School Updates

November 18, 2020

Dear Gibbons Community,

I hope that you are having a great week and enjoying this brisk and beautiful weather! Our students and educators are busy tying things up before the break. Our athletic teams (women’s volleyball and field hockey and women’s and men’s cross country) have begun competing against other schools (victoriously, I might add) and our outreach program has put together more than 1,000 soup kits for Catholic Parish Outreach. It’s wonderful for our community to have these kinds of events again. 

Thank you for your feedback, insights, and ideas about the proposed schedule and calendar changes. It was very helpful to hear your voices to help us best plan for next semester. The response from educators, students, and parents was very positive to the proposed shifts, especially the greater consistency that the new calendar will bring. We have made some changes and updates to the original plan, specifically around Content Focus days. Ms. Barkan will host a Livestream on December 2 at 5 p.m. to answer additional questions about the schedule and calendar. You can find the updated information here and the link to Ms. Barkan’s podcast here. 

After speaking with many of you both in person and via email and survey, we are grateful for your desire for clearer communication about the happenings at Gibbons. There is so much electronic communication occurring because of COVID, and we want to make sure that every one of our community members has a grasp of what is going on at the school. We will be working for the remainder of this calendar year on creating some clearer channels of communication that we will unveil in January 2021. Thank you for your partnership and your willingness to help us get better in this important area. 

To that end, we want to make sure that everyone is aware of the Athletics practice and game calendar and the Retreats page. You can sign up for Retreats for next semester beginning at 8 p.m. this evening. I also encourage you to spend a few minutes watching our updated virtual tour, found at the bottom of the page. If you have been missing being in the building, this is two and a half minutes well spent. 

Finally, I am so happy to be celebrating my first Thanksgiving here in Raleigh. It was almost a year ago to the day that I was hired to be a part of the Gibbons community. With each day, both my family and I feel extraordinarily blessed to be here. I truly believe that God called me to Gibbons, and I am thankful to Him and to all of you. This school is truly special and wonderful, and there is no other place I’d rather be. Thank you for creating this amazing school and culture that continues to thrive in spite of this pandemic.

Have a happy Thanksgiving. Stay safe and healthy. And please exercise caution if you or your student is exposed to COVID-19 over the break. 

To close, here is a prayer written by Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything thy goodness sends.

Peace,

Jeff Bell
Head of School