Newsletter 8/8/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you are having a blessed summer, and that you have been able to have some time for rest and relaxation with family and friends!

With just a month to go until school returns, we are happy to announce that we have new students joining us in September! Two families will be joining us shortly, with a third hoping to enrol their children as soon as possible. This is very positive news for Stella Maris School and we thank you for your prayers!

It is very encouraging to know that the great work of Stella Maris School is being talked about by people around Munster, and even abroad! Recently, after Mass, an elderly sister who has been living out her vocation devoutly in Liverpool with the Little Sisters of the Poor, congratulated Master Casey on the great work being completed in Stella Maris School and encouraged him to continue this most important work of traditional Catholic education. More and more people are hearing about Stella Maris School, and more and more families are hoping to send their children to our wonderful school in the future. Thank God for this option for traditional Catholic education which is making a huge difference to these children’s lives and is a source of great hope for many for the future.

In order for Stella Maris School to continue to provide its stellar education for its current and incoming students, we are still in need of generous benefactors to help allay the cost of some of our major expenses during the year. Two of these expenses come at the beginning of the school year, as we have to buy new books for our students and to pay €1,700 for the insurance for our school. Your spiritual and material support at this important time of the school year is greatly needed and appreciated! Please donate here, and share this link with your social media groups! https://gofund.me/bd63b178

We have a new wonderful teacher, Ms. Casey, joining us this September. Ms. Casey will be involved in teaching Gaeilge, Music and Catechesis. This wonderful addition to our school will provide the children with new inspiration in these subjects, as well as being another example of a devout young Catholic teacher. Perhaps you are in a position, or know someone who is in a position, to teach a subject in Stella Maris School; if you are interested in teaching a subject, please contact us at info@stellamarisprimaryschool.com If you are a primary or secondary school teacher and would be interested in helping for an hour or two, we would be delighted to hear from you. We are also particularly looking for a teacher to help with the teaching of Art. Perhaps God has blessed you with another talent that you can share with the Stella Maris School community, like administration; we are also in great need of a cleaner as our wonderful cleaner can no longer help us, this position would be for 30-45 mins a week. Any help that can be provided to us in this regard would be hugely appreciated by students, parents and staff!

We wish you all a blessed summer. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 18/6/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you are having a most blessed month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Just today we were given a new beautiful sign of the Sacred Heart to display in our school for the month of June, proclaiming, “June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus”. This adds to our beautiful Irish flag with the Sacred Heart, which is hanging proudly in our school window. There is no doubt about the commitment of Stella Maris School to the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord! Public displays of piety and devotion help to strengthen our students and staff in our faith on a daily basis.

We are delighted to inform you that we had our sports day last Thursday. The children had wonderful fun taking part in many different races. They were engaging in sprinting races, as well as taking part in the three-legged race, the wheelbarrow race, the sack race, the egg and spoon race, before taking on the headmaster and some local priests in a game of soccer. A last-minute equaliser in the soccer game meant that the game ended in a draw; we will have to continue the game again next year! We also had a chance to play some table tennis, which the children really enjoyed!

After the sports day, which was held in the local park, we had the presentation of certificates for completion of the academic year in Stella Maris School and medals for taking part in the sports day. The children were delighted to receive these great tokens of recognition for their excellent effort during the day and the entire year. The children and parents also had the joy to reminisce on their year in Stella Maris School by looking at a presentation of many of the photos and videos taken throughout the year. Finally, very sadly, our sixth-class student, Maja, is leaving us this year. We are very thankful to Maja for all her great work throughout her time in Stella Maris School and wish her very well in Secondary School! Maja was presented with beautiful gifts by the school and a wonderful cake was designed for Maja’s graduation. Thank you again to all those who helped to make this celebration and the whole day a resounding success!  

We have had a wonderful day trip in Limerick City today, visiting the library, the Treaty Stone, St Munchin’s Church, and getting ice lollies after a long walk around the city. Please see some pictures below of the boys’ and girls’ fun day trip!

