When our youngest turned five in January 2012, we knew Kindergarten was just around the corner! We honestly never gave a second thought about enrolling her at St Patrick’s Elementary School. As a Catholic school, we knew that developing her faith would be the focus of her years spent here. St Patrick’s has excellent teaching and support staff led by faith-filled inspirational administration where our children have blossomed into responsible young stewards of their faith. Our daughters have made wonderful friendships with their peers as they move through early to older childhood. Challenges inside and out of class are met with open reception to help the students resolve differences. We love that our children have had wonderful opportunities to participate in field trips, sports, music, art, drama, RC Challenge, Spelling bees, Math contests as well as Reading Link challenges.
We could not imagine any other learning environment for our children. We know that their Catholic faith which is nurtured here at St Patrick’s will be their foundation as they navigate through life’s many challenges.
Jaskiewicz family
Over the past 8 years we have been an engaging part of the Saint Patrick School and Parish. Our family has been attending CISVA schools (Catholic Independent Schools of Vancouver Archdiocese) ever since 1998, with the attendance of our first child. My husband and I grew up in the communist system where religious education wasn’t offered at schools. So when we arrived in Canada we were thrilled that it was offered here. We decided to put our children through this system without any hesitation. Our older children attended Saint Michaels and Queen of All Saints elementary schools, as well as Archbishop Carney Regional Secondary. Once our younger daughters were old enough, they began attending classes at Saint Patrick. Two of them graduated from St.Patricks last year while our youngest daughter will be graduating this year.
Saint Patrick’s School and Parish has been a tremendous gift . As a family we are able to feel welcome and find everything we could ever hope to look for. Our daughters flourish under the outstanding care of the teachers and the many extracurricular activities that the school offers. Three of our daughters participated in Choir programs and music performances, which they loved. They also participated in Roman Catholic Challenge, the basketball team, as well as the track and field team. When they entered the school as 5 years old’s, they were very well taken care of by their elder Grade 7 classmates and when it was their turn in Grade 7 to take responsibility for the new kindergarteners they did it with so much joy and gratitude. Thus bringing everything full circle. They even had the chance of organizing a book club which was a beautiful and fruitful experience.
We are very pleased with the attentiveness of the teachers. The parent-teacher meetings held regularly, kept us up to date with what’s happening with our daughters and provided us a chance to ask questions. My daughters’ teachers every year were wonderful and always willing to help and were very responsive to communication with emails and anything my daughters needed. We all developed special relationships during our time at Saint Pats. The principal, office staff, teachers and teacher’s aids are always available to speak with, even outside the school hours. We met beautiful families and our children found their best friends. Moreover there is an abundance of fundraising activities for parents, which helped build strong relationships with the other families; our personal favourite one being the Trivia Night.
Lastly, but certainly not the least is the emphasis on faith. A deep commitment to nurturing the students in the catholic faith and a catholic lifestyle is very vibrant in Saint Pats. The school offers school mass, confessions, monthly prayers, and retreats. Teachers truly care about each student’s soul and prepare them for their sacraments. Our children are involved in various charities in the municipality and are strongly connected to the parish events. In the summer time they took part in Vacation Bible Summer Camps both as participants and as leaders.
As you read our testimony you can now know why we chose Saint Pats. It is like a second home for our daughters and I hope it will be for you .
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the whole staff for providing this faith-filled environment that we did not think was possible to achieve in today’s world. One can read the news and get saddened easily about our culture and our future but this little school shines bright in the dark. My daughters get to be children as they form an appetite for the true, good and the beautiful.
An absolutely huge blessing!
Sorry for the lengthy letter but this is our last year at school so we thought we would like to say what we truly think and feel about the school.
With love the Zochowski Family.
Having lived outside of Canada first and raised as Catholics, we longed for a community that could help us support our daughters in the kind of education and strong traditional values we wish for them to practice. Nowadays with so much influence by media and external sources, it is even more important for us that we stay close to our faith and to our roots with Jesus at the center of our family.
We are thankful how St. Pat’s school environment has helped us grow in the last 5 years and strengthen our faith and its values. We have learned to give and have received; we have matured and have cherished every moment.
Not only our daughters but we too, have been blessed with wonderful relationships through the school who have opened their homes and their hearts to us. There are many good families to be known and with whom to share.
With an incredibly supportive school staff who have always been kind and devoted to our children and a warm, caring parish priest In Fr. Matthew To, always concerned for our school and parishioners, it is an excellent school community.
We are truly grateful for being part of it!
-Cynthia & Fernando Soler
Our world is filled with moral and physical challenges. It is important to have a foundation of faith and spiritual development which we can depend on to get us through the tough times.
We chose St Patrick’s because it was the obvious choice for our son. He had attended another catholic school when we lived in Vancouver and he himself wanted Catholic instead of public. We chose catholic because we wanted our child to be raised with the respect and compassion that I felt lacked in the public system. The academic program in catholic will better prepare my child for the academic and moral challenges in high school. He is being challenged daily academically and it is shining through. The catholic system will not leave my child behind, they provide assistance in all aspects of life. When my child lost both his grandmother and Nonno(my father) at 5 he had his entire school give him moral and spiritual support. I don’t think he would have been as strong as he was without this support system. Simply the love of God shines through each and every child. You are not just getting a stronger educational foundation but also a community of like minded parents.