Lumen News – December 10th, 2021

Important Upcoming Dates:

Dec 10: 11th Grade Retreat, 1-6:30pm
Dec 11: Winter Formal Dance (“Snow Dance”) (JH 5:30-7pm; HS 8-10pm) Dec 14-16: Final Exams (see schedule below for time change from Handbook) Dec 16-18: High School BB Tournament @ Lumen
Dec 17-Jan 2: Christmas Break
Jan 3: Start of Second Semester
Jan 17: MLK Holiday (No School)
Jan 30-Feb 5: Celebrate Catholic Schools Week
Feb 1: SAVE THE DATE! 6th Annual State of the School Address, 7pm
Feb 12: There’s No Place Like Home ~ Fundraising Gala!
Feb 16-17: P/T Conferences
Feb 18: Inservice Day (No School)
Feb 21: President’s Day Holiday (No School)

Principal’s Update:

Congratulations to Class of 2022 senior Frankie Locke and Class of 2026 8th grader Noah Tzvetcoff who won the annual Lumen Christmas card design contest! Each of them received cool $100 cash money for their creative efforts. Their unique designs will adorn our Christmas card, which will go out to over 400 members of the Lumen Christi community, including parents. Cards should be arriving in mailboxes soon.

As part of Advent, our students participated in the Sacrament of Reconciliation during the 7th period this week. We thank Father Hank and Father Shijo from Our Lady of Guadalupe, Father Scott from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Father Steve from Holy Family Cathedral, Father Arthur from St. Andrew’s, and FAther Tom from St. Benedict’s for ministering to our students in this “spiritual resurrection” of love, mercy, and healing. We will hold another Reconciliation service during Lent in the spring.

At Lumen, we pride ourselves on our academic rigor. The myriad of student presentations in class I have observed over the past week have been a prime example of this academic excellence. Student presentation topics included:

“The Long Term Effects of Concussions on the Brains of High School Students”
“Negative Effects of Social Media on the Behavior and Development of Children”
“Using Systems of the Future to Improve Correctional Facilities”
“The Impact of Suicide on Alaskan Native Communities”
“The Effects of School-Related Stress on Teenage Girls”
“The Catholic Stance on Embryo Adoption”
“The Ethics of Organ Donation”
“The Ethics of Drone Usage”
“Therapeutic Stem Cell Therapy”
“Assisted Reproductive Technologies”
“The Ethics of Reproductive Cloning and the Use of Humans in Trials”

From my standpoint, our students are knocking these papers and presentations out of the park across the board–truly home runs! I did not do this level of academic research and writing until I was in graduate school, and yet, our Lumen students are doing this in high school! Simply impressive! Students and parents alike should take great pride in the accomplishments of our young people this semester.

Finally, we are making the final few adjustments to our COVID survey report. I anticipate sending this out to our community under separate email correspondence tomorrow. It promises to be a bit lengthy, so thank you in advance for your patience and for taking the time to read the final product.

Campus Ministry:

Here are some helpful resources for parents looking to discuss the strength of MEEKNESS at home:

https://www.sportsleader.org/sites/default/files/newsletter-assets/Meekness%20Parent%20PDF%202.pdf

Come, Lord Jesus! Come! May this Advent be a time of deep renewal in my life, dear Lord. May it be a time in which I strive with all my heart to seek out Your gentle and profound voice. Give me the grace, dear Lord, to turn away from the many noises of the world that compete for my attention and to turn only to You and to all You wish to say. Come, Lord Jesus, come into my life more deeply during this Advent season. Jesus, I trust in You.

●  Junior Class retreat will begin at 1:00 p.m. Friday, December 10th. We hope all junior class families will be able to join us for dinner and prayer at 5:30.

●  Students in need of service hours for the school community? Join the choir! Volunteers meet once a week (students taking choir as a class meet 4 times a week) to practice music and earn 1⁄2 hour of service each week they practice and sing at Mass with the choir.