It is now the end of the school year and we are planning for the 2024-2025 school year. Our school is developing very well, year on year, and the compliments we are receiving from our parents, our school community and from followers of the school from around the country, and abroad, is most heartening. Please continue to pray for our school, and to support us financially; we greatly appreciate you making this school dream into a reality! Or, perhaps you are in a position, or know someone who is in a position, to teach a subject in Stella Maris School; if you are interested in teaching a subject, please contact us at info@stellamarisprimaryschool.com If you are a primary or secondary school teacher and would be interested in helping for an hour or two, or even for half an hour, we would be delighted to hear from you. We are also particularly looking for a teacher to help with the teaching of Art and French. Perhaps God has blessed you with another talent that you can share with the Stella Maris School community, like administration; we are also in great need of a cleaner as our wonderful cleaner can no longer help us, this position would be for 30-45 mins a week. Any help that can be provided to us in this regard would be hugely appreciated by students, parents and staff!

We will continue the exploration of our curriculum in the next academic year, with the focus firstly being on the arts subjects. We all know how much the arts subjects bring beauty into our lives, and for this reason, the arts subjects play a special role in a classical curriculum. We look forward to exploring our wonderful curriculum more with you next September!

We wish you all a blessed summer. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 11/6/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you had a blessed Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary! May Our Lord and Our Lady bless and protect you and your loved ones over the coming week.

We are delighted to inform you that we had our school tour in Ardee yesterday. The House of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary gave the boys and girls some great spiritual fun activities to engage in, like rosary bead making, and crowning Our Lady with a crown of beautiful garden flowers. As you may know, the convent has beautiful grounds, and so the boys and girls were delighted to be able to play games and explore all the beautiful gardens in the convent. The main part of the day was the celebration of Mass, which gained great graces for us all. The day was extremely enjoyable from start to finish! Thank you, Sisters, for such a great day!

We will also have our sports week this week. This will be a great chance to exhibit the learning we have garnered from our PE lessons this year, as well as having fun teachers v pupils’ games and maybe even a race with some of our parents! Providing this holistic education in Stella Maris School is the key to the development of our pupils physically, emotionally, socially, academically and spiritually.

We will continue the exploration of our curriculum this week, focussing on science. A science, as defined by St Newman, is a body of knowledge. Thus, any subject is a science in its own right if it contains a body of knowledge. In more recent history, the physical sciences have acquired the name ‘science’ for themselves. Thus, when we speak about science in our curriculum, we are talking about the physical sciences or the science of the natural world. In this sense, science integrates and overlaps in many ways with geography. The teaching of science can overlap with many areas but it especially can overlap with geography. The different strands of science can be explored through the use of a good school program like we have in Stella Maris School. The use of a good program ensures that all the major areas of science are studied by our students. Science, even in primary school, also lends itself in a particular way to discovery learning, active learning and experiments. These are always fun for our students to engage in, as well as being educational!

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 27/5/24

Dia duit a chara,

We hope you had a blessed Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. The doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is at the centre of our faith, and blessing ourselves in the name of the Most Holy Trinity is how we begin each school day. Glór don Athair, agus don Mhac, agus don Spiorad Naomh, mar a bhí ar dtús, mar atá anois agus mar a bheas go brách, ó saol le saol. Amen.

Please see below two newspaper publications on Stella Maris School’s unveiling of their new school sign!

https://www.limerickpost.ie/2024/05/18/stella-maris-a-shining-star-in-limerick-education/

https://www.limerickleader.ie/news/home/1505973/new-sign-of-hope-for-limerick-primary-school.html

https://www.instagram.com/limerickpost/p/C7HTUMus2vl/

It is a very busy time in primary schools at the moment, school tests, reports, school tours, sports days, and many administration tasks all need to be planned for. It is wonderful to be able to offer up all this work for love of God and for the salvation of souls! The children in Stella Maris School experience such a joyful education only due to the work of many different people and organisations working with us in all these ways. Thank you to everyone who helps to provide this stellar education for our students, we are greatly indebted to your selfless sacrifices!

May is the month of Mary and we have been visiting churches in Limerick to offer Our Lady a bouquet of rosaries! We will shortly visit the Augustinian Church to say the rosary and have also visited St Savior’s. Please see below the children praying the rosary recently at Sacred Heart Church, too.

We will continue exploring our Geography curriculum this week. Geography is a very important subject for children to develop a sense of space and place. We do not innately understand the physical world and we need to be educated in understanding how the world works, how it is shaped and how we operate in it. Studying maps and engaging in Atlas work is an important methodology used in our geography lessons, as well as learning by heart the counties, rivers, lakes and mountains of Ireland.

