 352-9474 and we will help handle the details. And this is a good time to ensure that we have all of your most current contact information. If you are unsure about that, please call the school office to verify our information. Thanks in advance for your cooperation on this matter.
To continue from last week, I’d like to briefly discuss another important step that we’ve taken with our new grading system this school year. We made the decision to completely separate academic achievement from behavior grades, and we did this for a number of reasons. Again, the grading system that we’ve all grown up with has lumped academics and behavior all together in one grade. For instance, students could get extra points in class for turning things in on time, for getting their parent’s signature on a graded test, for behaving well in class, and for putting their names on their papers. If you think about it, in a Math class, NONE of those things help to convey what students know about MATH. Yet those behavior grades could seriously inflate or deflate a student’s grade in Math. This combination of academic achievement and behaviors blurs the picture of what a student has learned or not learned. Teachers must have accurate learning data in order to know what to teach, and they weren’t able to get accurate data from those combination grades. We know that behavior is VERY important, so we are still taking data on behavior and assigning grades to behavior in every grade level. We’ve just separated the behavior data from the academic achievement data so that we have a clear picture of each student’s strengths and weaknesses. The last important step that we’ve taken with our new grading system is doing away with strict averages, and I will touch on that step in my letter next week.

We’ll take a week off from our featured teachers, and will pick up next week with Mrs. Laura Berns. In the meantime, stay warm and safe, and please continue to keep all of us at St. Raphael the Archangel School in your thoughts and prayers!
Peace and Blessings,
Kim Vangel
Principal