Alliance of Mission District Catholic Schools

The (U.S.) Bishops recognize that our young people are the Church and civic leaders of tomorrow. Therefore, it is essential that Catholic schools should remain available and accessible in all areas of a diocese for children who are from poor and middle class families who face major economic challenges… providing immigrants and newcomers with a sense of welcome…
~Conference of Catholic Bishops, Renewing OUR commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millenium

::\Archived News Documents/::

Poem for May

Under the sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly,
    sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging,
    after the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth,
    the harvest comes.

~"The seven of pentacles" by Marge Piercy

From the Executive Director

A Reflection on the AMDCS Ministry

May 2008

On May 6, 2008, the eight AMDCS principals gathered for a morning of prayer and an afternoon of curriculum planning. For the morning prayer and reflection we read and shared thoughts on Marge Piercy's poem (cited on this page). It was surprising to find how many of us are gardeners, literally, and how each of us could identify with many of the images in the poem metaphorically and related to our educational leadership. From my vantage point as the AMDCS Executive Director, I was caught up with the metaphorical images which describe how growth happens and my own application of them to the work of the AMDCS: "At [its] own internal clock", "slowly", "sometimes...underground", and, "you cannot tell always by looking what is happening." Certainly in the last three years of growing the AMDCS from infancy, I have had to let go of my own desire to push the AMDCS and allow its growth with a life of its own. I have not always been able to see the growth happening, yet looking back on just a few years, I can now see that much of the work was "spread out in the soil under [my] feet" and that the "long season of tending and growth" has happened and most likely, will be a season that persists for a long, long time before all the harvest we desire truly is reaped.

But I am sure that we are, as Marge Piercy says, weaving real connections. So many collaborative efforts are underway. Our significant goal of "curriculum enhancement" will continue to be woven out of continuing our professional development program next year focusing on new and effective instructional methodologies for math. The Consultative Board is weaving together the Strategic Plan for the AMDCS through courageous and challenging conversations. Fundraising staff and volunteers dedicated time to weave the interconnectedness for AMDCS and local school fund raising efforts. We are in the long season of tending and growth — for the seeds have been planted.

I pray with the AMDCS principal who said in our reflection time on May 6 that she hopes we always "Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in" — that our collaborative efforts are about the interconnections that allow us to continually receive and give — together — for our children, for all those "generations to come."

AMDCS News Updates

May 2008

In late April Julie Clemens (AMDCS Advancement Director), and Sr. Maureen Hilliard together with the Marketing Committee of the AMDCS Consultative Board convened the pastors, volunteer and staff development workers for the AMDCS members schools, and principals, for an evening of "Open Discussion" regarding fundraising efforts to be shared by the AMDCS and the local school sites. Julie and Sr. Maureen shared updates on AMDCS activities and successes and participants engaged in discussion of future plans and raised questions for mutual consideration.
Facility Guide Questions Combined (doc)

AMDCS: A Unique Collaborative Partnership (4/23/08) is available for viewing. Please click here to view the presentation.

The eight AMDCS members have chosen two new Math textbook series for fall 2008-09, Houghton Mifflin K-5 and Prentice Hall 6-7-8. The funding has been secured for the books through grants from the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

On May 6 the AMDCS principals met for a day of reflection and planning at the Dominican Sisters' ocean side house in Moss Beach. The morning was spent in prayerful conversation among the principals. In the late morning to afternoon the principals planned for the professional learning community process to commence using the new math textbooks in the fall 2008.

The Congregational Ministry Fund of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur have granted $8,000 to the AMDCS for Differentiated Instruction teacher training materials.

The University of San Francisco has granted $15,000 to the AMDCS for teacher professional development at conferences throughout the United States.

::\Archived News Documents/::

Poem for May

From the Executive Director

A Reflection on the AMDCS Ministry

May 2008

AMDCS News Updates

May 2008

One Peter Yorke Way • San Francisco, CA 94109 • (415) 614-5546