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

Newsletter 20/5/24

Dia duit a chara,

May the blessings of the Holy Ghost be with you and your loved ones this Pentecost! We give thanks to God for the power of the Holy Ghost which is at work in Stella Maris School. Just as the Holy Ghost appeared in the forms of tongues of fire on the heads of the Apostles, the Holy Ghost is at work bringing His fire into the lives of the students and community members of Stella Maris School. The heat of the love of the Holy Ghost has been stoked in the hearts of our students, and the light of the Holy Ghost is filling their minds! Come, Holy Ghost!

This week we will give you a sneak preview of the press release from our recent sign unveiling with Councillor Emmett O’ Brien! Articles about the unveiling will be released in Limerick newspapers and national media outlets over the coming week! Keep a watchful eye out!

Please see the press release below:

Stella Maris School, a new independent primary school in Limerick City, had the official unveiling of their new school sign on Tuesday 14th May by Limerick Councillor, Emmett O’ Brien. Students, parents, teachers, and members of the school community all gathered together to celebrate the wonderful occasion at Stella Maris School, Windmill Street, Limerick City.

Stella Maris School began in September 2022, for the purpose of providing authentic classical Catholic education to the children of Limerick and the surrounding counties. The School Principal, Richard Casey, has stated that his school provides a learning environment that ensures standards of excellence throughout the school, based on classical education principles, and which is ultimately centred on the person of Jesus Christ.

The event began with Headmaster of Stella Maris School, Richard Casey, speaking about the vital importance of receiving a quality education. Mr Casey is also a doctoral student in Mary Immaculate College, where he is studying the educational philosophy of Saint John Henry Newman. He stated that a Catholic and classical education (which Newman strongly advocates for) is the best type of education which can be provided for children.

Mr Casey asserted, “We believe that we are providing the best possible education in Stella Maris School, and are so thankful to our students, parents, teachers, volunteers and benefactors for making this dream into a reality for our students. Our next goal is to provide this education for an increasing number of students over the coming years.”.

The students of Stella Maris School then exhibited some of their learning by beautifully reciting a poem about the Eucharist, before proudly singing the Marian hymn, ‘Star of the Sea’. The standard of the children’s performance was of a very high quality, this being in part due to the large emphasis placed on memorisation of inspiring poems and songs as part of traditional classical education.  

Next, Councillor O’ Brien spoke about how important education is in forming the future generations. The formation that one receives as a child stays with them for their entire lives, said Mr O’ Brien. He reminisced on the quality education he received from his primary school principal and spoke highly of the admirable vision of Stella Maris School, and of the great results achieved so far by Richard Casey. Mr O’ Brien praised the inspiring performance of the children, saying that it brought a tear to his eye when the children so beautifully sang for Our Lady.

There was a wonderful community spirit to be found amongst those in attendance throughout the day. Even the bad weather could not dampen the high spirits of those who were in attendance, although it did lead to a last-minute change of schedule with the performances and speeches taking place inside rather than outside. Overall, this important landmark in Stella Maris School’s history signifies their hopes to become a high-quality alternative to public schooling and home-schooling.

Enrolment for Stella Maris School is currently taking place. All those who are interested in finding out more about the school, or who wish to enrol their children, should contact the school headmaster, Richard Casey, at info@stellamarisprimaryschool.com

Stella Maris School is an independent school, meaning it receives no governmental financial support. The school depends greatly upon donations from the public for its income. If you wish to help provide the gift of authentic Catholic education for children in Ireland, which will help to glorify God and save souls, then you can find donate via Paypal or Go Fund Me at Stella Maris School’s website: www.stellamarisprimaryschool.com. “We are in great need of monthly benefactors in order to continue to provide this essential and priceless education to Ireland’s youth”, stated Mr Casey.

The unveiling of the new school sign in Stella Maris School could well be a sign of things to come for Catholic education in Limerick and in Ireland, as the country becomes increasingly secularised and divestment attempts remain at a very slow pace. The future of Irish education and the role of the Catholic Church in Ireland is certainly unclear; however, there are undoubtedly new signs of hope.

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 29/4/24

Dia duit a chara,

It is almost the month of May! We pray that Our Lady will bless us in this month and during the rest of Eastertide. Did you know that the Angelus is traditionally replaced by the Regina Caeli during Easter? Our boys and girls have learned this beautiful hymn and sing it daily in class at 12 p.m.

