Last week was National Teacher Appreciation Week, but at MAA, we are taking the entire month of May to celebrate our wonderful faculty and staff. On Friday, our Home and School Association served a thank you lunch for our faculty and staff, with delicious food and beautiful decorations. A big thank you to Home and School for planning such a special event.

At MAA, we have so much to be thankful for. Ask any one of our students and they will tell you that they feel supported and cared for by their teachers. Whether submitting their students’ work for awards or dreaming up creative lessons, our teachers engage and challenge students so that they may discover their true potential.

Just this past week, MAA’s fifth-grade class was given $100,000 to invest in a stock market game as they went “for broke” like Turtle Wexler from the novel The Westing Game, which they were reading in English class. In April, MAA’s fourth graders presented their “good-enough-to-eat” art sculptures of delectable dishes that represented their favorite books. They learned that just like their favorite foods, books have many important components that meld together to make a delicious dish.

If you visited Science class in the last two months, you would have found students racing cars down ramps to learn about velocity and speed and conducting experiments on renewable energy sources for their award-winning STEM Fun Fair.

Beyond academics, MAA’s dedicated faculty and staff are committed to educating the whole child, intellectually, socially, and spiritually. Starting in Preschool, students have the opportunity to participate in any number of age-appropriate service projects.

This focus on service sets a sturdy foundation for their future by highlighting the transformative power giving back to others has in this world. The success of MAA’s focus on service can be seen in the number of alumni who choose to return to campus for their high school senior service. We currently have students, including MAA alumni from Catholic Memorial School, St. Sebastian’s School, and Ursuline Academy volunteering here at MAA.

All of this could not happen without the hard work and dedication of our faculty and staff. One week is simply not enough time to show our appreciation for everything that they do to make MAA such a nurturing, challenging, and caring place. So, join us in giving thanks to our teachers and staff members this May!