latest

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

         The pressure was on, especially for the high schoolers, during their end of semester exam week. The two to three hours exams in each subject continued non-stop morning and afternoon, from January 23 until January 27, the last day of the second quarter. Then the teachers were left with a pile of papers to grade, whilst the students were able to celebrate the end of the second quarter by ice skating at Wilmot Recreation Centre on Friday January 27 in the afternoon. It then took a couple of weeks for the teachers to finalize all their grades and to complete the report cards, so that the Principal could hand them out to the children. If in some subjects the performance was less than desired, nevertheless across the board the results were quite satisfactory.

          Our school bus, the golden chariot, received much use this month. On Saturday January 28, the bus took all the boarders to go hiking in the snow and ice at Wildwood Conservation area, nearly getting stuck in the snow itself. Another weekend they went ice-skating on the lake and cross-country skiing. The donation of several pairs of cross-country skis made this possible. Another Sunday they took a trip to Waterloo, where they were able to go skating on a public outdoor rink, and on yet another Sunday they went skating in New Hamburg. This mobility has been great for morale. On February 6, Father May and Mr. De Vriendt took the high schoolers on the bus on a field trip to St. Catharines to inspect a factory that fabricates robots to be used on car assembly lines. Then again, on Saturday February 25, Father Scott and the boarders headed out to visit a local organic dairy farm, an organic pig farm, and a seed mill. Several other field trips are being planned for the weeks to come.

          The chocolate fundraiser finally came to its end on Shrove Tuesday, February 21, with all but the last twenty chocolate bars being sold. A small band of enthusiastic boys managed to sell most of the more than 6,000 chocolate bars, making a profit of around $9,000 for the support of the school. The well merited cash prizes for first, second and third places for those who sold the most chocolates were immediately obvious to the students, who had been following the chart on the notice board from week to week, and sometimes even day to day. As their reward the boys were able to finish off the remaining chocolate before the beginning of Lent.

previous news