The boys and girls can be seen below enjoying our measuring lesson in Maths this week. It is always great fun to take part in active learning sessions like estimating and measuring objects. The students really enjoyed the challenge of guessing what each object would weigh and then checking to see how far off their answers were. It can be a tricky guessing game, even for teachers, but it is very enjoyable!

In our history curriculum, this week, we will explore the importance of studying important world and national events in the true light of the Catholic faith. As mentioned previously, we have sourced high quality resources for teaching history, however, because some events are of such importance, and even very good books can portray events in a somewhat hazy light, it is very important to research these key historical moments well so as teach about them clearly and unambiguously. We will use an example to exemplify our point. We were blessed to have a French visitor in the school last week, who was teaching the children about the French Revolution. This revolution is lauded in our modern world as a great and momentous occasion, however, as Catholics we know that rebelling against God and His Church, making a secular government, and murdering innocent people are most grievous sins. Our students benefitted hugely from this great lesson, and from other smaller similar lessons throughout the year, which have helped to clarify important historical moments in light of the truth.

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 22/4/24

Dia duit a chara,

May the peace of the Risen Christ be with you and all that you love; may He pour down His abundant graces upon you to grow in faith, hope and love during this blessed season!

The boys and girls are pictured below with some of the magnetic fish that the 1st-3rd class made last week. Learning by rote is a very important part of our pedagogy in Stella Maris School, but everything must be done in moderation. Numerous teaching methodologies must be employed to ensure the highest standard of teaching possible on a day-to-day basis. Active learning, including learning through play, is a vital teaching methodology in our school also. The boys and girls had great fun learning about magnets by creating and engaging in a fun game!

We will continue our exploration of our history curriculum this week. Having already touched upon the essential teaching of salvation history, which is taught in religion class, we will begin to examine the teaching of our history curriculum to our senior members. History is one of the three subjects which has a large impact upon the formation of the moral character of our pupils, along English literature and catechesis. This is because there is a lot of reading involved in these subjects, which explicitly or implicitly promote ideas, morals and attitudes. For this reason, we were delighted that we were able to source a quality textbook from a very kind educator in Dublin, who republished an old Irish primary school textbook, which is of a greater quality and simplicity of style than many modern textbooks. History is prone to revisionism, and true facts can be distorted by lies or biased interpretations. This is why a very high standard in history textbooks is required to form our children in truth and goodness. We will continue investigating our history curriculum next week.

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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Newsletter 15/4/24

Dia duit a chara,

Christ is Risen! Alleluia! We hope that you have had a blessed Easter, and that you continue to have a blessed Season! This morning, in Catechism class, one of the Dominican Sisters was explaining to the children about the length of the Easter Season. Lent, lasting 40 days, can seem like a long time, however, Easter is even longer. Easter is 50 days long; thus, the time of celebration is longer than the time of penance. This reminds us that although our time on earth may involve much suffering and penance, the celebration in heaven will be much longer, infinitely longer! This is great news, and brings great hope and joy to our hearts.

You will be glad to hear that the boys and girls are very happy to be back after their break and are commenting on how quickly the year is going. The year flies when you are happy in school!

You will see a link to our Youtube Channel at the end of this paragraph. This will show many of the wonderful performances of poems, songs, dancing, tin whistle playing, and prayers of the children at our St Patrick’s Day Concert. Please like the videos, and share the videos with anyone you think would appreciate the great work being done by the boys and girls of Stella Maris School. https://www.youtube.com/@stellamarisprimaryschool1678

The boys and girls are pictured below with their Easter surprises after their return to school! It is very heartening to see boys and girls being so grateful for the treats given them to celebrate the victory of Christ over sin, suffering and death! There are further pictures of the children with a wonderful new set of children’s classics, encyclopaedias, and other beautiful books donated by a very kind benefactor from Dublin. Thank you very much for these great gifts to our students! Thank you again also to all our benefactors; thank you to all who are supporting us materially and spiritually, this school would not exist were it not for your generosity of spirit!

We wish you all a blessed week. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that we keep all our benefactors in our daily morning prayers, too.

God bless you,

Richard Casey

Headmaster of Stella Maris School

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