Dear Families,
Data often overwhelm us. There are infinite ways to measure anything and everything.
Anyone with an infant knows this truth. Each visit to the pediatrician yields endless measures and metrics: percentiles for weight, height, and head circumference. Behavioral measures: at what day and month did your child sit up, stand up, walk, grasp objects with one hand?
Any institution or business has an equal number of metrics and feedback loops: customer satisfaction, increase in profits, decrease in expenditures, growth in distribution, and more.
And then there are schools. There are norm-referenced measures for any school-based concept or construct. Tests for measuring achievement or aptitude. Surveys to gauge self-concept, climate, attitude, mindset, and more. Behavior plans, mastery charts, intervention effectiveness, tiers, levels, etc. To say nothing of actual numbers and letter grades!
So when our goal is heaven, and our work is growing saints, how do we measure this? Can you “see” an increase in virtue? Is there a “test” for holiness?
No. Thank goodness-- no. You pray, and trust God. You keep your eyes on Him and ask the Holy Mother for help. Then you will see signs; then you will see the true metrics.
It looks like mittens hung up to dry in a classroom. You know the children there are growing and playing, reveling in God’s creation and the joy found in one another.
It sounds like a silent classroom, full of children completely absorbed in reading-- for pleasure. Reading uplifting, classic texts that bring them closer to God.
Thank you God for the gift of this time and place. May we measure the world as You do.
Yours truly in Christ,
Amy Sansone, Academic Dean