Aid & Prayers for Ukraine
Written by Taryn Dennis, Theology Teacher
During the past few days I have been in contact with Servidora sisters in western Ukraine, at whose orphanage I had the privilege to work a few years ago. They are currently doing their best to get orphans, mothers, and children out of the country, and to help the countless waves of people coming from the eastern part of the country. Two days ago they got 10 orphan girls and 2 sisters to Germany, and yesterday got 70 children and 30 mothers on buses to Spain.
If anyone feels called to donate to assist them, please email me (tdennis@jpiihs.com), and I can give you specific instructions on how to do so, as well as telling them about your donation, since it is very difficult for them to keep track at this time.
Regardless of whether God calls you to support them financially, please pray for them! All of the nuns and priests of their order will try to stay in the country as long as possible.
Student Athlete Achievement
Congratulations to Angela Friedman (10th grade) and her basketball team, Dayspring Christian Eagles, who won regionals and made it to the state championship! Their first game is today–GO EAGLES!!
Mark Your Calendar: May 7th
Outdoor Mass & Breakfast!
Saturday May 7th
Mass @9am
Famous Knight’s breakfast to follow!
Mark Your Calendar: September 17th
Reminder: New Emails!
Just a reminder to email our new school emails, ending in @jpiihs.com! The format is [first initial of first name][last name]@jpiihs.com
For example, if you are trying to reach Mrs. Emma Ward to donate a gift for our auction or to ask a question about our student application process, you would email eward@jpiihs.com.
Thank you!
Student Article
Thoughts on the Drama Club
Rose Threewitt, Junior
As the very first St. John Paul II High School Drama club production has come to a close, I can’t help but reflect on these last few months. I am so proud of my fellow drama club students: I have gotten to watch them learn and grow into very adept actors. Over the past few months, they have grown in dedication, perseverance, and discipline. In the end, their hard work, and a little help from some generous friends, led to the success of JPIIHS’s very first performance, Arsenic and Old Lace.
In the beginning the drama club didn’t have anything. We had no finances, resources, time, very little space, and we didn’t even have enough actors to put on a performance. But we worked with what we were given, and we pulled through. We started by having to put some plastic chairs together to have a makeshift set. We would practice for hours after school, putting in a lot of time and effort. In just five weeks, our little group, most of which had never performed before, produced a successful play with well-developed characters.
We reached out to very generous investors who were willing to let us use their resources in exchange for a portion of our ticket sales, namely Windsor Community Playhouse who granted us their space and the Costume Castle who provided our costumes. We were also blessed to have so many adults in the community come to our aid. Thanks to these individuals, we were able to have more rehearsals, to have a set, and were taught many valuable tips for acting—not to mention their involvement as characters in the production. Without these people, our performance would not have been possible, and we owe our success to them.
Another rewarding aspect of being a part of the first-ever school play was that it benefited our school. Since the drama club reached out to so many people and entities, we were able to make more connections and expand awareness of the school throughout the Windsor community. Additionally, we were able to set a precedent of how to start a club—to found something ourselves and have it become a school tradition and a part of our school culture.
Overall, our very first performance was a triumphant achievement not only for the drama club students, but for the school as a whole. We created our own little community, and we learned so much along the way. With a little help from some new friends, we created something out of nothing and for that we are proud. We hope to keep growing in order to do more in the future and build our club, so stay tuned. We appreciate all the support from the JPIIHS staff and families!
Teacher Article
Purpose of Art at JPIIHS
Elizabeth Yeh, Art Teacher
A couple weeks ago I was asked to write the purpose and philosophy of Art at JPIIHS. After almost two years of teaching and twenty years of practicing art myself, it was really what I have seen and done in the classroom and studio that inspired it more than any book or teaching model. Sitting down last Tuesday night with my favorite candle lit and a cup of tea, I wrote the following:
Art at JPIIHS is for no other purpose than to invite students to see Beauty and make beautiful things for Beauty’s sake. To flip a maxim by C.S. Lewis: Art, is unnecessary, like friendship. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that gives value to survival.
The goal of art class at JPIIHS will be to invite students to learn, and hopefully love, the value of art—specifically as the artist. Although they will naturally grow to appreciate others’ art by knowing the process of creating themselves, the purpose of the studio art courses is not primarily to learn about the art of others and to appreciate it, but to come to appreciate, and hopefully love, being a craftsman that takes the first and only Creator’s Creation and participates in His image and likeness by creating from this Creation, utilizing the elements of art and principles of design He Himself created at the inception of the world.
