From Principal Madeleine G. Thomas
School Mission, Philosophy, and Goals
Resurrection Academy, a ministry of St. John XXIII Catholic Community, is a diverse preschool to eighth grade population with a rigorous Catholic academic education, immersed in technology with a focus on 21st century skills where students communicate, collaborate, create, and think critically. Serving Fontana and neighboring locales for over fifty years, we are a community which provides for worship and is caring, respectful, compassionate, and life-giving; designed to create tomorrow’s leaders, today.
Philosophy of Education
We at Resurrection Academy are a community of dedicated Catholic-Christian educators, whose goal is to provide a Gospel-centered environment for our students and families. For over fifty years, we have served as a ministry of the community of St. John XXIII grounded in an atmosphere of service and stewardship wherein our students may discover a respect for self and others thereby developing their God-given potential for service and peace.
We believe in the personal dignity and worth of every individual. We encourage and develop a sincere spirit of caring, concern, a sense of civic duty, community service, and pride throughout the student body, faculty, and families. We celebrate a rich Catholic tradition through faith sharing, liturgy, sacramental preparation, Reconciliation, and Holy Eucharist.
Our goal is to provide a multi-faceted curriculum that promotes spiritual, academic, social, emotional, and physical growth. We are committed to fostering a positive self-image and desire within our children to be life-long learners, creative critical thinkers, responsible Catholic citizens, and effective communicators by developing their sense of personal growth and independence, challenging their limitations, and building on their strengths. We prepare our students for leadership roles and to meet the demands of our rapidly changing world by immersing them in technology, collaboration, and creativity.
We believe that the parents are the first and most important educators of their children. We instill the values of Catholic schools, including service, respect of self and others, discipline, high academic standards, prayer and worship, with the support and commitment of the parents. We work to provide a well-rounded experience and to form our students into Disciples of Christ. To this end, we build bridges of communication that will enable us to work in partnership with our parents to improve each student potential for individual excellence.
Finally, our school is blessed with students from various racial, cultural, religious, social, and economic backgrounds. We recognize, utilize, and celebrate these differences as gifts that enrich our school community.
Future
Resurrection Academy’s vision statement states that it will maximize the use of technology to enrich and expand the tradition of excellence in Catholic education.
Virtual Academy
Students will be using a learning platform utilizing Accelus, which is an online interactive learning system that is empowering students to learn as never before. The curriculum will cover the core subjects including Language Arts, Math, History, and Science. Students will be able to work at their own individualized pace allowing our slower learners to succeed at a pace comfortable to them and our advanced students to be challenged. Instruction is differentiated to meet each student’s academic needs.
Enrollment, Recruitment, and Retention
The cultural and ethnic diversity of our school population is a true reflection of our parish. We are blessed with students from various racial, cultural, religious, social, and economic backgrounds. Although our Hispanic group is our leading population and will remain the same for the course of the next years, we will continue to recruit families from all walks of life.
Our classroom sizes are 9 to 23 students except for the Preschool program that has 34 children in both the 3 year old and 4 to 5 year old classes. It is our goal to continue to increase our enrollment for all grades in order to provide additional ancillary services and to increase the classroom capacity to 25 to 30 children in order to be less dependent on the diocese, parish, and donors, while we continue to provide our students the best in quality Catholic education.
Despite the change of our parish name and the merging of two parishes to make up St. John XXIII. We are thriving and keeping afloat. We are grateful to God, to all our families, and our supporters. We are grateful for the commitment of dedicated teachers and staff, support of our pastor and priests, and parishioners who are generous with their financial support. For those that are recommending our Resurrection Academy to others to serve the family’s needs in their early and elementary education, we are most grateful.
We have strived to be less dependent on the diocese, parish, and donors who have been generous and keeping us afloat. We have been blessed to have the Shea Foundation provide a major capital improvement of our school that keeps our school plant in an excellent condition. In addition, we are currently working with Shea Foundation to support us in meeting our technology plan goals and Caritas Communications in providing the school with 50 iPads and with the necessary firewall or monitoring system. In addition, our school is in the process of collaborating and partnering with Lennox District for a blended learning educational program. If these plans come to fruition, it will ensure that our students will continue to maximize the use of technology to enrich the tradition of excellence in Catholic education.
Resurrection Academy has withstood the test of time in covering the day-to day expenses. However, we look to the future when the school will be able to rely solely on its own in order to have a lasting foundation for a long-term future.
Top quality education can be very expensive when we strive to keep quality teachers and small classroom numbers. Over the last three years, we have been doing an optimal job of controlling expenses, however, we challenge ourselves to encourage more families in the value of a Catholic education.
Education
We have many exciting things going on in our elementary and middle school grades. Resurrection Academy continues to bring technology into the classrooms and into the hands of the students. Currently eBeam technology is set up in all classrooms. In grades K-2 through 4 students use iPad technology. Currently, kindergarten has 5 iPads and 1st through 4th have 8-10 iPads. The school recently received 50 new iPads through a grant, so we are gradually reaching our goal of 1 to 1 tablets for the students. The iPads are used throughout the day for Superkids.
In the Language Arts program, several educational apps such Accelerated Reading and Moby Max are used. Students also use technology to complete research. In the upper grades we suffered a setback in the area of technology. As you know, our classrooms were broken into last year and all the tablets from 7th and 8th grade were stolen. As yet, we have not been able to replace these devices. Students in the upper grades have been able to bring their personal devices from home to utilize in the classrooms following strict classroom procedure in regards to the technology. Three of the classrooms are equipped with Apple T.V., which is utilized on a daily basis. In keeping up with the 21st century, Resurrection Academy is steering away from textbooks and utilizing technology as the main resource in learning.
Facilities
We are proud of our school and thankful for the beautiful refurbishment of the school generously provided by the John and Dorothy Shea Foundation. As you know, the Shea Foundation gave our school a complete makeover including our offices, teachers’ lounge, and all the classrooms. In addition, we are extremely grateful to all our benefactors for their generous support of Resurrection Academy.