Friday Forget-Me-Nots September 3, 2010
Dear Parents/Guardians & Friends:
Our major fund raiser for all athletic teams as well as the band, the choral music program and the drama department is underway. All students who are participating in any of these activities or are planning to participate at any time this year, are required to see a minimum of $200 of raffle tickets by September 14. Students with more than one student in school are only asked to sell $200 per family. The tickets are $5 or 5 tickets for $20. The grand prize drawing is Five Thousand Dollars to be drawn at the Homecoming football game on Saturday, September 25. Remember that if the holder of the winning ticket is present at the game at the time of the drawing the prize is increased to Six Thousand dollars.
Students are encouraged to sell more than the minimum and all students, whether or not they are participating in a sport or activity are asked to sell raffle tickets.
Students selling $300 in raffle tickets or more (or $100 for those not participating in a sport or activity) will be allowed in casual dress from the day after they turn their money in through September 24. Students selling $360 in raffle tickets or more (or $160 for those not participating in a sport of activity) will receive relaxed shoe policy for the school year. These prizes are also per family with no added amount needed.
Extra tickets are available at the school office or in Miss Henry’s room.
It is hoped that everyone will get behind this raffle drive so that we can continue to eliminate the multitude of small fund raisers that are usually needed to run our athletic and extracurricular programs, none of which are funded by tuition dollars.
In Family meetings on Monday the following students were elected by their peers to represent them in Student Council this year:
House of Tipperary: Isaac Shaw, Jackson Chory, Elizabeth Hartman, Rachna Rangwani
House of Donegal: Abraham Moses, Alix Fields, Kyle Mooney, Alison Mooney
House of Cork: Austin Reid, Catherine Brown, Anna Carr, Morgan Swinehart
House of Limerick: Nicholas Crate, Kristi Mitchell, Iris Miller, Emily Shumaker
House of Clare: Mickaela Brady, Leah Boyden, Justin Maskulinski, Dominic Competti
House of Kildare: Eric Gundelfinger, Abbie Albert, Tessa Carpenter
These reps. join Governors Josh Jones, Joe Szablewski, Caitlin Albert, Liz Siemer, Olivia Reade and Patrick Walsh on The 10-11 Student Council. It is important to note that as Student Council committees form that the work of Student Council is open to all students!
Although the magazine drive is not taking place this year, families who wish to renew magazines bought through the magazine drive will still have an opportunity to renew through Fisher Catholic and we will continue to benefit with a profit. Students will be given postcards to take home for any renewals and/or new subscriptions in mid-September. This program is completely voluntary but if you wish to keep receiving your magazines please renew through us!!
ConnectEDU, our guidance program for college planning, is currently being re-done and students may not be able to access it right now. Mrs. Kirby will post another note when it is back up and running.
The Peer Advocates Club along with Student Council is planning on holding tailgating for students during a variety of fall sporting events. The calendar of events is as follows:
Sept.4th-5pm (Football & Band)
Sept. 11th-5pm ( Boys Soccer & Golf)
Sept. 16th-5pm (Girls Soccer & Cross Country)
Sept. 21st-3:30 @ Rising Park (Girls Tennis and Cheerleaders)
Sept. 30th- 5pm (Volleyball)
Oct. 16th-5pm (Football & Band)
All tailgates are in the parking lot of Fisher except for Tennis. I would like all of the teams to support one another. Students are to bring a desert and donate a twelve pack of pop. Parents welcomed.
A reminder that you can purchase an athletic pass that will allow you entrance into all home athletic events for the entire year by paying one time. Prices are:
Couple’s Pass: $125
Single Adult Pass: $75
Junior Irish Pass: $25
College/Under 21: $25
It should be noted that senior citizens 65 and over are always free for home events!
Fisher Catholic High School is looking for volunteers to take tickets at the Fair. The dates are October 11 – 16. Three shifts per day, 6:45-11:45, 11:30-4:30, and 4:15 – 9:00. We need 12 workers for every shift, a total of 216 people. Volunteers receive free fair admission on the day they work. We do not handle any money, only tickets and passes. Fisher Catholic High School receives $6500.00 for this fundraiser. Please share this information with grandparents, friends, family or any FC supporter. To volunteer, contact Cathy Barrows at 653-1886 or cbarrows@columbus.rr.com or Elaine Householder at 687-4626 or ehouseholder@columbus.rr.com.
Our condolences and prayers go out to Daniel and Maggie DeGenova and their family on the recent passing of their Grandfather.
Please keep Allie & Meghan Snoke’s Grandfather in your prayers as he undergoes heart surgery today.
As someone who has worked with young people all of my adult life it is almost inconceivable to see the freshmen here this year and realize that my own first week of high school was 40 years ago. A time span of 40 years is a measure known only in history books and yet here I am with almost half a century between our present freshmen class and my own first days of high school. And yet, my memories of those first days in 1970 seem but a moment ago!
As some of you may know, I went to St. Charles Preparatory. At the time, only two years removed from its short-lived experiment as a seminary high school my class was only the second in its renewed life as a regular high school. St. Charles back then, in terms of numbers was more like Fisher Catholic. There were 72 freshmen in the fall of 1970. I didn’t know a single one on my first day having been the only boy to come to East Broad Street from Our Lady of Victory Elementary School in Marble Cliff.
