December 14, 2014
Dear St. Raphael School Families and Parishioners,

We are celebrating the beautiful season of Advent at school in a number of ways. After our daily praying of the Angelus at midday, our 4 ^th Graders lead us in a short reflection and prayer about the Jesse Tree. Then they place ornaments from the reflection on the Christmas tree in our school lobby. Students are reminded every day of this Advent tradition. We have Advent wreaths and candles, we are learning about Advent in our Religion classes, and our 4 ^th-8 ^th Graders are preparing our Advent Prayer Service. Our hearts will be ready for Jesus this Christmas!

I’d like to thank everyone who responded to the Parent Survey earlier this Fall. The responses and information from this survey will be very helpful as we move forward in our School Improvement Process. You will be hearing more about this process after the first of the year, when we begin asking for more input and help in strategic planning for our school. If you are interested in helping with this process, please let me know and we can put you to work!

Our 8 ^th Graders will be working on a service project next week called Motion for Kids. It’s a joint effort between the St. Louis Bar Association, the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, and the St. Louis Rams. These organizations collect Christmas toys and gifts for children whose parents are incarcerated. Our students will be helping to receive, sort, and prepare the gifts for the kids at the Edward Jones Dome on Friday, December 19 ^th. The next day, these groups host a big Christmas party for the children at the Dome, where they all receive toys and gifts. What a wonderful way to give back to our St. Louis community!

Our featured teacher this week is Miss Erin O’Driscoll. Miss O’Driscoll holds a Bachelors Degree in Education and Spanish from Harris Stowe University, and a Masters in Secondary Education from UMSL. She is certified in English. Miss O’Driscoll is one of those teachers whom I can ask to do almost anything, and she can pull it off! She is a fantastic English teacher, and currently teaches Challenge English to 6 ^th, 7 ^th & 8 ^th Graders. She also speaks Spanish, and she has single-handedly created, taught, and tweaked our Spanish program for K-8. Then I asked her to teach computer to our younger students, K-5, and she does that too! Miss O’Driscoll is also a talented singer and actress, and since she took over the Bellarmine Speech Team at SRA, it has blossomed into a very successful and popular program with our older students. She is extremely organized and manages to stay on top of all of those students, classes, and details.

Miss O’Driscoll is a leader in our school for understanding and implementing standards-based grading, having written curriculum and taught the past two summers in a special Archdiocesan summer program, using this format. She has been a great resource to our faculty this year, and she is a much valued member of our school staff!

Please continue to keep our students and teachers in your prayers, especially our 6 ^th, 7 ^th & 8 ^th Graders as they prepare for their mid-year exams. We hope to see many of you at our Advent Prayer Service on Wednesday, December 17 ^th in church at 6pm!
Peace and Blessings,
Kim Vangel
Principal