Welcome to the 2023/2024 school year! Summer months bless us with plenty of sunshine, warm temperatures, and opportunities to rest and relax. It’s also easy to embrace crisp fall days, colourful autumn views, and the familiar routines of going to school each day. It’s always fun to reconnect with friends, young and old.
This year's school year theme, described in more detail
here, speaks of grace, mercy and peace. As we explore this theme over the year, we will learn how important each of these virtues is.
Today, we can’t get enough grace, mercy, and peace. Our students need it, our support staff need it, our educators need it, and certainly our communities need it. Let’s make this the year that we speak and act with grace, mercy, and peace in an effort to spread love and kindess. I’m sure we can think of ways to be kinder at school, in classrooms and playgrounds. There are also many ways to be kinder to our loved ones. It is equally important to be kind to strangers too - people who might be struggling in ways that we can only imagine.
Kindness is contagious. One kind gesture rooted in grace, mercy and peace motivates others to do the same. Speak gently, even when frustrated. Be respectful, even when challenged. Be calm, especially when others cannot. Avoid judgment, criticize less, and appreciate more.
Extend your kindness to the environment too. Litter less, and lead by example so that others will do the same. Be kind to Mother Earth - recycle more, use less plastic, turn off lights not required, nurture gardens for bumblebees - the list is endless.
My prayer for the staff and students of the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board community is that we have a productive, healthy, and fun year of learning, punctuated by grace, mercy, and peace for ourselves and others. September sees us begin our school year with renewed energy and hope. Let’s work our way towards June, and be able to look back at our school year with pride and happiness, knowing that we all did our very best.
Blessings for a wonderful year!
Frances Bagley
Director of Education