Artist: Averi, 10th Grade
Artist: Liam, 9th Grade
A unique aspect of art is that whether it is pursued or not, in most cases, depends entirely on if the individual enjoys it. Rarely does someone practice art for utilitarian purposes (if utility is defined as productivity rather than happiness). Those who continue their relationship with Art, outside the classroom or after high school, do so because they enjoy it and can continue pursuing it no matter what they do for work.
In effect, what we are teaching the students in Art studio is how to “work our leisure” (Josef Pieper)—in other words, how to fully engage and partake in leisure that takes the attention and skill of the partaker. We do this by 1) teaching them the skills to practice art, for it is hard for something to be leisure when it leads to frustration or confusion, and 2) by practicing art in a way that elevates the spirit and brings peace and calm to the mind.
Therefore, art necessarily needs to be done in a creative space. This requires time for the mind and body to engage in the project at hand, an environment that is set apart from the busyness that overtakes the rest of our life, and preferably a space filled with music—for our creative faculties overlap and music often sparks or assists in the artists’ creative process. Additionally, it is important that art is not stressful for students. This means specific planning for a limited amount of homework and a grading style that allows for (and even encourages) experimentation, trial and error, and effort over natural skill.
What we are essentially teaching the students is how to practice art and creativity amidst the stress and busyness of their daily lives, in a sustainable way that they can continue. This means using materials, when possible, that they could acquire on their own and use to draw on a bus, in their dorm, or outside on a bench. This also means showing how they can fit art in their schedules (e.g., 5 minutes of sketching every day). We are teaching them to be artists in the world, in their own lives, so that they might experience leisure through the creative process of their own art.
From the Headmaster’s Desk
Modernity and Catholic Responses
Blaise A. Hockel
Let me begin by admitting: I do not take in the news terribly much, and my wife is far more knowledgeable about the works of Billy Joel than I am. Nevertheless, I should like to make the claim: if one were to try and write a modernization “We Didn’t Start the Fire” about the last two years alone, it would doubtlessly be a full-length opera that would make even the longest Wagner seem tame. There are a few things, of course, that lead me to saying so, even during just the last four weeks—Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, the use of riot police on Canadian truckers, and the affirmative action case that is going to the Supreme Court against colleges (like Harvard) being a few particular examples.
Again, I say that I don’t take in the news terribly much (not for being unable to stomach it, but that I just have so many things to read that I often push the most recent affairs to the bottom of my pile). But what I did read this morning with the junior class was this little excerpt that goes:
And this in our days—in an age where philosophy has made so much progress, and a hundred academies are writing for the improvement of our morals! It would seem that fanaticism is angry at the success of reason and combats it more furiously.
Though the tone is familiar—we say such things ourselves today—I should like to point out that the author is Voltaire and that the year is 1763.
Let us take the sentiment of Voltaire and translate it to the modern era: it is a simple enough task if you take out ‘philosophy’ and insert ‘science’, if you take out ‘a hundred’ universities and substitute in ‘hundreds’. What, really, then is Voltaire saying? Well, our junior class thinks that Voltaire’s indignation sounds eerily similar to when we bellow out, “It’s 2022! How could that happen?!” as though that were some mark of human achievement such that a mere two-hundred and sixty years could shout down the immutability of the human condition.
The juniors gathered how Voltaire’s outrage at the death of John Calas in 1762 was not very different in process than the acquitting of of OJ Simpson in 1995, given how both cases were presided over by the court of public opinion. These sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds are sitting and recognizing the practical worth of reading Hobbes, Locke, and Rosseau because they see the ghosts of their philosophies still haunting not just the ethereal realm of the political landscape, but the dark wood of their own lives today.
Of course, we see the greatest humor all of this—a joke which the students will not learn until after they are off and gone to the next stages of their life. The great joke is that Voltaire thinks that the death of John Calas should have been prevented because there are more philosophers and more schools. Not so, not so! There are, in fact, two reasons why we can enjoy laughing to ourselves while Voltaire is bewildered at the simplest of realities.
Where Monsieur Voltaire is dreadfully misled is this: no number of universities can correct the course if they themselves are misled, and more specifically that no institution can supplant or uproot the human condition.
This is a commentary on quality versus quantity to be sure—better to have one institution seriously striving towards the Good, the Beautiful, and the True than hundreds of mediocre institutions teaching absurd parodies (making the Good appear grey, the Beautiful be beheld askance, the True turned truant). But moreover, to imagine that a university could stamp out humanity is precisely why Voltaire’s second statement highlights his misunderstanding so severely. He feels fanaticism fights against reason. I argue that fanaticism is fueled by false reason and cannot endure the well-ordered mind. That is, an institution which teaches a single line of ideology leads to fearfulness which stamps out its opposition, whereas an institution which recognizes the person as a person leads to a cultivation of conversation and a genuine pursuit of the good for all.