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March 6, 2015
Tom BurkeOf all of her 16-plus years of schooling, Janel Worley says “Kindergarten was my favorite year!” Thus began our email interview about Janel’s 36 years as educator and kindergarten teacher at St. Matthew School, San Mateo, time over which she has taught some 2,500 students.
“Kindergarteners love to learn!” Janel said about the kids she spends her days with. “They are totally open and they view new concepts and the world without prejudice. They forgive from the heart, they fall over each other to help someone new, and they tell me I am beautiful!”
Janel calls St. Matthew’s “a community that works together for the formation of its children” and said the “St. Matthew clergy, administration, faculty, and staff make me know that I am never alone in what I seek to do each day.”
Her best compliments? “I am deeply touched when my former students whose own children are now in my class say it gives them peace and confidence to know I am teaching their babies,” Janel said.
The school day has its own rewards she said. “I get to pray for goldfish, and on my birthday, my students guess that I am turning 23! Witnessing a child learning to read is about as good as it gets!”
When I was in kindergarten we got to nap from all the hard work of finger painting and such but no snoozin’ for Janel’s students.
“There is way too much to learn, see and do,” she said. “They read, write, create, pray, solve math problems, decompose numbers, and share presentations across the curriculum.”
Do we learn everything we need to know in kindergarten? “Of course we do,” Janel says with the bulk of it in character development from Bible stories including the good Samaritan and giving presentations on lives of saints. Kindergartners also establish themselves as “active Christians with Catholic vision” raising money throughout Lent to help the St. Vincent de Paul Society,” Janel said, and responsible citizenry starts with recycling, sharing and taking turns as leaders.
Janel’s advice to those considering the profession? “Make sure it is a calling, a true vocation, and something about which you are truly passionate. Spend time in classrooms, talk to teachers, seasoned and brand new and once you are knee deep in it, remember that each child comes to you daily with his or her own set of circumstances, and whether those circumstances are a help or a hindrance, God has sent you that child.”
MOUTHS OF BABES: A family with two daughters was glad to bring their third child, a son, into the church with baptism at Our Lady of Angels Church, Burlingame. Capuchin Father Michael Mahoney, pastor, administered the sacrament. “I asked the younger daughter to offer a prayer for her brother,” Father Michael told me. “She asked God to ‘bless him and keep him and please let me get along with him because I sure don’t get along with my sister.’”
BRICK AND MORTAR: The Fletcher Jones Foundation has awarded a $400,000 grant to Notre Dame de Namur University to help fund the university’s first classroom expansion in 49 years, school president Judith Maxwell Greig said in a statement. The sum will help renovate the school’s St. Mary’s Hall, its largest academic building. New construction “will house new laboratory, classroom, and faculty and student meeting space,” the school said. Also pitching in for campus spruce-ups is philanthropist Tad Taube with a $6 million challenge grant for the seismic retrofit of historic Ralston Hall and an anonymous donation of $1.35 million also for the Ralston Hall update.
Email items and electronic pictures – jpegs at no less than 300 dpi to burket@sfarchdiocese.org or mail to Street, One Peter Yorke Way, San Francisco 94109. Include a follow-up phone number. Street is toll-free. My phone number is (415) 614-5634.