The first two boys I met on the very first day were Charlie and Adrian, two African-American students, one from the east side and one from the south side, neither of whom were part of the 48 with whom I ended up graduating. All of my teachers that year were male, and more than half were Diocesan priests. My religion teacher (we didn’t call it theology class back then) was the Principal of the school, Fr. Ralph Huntzinger. My Latin teacher, in fact my Latin teacher for all four years was Fr. Bill Dunn, now known of course as Msgr. Dunn, former Pastor at St. Mary, now Pastor at St. John’s in Logan. Fr. Emmert taught me English, and Fr. Bennett world history. Msgr. Gallen had the misfortune of having me for both algebra and glee club. Mr. Henne, a first year teacher and new head baseball coach was both my health and physical education teacher. Although I grew to like Coach Henne over the years and I take into account that it was 1970 and times were different, he embarrassed me greatly on my first day of high school in health class when he asked me, in front of the whole class, why I wasn’t out for football, questioning my masculinity with a crude term that would get a teacher fired today. Back then it was part of being in an all boy’s school along with mandatory showers after gym class, senior hazing including a school fundraiser where freshmen were sold to seniors as “slaves” for a day, and boxing matches at lunch time. Oh what a different time we live in now!
I recall that I could go to daily mass instead of study hall. The incentive was that the mass attendees got to go to lunch before the study hall students. Everyone ate lunch together. The faculty had a head table with white tablecloths and was served by a group of German sisters who did not teach at the school but were housekeepers for the priests who all had small apartments within the school (the nuns had their own self-contained convent there as well).
Of course there were no computers or even calculators in classrooms back then. Film strip projectors were high tech. Rooms were not air conditioned. The World Series was still played during the day. That year the Baltimore Orioles beat the Cincinnati Reds in five games and students still cared about major league baseball as kind teachers would sometimes allow a radio to be played in class during the game. As a native of Baltimore only a few years removed from living there, I was a big O’s fan and didn’t make many friends with my gloating over Brooks Robinson’s magnificent series.
Like all things old the common wisdom is that the education I received, especially in an august institution such as St. Charles, was better than the education that our students receive today. I don’t know. I am sure that I read more than students read today, but I didn’t have the internet. I was a better than average student so I was able to keep up with most subjects (except algebra where I was a colossal failure) but I doubt that students with different learning styles (remember when students were simply called hyper?) had their needs met nearly as well. Teachers could hit a student back then and no one said a word. Tuition was cheaper, a lot cheaper, but so was a gallon of gas, and a house cost what a car costs now.
Like our students today, we were in a war back then. The main difference is that the soldiers fighting in Vietnam were drafted. When I was a freshmen the killings at Kent State had just happened and the country was extremely divided. Woodstock, the first moon landing, the assassination of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King were still recent memories. There were three television stations, and if any of them were in color I didn’t get to see them. Hair on boys was long, even at St. Charles, and bell bottoms were cool. I could go on and on.
What hasn’t changed between our present freshmen class in 2010 and the freshman that I was in 1970 is that I felt so old going to high school and yet felt so young compared to those lofty seniors. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life but knew, thanks to wonderfully supportive parents and teachers, that every Latin sentence I parsed, every math problem I solved, every history fact I memorized would somehow shape and determine my future. I learned my subjects and I learned how to get along with people and I learned what I was good at and what I wasn’t good at and I made friends with whom I remain close 40 years later. I had very good days and I had absolutely, horrible, terrible days and both contributed to my education equally.
I hope that our freshmen wandering the halls of Fisher, still getting lost in our little building, will look back on their time here in 40 years with the same sense of wonder and awe that I do. And I hope that they take their experiences, both good and bad, and learn from them. And remember, ninth graders, your freshmen year, your time in high school, indeed even 40 years, goes by in a blink!
Jim Silcott
| Date | Event | |
| Monday | Sept. 6 | Labor Day- No School |
| Tuesday | Sept. 7 | Regular Schedule |
| Wednesday | Sept. 8 | Regular Schedule |
| Thursday | Sept. 9 | Odd Period Day |
| Friday | Sept. 10 | Even Period Day |
| Monday | Sept. 13 | Schedule 3- Monday Matters Assembly Xavier Visits |
| Tuesday | Sept. 14 | Regular Schedule St. Mary and Mt. St. Joseph Colleges visit Student Council Meeting- Period 2 Fire Drill |
| Wednesday | Sept. 15 | Regular Schedule Community Cares Day for Juniors and Seniors |
| Thursday | Sept. 16 | Odd Period Day |
| Friday | Sept. 17 | Even Period Day Walsh U. Visits Interims Coming Home Today |
| Monday | Sept. 20 | Homecoming Week Schedule 4- Monday Matters Assembly & Houses Meet U. Cincy Visits |
| Tuesday | Sept. 21 | Regular Schedule |
| Wednesday | Sept. 22 | Regular Schedule Kent Stat & Otterbein visit |
| Thursday | Sept. 23 | Regular Schedule House of Cork Mass and Pizza Lunch OSU Visits |
| Friday | Sept. 24 | Schedule 6- Pep Rally 2:15pm |
| Saturday | Sept. 25 | Homecoming Game One For All Raffle Draw |
| Sunday | Sept. 26 | Homecoming Dance in Alumni Hall 8-11pm |
| Monday | Sept. 27 | No School- Diocesan In-Service |
| Tuesday | Sept. 28 | Regular Schedule Akron and Cleveland State visit |
| Wednesday | Sept. 29 | Schedule 6- 2:15 Dismissal Faculty meeting 2:20-3:20pm |
| Thursday | Sept. 30 | Odd Period Day Capital U. visits |
| Friday | Oct. 1 | Even Period Day |