{"id":13292,"date":"2016-02-03T17:00:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-03T22:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=13292"},"modified":"2016-02-03T17:00:40","modified_gmt":"2016-02-03T22:00:40","slug":"our-lady-of-grace-c-e-s-gears-up-for-60th-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/our-lady-of-grace-c-e-s-gears-up-for-60th-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Lady of Grace C.E.S. gears up for 60th anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

As an elementary school athlete, Jo-Ann Smith remembers hopping on the bus to play off against students from local Catholic schools.<\/p>\n

With 35 years as a teacher now under her belt, she is marking her 28th year teaching at Aurora\u2019s Our Lady of Grace Catholic Elementary School (OLG). <\/p>\n

As a teacher, she has seen her daughter come through the Aurora Heights Drive school, has watched her grandson take his first educational steps as a current kindergarten student at the school, is preparing to see her granddaughter follow in his footsteps this fall, and now she is helping shape the school as it prepares for a momentous milestone on Sunday, May 1.<\/p>\n

This year, Our Lady of Grace Catholic Elementary School will celebrate its 60th anniversary, and plans are now underway to celebrate the occasion in style. <\/p>\n

According to parent councillor Eric Poblete, who is helping lead the celebrations, they knew as soon as they realised the 60th anniversary was approaching that it was a matter of go big or go home. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a great way to bring not only the school community, but past school communities as well, back into the environment to celebrate,\u201d says Mr. Poblete. \u201cThe initial thought was we would have a large event at the end of the spring. The initiative came about that way, plus with the [York Catholic District School Board]. Elizabeth Crowe, the Chair at the time, indicated to us there should be a large celebration. Certainly with this school being the oldest in their board, they wanted it to be done in the proper way. Towards the end of last year, she contacted us and said, \u2018Be prepared! We\u2019re going to start fixing the school and repairing it because we expect to have a fairly public and high exposure of the school.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

May was ideal, he added, because it coincides with their end-of-the-year festivities as well as Education Week within the Board. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a date, combined that event with this event, and now we have been taking a lot of parent and teacher volunteers to try and coordinate this,\u201d says Mr. Poblete.<\/p>\n

There has been no shortage of enthusiasm on either front with parents and teachers alike eager to get the ball rolling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have always had a lot of support from the parents,\u201d says Ms. Smith.<\/p>\n

The feeling is mutual, adds Vicky Yaeck, whose own children recently graduated from OLG.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a volunteer, we always felt welcomed by the teachers, which is very important because there are a lot of schools where the teachers aren\u2019t as welcoming. It feels like a community when you walk into the school. The kids feel it and it is an all-round good feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Yaeck\u2019s eyes well up when she speaks of this \u201ccommunity\u201d in action, particularly recalling her daughter winning an award for oral communication. Her learning, says Ms. Yaeck, has been something of a struggle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a huge milestone for her,\u201d she says. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have happened without the teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n

This school year marks the second time around Ines Donato has been a part of the OLG community. First coming through their doors 11 years ago as Vice Principal, she returned this year to take the helm as Principal and is excited to have had the chance to be a part of the celebrations.<\/p>\n

The first priority, she says, is starting the celebration with a mass, which is set for 2 p.m. at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church on Yonge Street. Following the service, the party heads over to the school for formal presentation, themed rooms, and a student performance of a specially-penned song. <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I have come full circle,\u201d says Ms. Donato of her second go-round at OLG. \u201cI also live in the community and it is wonderful to be in church on Sundays and really have that sense of community that is within our faith and everyone coming together based on our belief in Jesus. It is exciting and it is also a challenge. I am a little anxious about all the things we would like to do for this anniversary, but I know we\u2019re going to work and it is going to be a really exciting day.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parents, teachers, student and community collaborate on May celebration. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2016-02-04-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3so","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 21:00:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}