Front Office News:

Final Exam and Bus Schedule

The final exam schedule in the Handbook does not correctly reflect our school starting time this year. Therefore, please use the following Final Exam schedule for Dec 14-16:

The fall exam daily schedule is:

Dec 14: Periods 1 and 2 Dec 15: Periods 3 and 4 Dec 16: Periods 5 and 6

The hourly schedule each day during finals is:

7:30-7:40am: Snack
7:40-7:45am: Pledge, Prayer, and Morning Announcements 7:45-9:15am: Final Exam
9:15-9:30am: Snack
9:30-11:00am: Final Exam
11:00am: Dismissal

Bus schedules will be as follows:

Morning runs from both St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Andrew/CSS will remain the same. Afternoon runs will be as follows:

St. Andrew/CSS: This bus will depart Lumen at 11:05a and arrive at CSS at 11:20a; Depart CSS at 11:25 and arrive at St. Andrew Parish at 11:50p.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton: If possible, we encourage parents of SEAS bus riders to pick up at Lumen at 11a as we will only have one bus run to SEAS, and we have more students than seats. For those parents unable to pick up at Lumen, the bus will leave here at 11:05a and arrive at SEAS at 11:20.

For both the St. Andrew/CSS and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton runs, please pick your students up right at this adjusted arrival time. We know these early dismissal times can be tricky for logistics, but limiting the number of finals per day to two both limits the amount of stress on students and allows for max study time at home!

27th Annual Gala Fundraiser

Thanks to those of you who completed the family survey that went out last week ~ we received some terrific feedback! One thing we learned was that people are definitely interested in experiences: new things to try, new places to go. To that end – do YOU have a get-away you can share? Girdwood condo? Kenai cabin? Timeshare in the Bahamas?! If you do, please consider donating some time. Our crackshot Gala Team will take that and run with it, spin it into an amazing package certain to bring in mega-bucks. Thanks in advance.

Winter Formal Dance- Need Parent Volunteers

We need parent volunteers to help chaperone, set-up and clean up.
Here’s the link to sign-up: https://signup.com/go/qZecchg

LCHS Winter Formal Dance will be this Saturday, December 11th at 5:30-7:00 pm for Middle School and 8:00-10:00 pm for High School.

Student Admission: $5

Lumen Legacy

Starting with this edition, we’ll now include a “Lumen Legacy” section to highlight news from former students and/or their families.

Our first shout out goes to Shon Nagel (2019), who is enrolled at Arizona State University but is spending the year abroad in Belgium. Studying political science (both at ASU and in Brussels), Shon reports that the architecture, history and meeting new people from around the world are the best parts of livin’ this new best life. He may have also mentioned that the beer is quite tasty, too.

Additional shout out to Gerianne Thorsness, alumni parent of Sophia (2015), Annie (2017), and Kaiya (2020) for this idea to share alumni news!

Other alumni students and families – we’d love to hear from you! Email LCHS@lumenchristiak.org to tell us what you’re up to these days.

Celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Please join us for the Feast of Our Lady Of Guadalupe this Sunday, December 12th as Our Lady of Guadalupe Cathedral has organized a mass full of rich hispanic culture for this specific day. OLG has invited all Lumen Christi families to experience this beautiful opportunity along with some delicious food from several Latino countries (served after mass). They will reserve seats for the Lumen community, so please consider attending.

Parent Share Hours/Faith In Action hours will be earned if parents/students attend.

Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe

3900 Wisconsin St, Anchorage, AK, 99517

Sunday, December 12, 2021 at 11:30 am

Late Arrival/Early Dismissal Forms

Students with Late Arrival and/or Early Dismissal will have to turn in a new form next semester. Ms. Brewer and Mrs. Guzman will have them available for those students.

Check out what one of our Lumen seniors made and let’s support young artists!

Frankie’s amazing work is up for sale! (see flyer below) Contact information for purchase: francescal@lumenchristi.com