School Notes

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Elementary Schools

Local community leaders and members of the Archdiocesan Department of Education came together at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new science lab at St. Patrick’s School in Bedford Nov. 14.

The lab, the result of two years of planning and fund-raising, is designed to meet the needs of the school’s science program, with the flexibility to accommodate laboratory courses in multiple disciplines for each grade level from prekindergarten through 8th grade. 

“The lab gives teachers the space needed to present lessons that lead students to engage in scientific reasoning while conducting experiments, recording data and analyzing results, and discussing their findings,” said Sharyn O’Leary, principal.

At the ceremony, science teacher Kristen Johannes led a class in a demonstration about the circulatory system, “The Study of Blood—It’s All in the Cells,” in which students performed simulated blood typing.

 

High Schools

Mount St. Michael Academy in the Bronx teamed up with the New York Blood Center to host a recent blood drive. The event successfully collected 65 units of blood from students, faculty and staff. The school’s Campus Ministry department sponsored the drive as a way to serve the community.

 

             The environmental club at St. Barnabas High School, the Bronx, teamed with The Friends of Van Cortland Park to help clean up a stretch of land near the corner of Kepler Avenue and Van Cortlandt Park East. Club members walked to the location after school and met with Carolyn Taylor, a representative of the park organization. The students received gardening gloves and went to work ridding the area of large branches, invasive plants and weeds.

The main goal was to make visible a stairway entrance to the park overgrown with shrubbery. For years local residents had created their own footpaths due to the hidden staircase, which damaged the park landscape. Another goal was to prepare that section of the park for bulb planting.

Liliana Garcia, vice president of the Environmental Club, said, “It took a lot of effort and teamwork to manage just a small portion of land, but we really saw the difference afterward and were excited to know that we had contributed to making the park more accessible.”

 

There was a lot of talk about Santa Claus at the Academy of Mount St. Ursula in the Bronx on Dec. 3 when alumna and author Sonia Leal, class of 1982, went to visit. Ms. Leal is the author of "How to Talk to Your Child About Santa Claus.” Her book serves as a guide on how to handle the Christmas conversation with young children and helps parents answer the age-old question of “Is there a Santa Claus?”  The book first began to take shape when Ms. Leal told her daughter about the history of St. Nicholas and how he became known as Santa Claus. Ms. Leal visited with English classes and spent time in the library sharing her memories of her time at the school and what led her to become an author. 

 

Send school-related news to Juliann DosSantos at jdossantos@cny.org.