Christian Brothers High School • Enter to Learn, Leave to Serve
A MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL
An invitation to relationships, transformation, and to seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary!
Dear Parents, The 2014-15 academic year at Christian Brothers High School is off to a splendid start! We are delighted to share another year of excellence in teaching and learning, partnering together with you in providing a human and Christian education for your children. This year brings many new and exciting innovations to our rigorous college preparatory curriculum. I have mentioned before the importance of RIGOR, RELEVANCE, and RELATIONSHIPS. We continue to focus on these themes and we pride ourselves on being the place to be for rigor (students graduate collegeready); relevance (students learn 21st century skills that prepare them for careers not even invented yet); but most especially relationships. Our Founder, St. John Baptist De La Salle, shared with teachers that “To touch the hearts of your students is the greatest miracle you can perform.” We are committed to touching the hearts of the students entrusted to our care – your children. Along with these three R’s, we are focusing as a community this year on three T’s: TRADITION, TRANSITION, and TRANSFORMATION. This theme is illustrated as an image of a tree that shows how we can build on our Lasallian tradition and CB’s legacy as we transition to new ways of being that result in transformation. You may have noticed the national Lasallian logo added to our signatures in emails and in other places. It reads:“Transforming Lives since 1680.” That’s true and we can say of CB, transforming lives in Sacramento since 1876!
SEPTEMBER 2014 FALL SEMESTER Christian Brothers High School Monthly Newsletter
www.cbhs-sacramento.org
Writer Ann Voskamp tells this story: “Marjorie Knight told me when I was nine. She turned to me while we were hulling a heap of strawberries over her sink, and her white hair caught all this afternoon light and her gravelly voice rolled over those words like smoothened stones: ‘Running hard after an extraordinary life turns out to be chasing a lie. The realest extraordinary is always found in the ordinary. The extra everyone’s looking for —- it’s found in ordinary.’ She didn’t say much after that, but I tasted her words in the strawberries, in the swallowing down of the rubies, the juice of them running out the side of the mouth. . . Everyone gets to accept the invite to extraordinary or not . . . the ordinary is the everyday container that holds the realest extraordinary. That every single one of us gets eyes to look into, to smile into, to witness glimmers of souls right here. The ordinary becomes the extraordinary when the eyes see the extra glory here. That’s a life equation, take it or leave it. There’s nothing in this world that’s normal — there’s only growing blind to the glory.” As we here at school cultivate relationships that support and affirm your precious children, we ask that you join us in trading out those worn out phrases: “I’m stressed” - for “I’m grateful…” and “I’m overwhelmed” - for “I’m wowed.” And that together we notice the extraordinary in our youngsters. The day-to-day rhythm of school and family - the ordinary - becomes extraordinary when we mindfully say the words out loud - “Yes, I’m wowed… Yes, I’m grateful” - so that the eyes see what is right in front of us. The transformation everyone’s looking for - it’s found in the ordinary. More ordinary awakenings to the common extraordinary, to the God-glory hidden in plain sight. As we pursue strong relationships and extraordinary transformation with our children, let’s join in reminding each other that CB is the place to be because Grace is here. The Extraordinary is here. God. is. here. And we can see Him in our students! Live Jesus in our hearts,
Mary Hesser Principal Domine Opus Tuum
INSIDE
As we consider these two unified themes of the three R’s and three T’s, it is clear that once again relationships are the foundation and underpinning of where transformation happens. And that begins with
recognizing that each of has a choice: to live with gratitude and see each other and all of life as extraordinary – or not.
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