"Autumn Leaves" by Sir John Everett Millais
Welcome back!
I hope that you return refreshed, renewed, rejuvenated, and refocused. We enter now into one of our longer stretches (six units) leading up to Thanksgiving in November.
There are a number of important notes for this week; read carefully!
NEW PDF UPLOAD INSTRUCTIONS: A number of teachers have reported that they have had trouble viewing student PDFs in the grading portal. Mrs. Rolling did some digging and we believe we discovered some new guidelines that will resolve the issues. We created a new "How To" document, titled How to Draft, Name, and Size PDFs. It has been added to the block of "Important Documents" found on the Dashboard.
NOTE: Everyone must review it and follow the guidance for all uploads beginning this week. Students, be sure to point it out to a parent.
NOTE: Everyone must review it and follow the guidance for all uploads beginning this week. Students, be sure to point it out to a parent.
MARCH FOR LIFE 2024: Students, parents, and faculty are invited to join in planning an Oxrose Meet Up at the National March for Life in Washington, DC in January of 2024. We last attended in 2022 and it was a fun, formative, and educational event. Please read this letter for information and signup for the mailing list to get the conversation started. Get signed up, even if you are merely interested. Join the March of the Oxrosians!
YEARBOOK COMMITTEE SIGNUP: If you are interested in taking photos, writing articles, doing design and layout, or contributing in any way to the 2023-2024 yearbook, please send a note of interest via messaging to Mrs. Mary Walker. Your name will be added to the group messaging for the yearbook and work will commence in the coming weeks. Send a note of interest, even if you were on the committee last year.
TIP of the MORNING: "When you start a new chapter [of a book], go on a 'picture walk' through it. Scan it. Look briefly at all the pictures, captions, and diagrams, but also at the section headings, bold words, and summary, and even questions at the end of the chapter.... It's a little like . . . checking a map before you set off on a journey. You'll be surprised at how spending a minute or two glancing ahead before you read in depth will allow you to organize your thoughts."
Source: Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School without Spending All Your Time Studying by Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski
Source: Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School without Spending All Your Time Studying by Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski
POEM of the WEEK: "A Child's Wish" by Abram J. Ryan. Recited by Mary Wagner.
Student and instructor contributions for "Poem of the Week" are welcome. Send a message to Mr. Rolling with "Poem of the Week," and the title and author of the poem you would like to recite.
WISDOM of the SAINTS: "A University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any society, he has common ground with every class; he knows when to speak and when to be silent; he is able to converse, he is able to listen; he can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when he has nothing to impart himself; he is ever ready, yet never in the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a comrade you can depend upon; he knows when to be serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves him in public, and supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment have a charm."
Saint John Newman, The Idea of a University, Discourse 7 ~ Feast Day October 9th.
Saint John Newman, The Idea of a University, Discourse 7 ~ Feast Day October 9th.