Priest Appreciation Day Wrap-Up

Thank you to all parents who participated in the Priest Appreciation Day! To all the parents who donated food and supplies, coordinated the hot lunch, and helped set-up, serve, and clean-up the hot lunch: you came together to host a supremely well-run and delicious meal! Breaking bread together in community is a time-honored gift so thank you for making this possible for all the students, faculty, and our priest guests.

And thank you to the following priests and to Bishop Hying for joining us, spending time with the students at lunch and during some very fun classroom visits! We welcomed Bishop Hying, our beloved shepherd, as well as Msgr. Larry Bakke, Fr. Steve Petrica, Fr. Rick Heilman, Fr. Tait Schroeder, Fr. Gabi Lopez-Betanzos, Fr. Kumud Nayak, Fr. Bill Van Wagner, Fr. Michael Wanta (SAA ’13), Fr. Simon Tipps, and Fr. Mark Foley.

Enjoy this recap of the day, which will also be shared throughout this week as individual posts with photos on our social media!

Spirits were high as the priests arrived, greeted first by members of the staff. Ms. Averill gave each priest an envelope with a handwritten note and a couple of small gifts to help them enjoy the St. Ambrose community beyond Priest Appreciation Day, including a pass for entry and complimentary popcorn to enjoy our boys basketball game experience, plus a complimentary ticket to our production of Anastasia. So if you see any of our priests around, make sure to say hello and spend some time getting to know these fantastic men! We are so grateful for their support of our school and of our families through their parishes.

Student ambassadors then arrived and also helped make a hospitable connection, acting as a host and table leader for each of our visiting priests and Bishop Hying, to facilitate a more personal experience.

All St. Ambrose students were invited to sign up to sit at a table with one of our guests to get to know them better or to visit with a priest they already knew! Several priests and Bishop Hying made specific comments about how fun and lively the students were and how enjoyable the conversation was.

After lunch, priests were given the option to stay for a visit to several classrooms if their schedules allowed. And they were in for a treat! Block 4 classes that day offered a ton of variety and we asked priests for their preferences about which classrooms they wanted to visit to give them a more personalized experience.

Enjoy some photos below and a recap of the amazing things students were learning and doing on this average February day as a glimpse into a day in the life of a St. Ambrose Guardian!

6th Grade Religion with Mr. Roser

On this day, the students were discussing chastity as a response to the 6th and 9th commandments, specifically how the integration of our mind and body make us happier and holier. The priests found it hard to leave this one – they could have enjoyed hearing the 6th graders discussing for much longer and would have been glad to stay for the whole class! Our guests enjoyed the liveliness of the students and the way they interacted with one another and their teacher. We may be biased, but we think our 6th grade and Mr. Roser are top notch!

7th Grade Religion with Ms. Melk

Lately, the students have been discussing the priesthood of Jesus, as part of a larger discussion on Jesus as ‘Priest, Prophet, and King’. What a perfect topic for visiting priests! Ms. Melk invited the priests to partake in a Q&A with the students, allowing them to share personal insights and experiences of their priesthood. She said that they are filled with questions and while she can answer many, there are still questions that truly only a priest could answer about his own unique experience. Again, we could have filled up an entire class (and then some) with our guests, but students were able to ask questions such as priests’ favorite Scripture passages, favorite church, and their vocational discernment stories.

History II with Dr. G. Ludvik

On this day, priests were in for a treat, as Dr. Ludvik’s History II students engaged in a Socratic discussion of Scholastic Metaphysics and Theology using the Pange Lingua and the Summa as their focal points. Students read through stanzas of the Pange Lingua and dove into the meaning behind them and our understanding of the Eucharist. The priests also participated well – if we gave them a grade, they would definitely get an A!

The beautiful integration of faith and academics means that topics like this are able to give students training in reading comprehension, text analysis, and engaging in good Socratic dialogue about a topic. In addition, students become more familiar with beautiful texts of our faith which they encounter in the real world in Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, and personal prayer. This type of learning in History class impacts their intellectual formation as well as their spiritual and personal formation in a beautiful, harmonious way through our intentional classical curriculum and our lived Catholic faith.

English II with Dr. Skemp

This class was a bit different than usual, due to some prep for an exam on Dante’s Inferno, which the class recently finished reading. This text, familiar to the priests who visited, was a wonderful display of classical education: students engaging in conversation about one of the great masterpieces of human history, discussing its allegorical nature and the symbolism of the characters and descriptions Dante used in his work. It was clear that the students knew the material! They were also asking intelligent questions that became a good source of conversation amongst themselves, as Dr. Skemp asked students what they thought of questions posed by their peers. Upon leaving the classroom, one priest immediately asked “so, how can I sign up to be a St. Ambrose student!?”

We couldn’t ask for better feedback than that! The subject material, the excellent faculty, and the engaged student body make for winning combination here at St. Ambrose Academy and we were honored to have been able to share that with these priests in a small way!

Biology II with Ms. Myers

Lastly, our priest visitors were able to enjoy our new science lab with Ms. Myers and the Biology II students! The day’s class began with a short presentation and discussion on the different stages of mitosis. Priest arrived just in time for the hands-on portion of the class – using microscopes to look at onion root cells! Does anyone remember doing this in their high school biology class? Priests were able to take a turn to glimpse the slides and identify which mitosis stage the cells were in, assisted by their very capable student lab partners!