Dear Parents and Guardians,

March is here! In some ways that fact astonishes me. The year seems to be flying by!

This month brings many gifts like the first glimpses of spring, great fun for fans of college basketball, the occasional early Easter…and it is a month devoted to celebrating women’s history. At Ursuline, we feel like we are always celebrating the gifts of women.

Earlier this week, some of our Mock Trial students had the opportunity to attend a Women's Leadership Luncheon about, "Women as Peacemakers." When I saw this theme, I was grateful, because it was a chance for our students to consider the power of making peace and the ways that, as young women, they can bring this into the world. A Core Value at Ursuline is "commitment to peacemaking." What might this mean to our students? A frequently posted meme I see online is: in a world where you can be anything, be kind. It’s easy to pop a heart on that beautiful thought and move on, but it’s actually a truly powerful invitation.

What does it take to choose to be kind? To choose to be a peacemaker? It may mean pausing before sending a Snapchat or making a comment on a social media post. It may mean taking a moment to register that a classmate is sitting alone at lunch and inviting her to join the table. It may mean recognizing that while gossip feels like a way to build a connection with a friend, it is also a false and fleeting basis for a relationship.

In 2018, Pope Francis said that Peace is a gift that can easily be destroyed through petty gossip and speaking ill of others. To be kind and to build peace may mean that you let someone you care about know that the way they treat others is hard to watch, or we may need to be the one to hear that message from someone we trust. These acts of kindness and peacemaking are not necessarily easy, but I have never yet met anyone who regretted bringing their best self to a situation and choosing to be kind to someone who needed it.

As women in the world, our students will find many invitations to engage in unkind behavior toward other women, and I hope that they build the strength in their hearts to reject that, and instead seek ways to build up their friends and colleagues. I strive to consistently ask my sons during family chats, "How were you kind today?" Sometimes they have an answer at the ready, and on those days, we celebrate the choice of kindness. I wonder how many beautiful examples our students could share with us about when they chose the path of kindness or peacemaking. I imagine there would be many moving examples!

Thank you for letting us be part of these important years of formation for your daughters. I hope they find many examples in their lives of other women who reach out to them and help them flourish. They have so much to bring to our world!

Your families remain in my prayers every day.

Dr. Andrea Shurley
Principal