Tag: community

What’s a kid to do with cabin fever?

What’s a kid to do?  It’s so cold outside that you can’t stay out very long.  Cabin fever is starting to set in.  The TV is getting boring.  “I know!  Let’s go to the Rec!”

When the Lakota students come to play in the gym, they need to leave their heavy coats in the Rec center hallway.
Here’s what it looks like on a cold winter day when our Lakota students need to leave their outerwear in the hallway before entering the gym!

The Recreation Center at St. Joseph’s is the place to be in any season, but especially during these short winter days in the cold of South Dakota.  The gymnasium and the pool are the most popular destinations, but the Recreation Center offers a whole lot more. In fact, when I started working there this fall, I was amazed at the variety of things to do and services they offer our Lakota (Sioux) students!

Hello, my name is Anita and this is my sixth year at St. Joseph’s Indian School.  For the first five years, prior to my “second retirement” last June, I worked as a houseparent at the Sheehy Home for high school boys.  Before that, my husband and I raised three sons while he worked as a teacher and I as a social worker.  Even though we’d been in our professions for 30 years, we weren’t ready for the rocking chairs!  That’s when we discovered St. Joseph’s and their mission.

But, back to the Rec Center…starting with the gymnasium.  Besides being available for individuals to come down and shoot some hoops, the gym is used on a regular basis for activities for the Lakota children:

  • Boys’ and girls’ basketball leagues, for grades 4-8. Each team is complete with two coaches, uniforms, and a schedule to play schools from nearby communities.  This fosters team play, cooperation, and good sportsmanship.  In addition, the connection to the local communities is very important to fulfilling our mission for the Native American children we serve. We want people to come here to see what we’re about and for our students to interact with other children from other areas.  The girls’ teams finished their season in December and the boys teams are just getting started. In conjunction with boys’ basketball season, some of the girls are now involved in cheerleading.

    The Lakota children have Enrichment each Wednesday night.
    Enrichment night is fun and games for everyone!
  • Wednesday Night Enrichment Activities for everyone in grades 1-8. The groups are lead in an activity appropriate for their age by two of the Rec Center’s staff members, usually Mark and Andy.  Houseparents are on hand to help out if needed.  Our Rec Center staff focuses Enrichment on activities that EVERYONE can participate in (not everyone is a volleyball or basketball player) in order to promote physical and developmental skills, cooperation, exercise and grow a strong body, and to simply have FUN!

We also have a Concession Stand that is open during certain events, like basketball and volleyball games. St. Joseph’s high school students often volunteer to help Rec staff operate the stand during those events.

When the gymnasium is not being used for programmed activities it is available for any of St. Joseph’s homes to use. It is also used for other St. Joseph’s student events such as school dances, Halloween and Valentine parties, sobriety celebrations and powwow.  Plus St. Joseph’s staff utilizes the space often for staff training or gatherings.  There have also been numerous occasions where the local community reserves the gym for an activity, plus the Chamberlain High School athletic uses it for practice when there is a conflict in their facilities.

The Rec center operates a concession stand during games with the help of St. Joseph’s high school students.
Everyone loves the concession stand!

That’s only the gymnasium usage in our Recreation Center!  In upcoming weeks I’ll be updating you on all the other things that we having going on here—stay tuned!

Celebrating Christmas at St. Joseph’s

Greetings from the banks of the Missouri River!

This past weekend was a busy and exciting one for the Lakota children.  Since they are home for Christmas break, we celebrate Christmas when they return to St. Joseph’s Indian School after the first of the year.

This past Sunday was that day!

Some of the students act out the Nativity and the visit of the Magi during the Sunday Mass. Afterwards, everyone heads to their campus homes to open gifts. It is exciting to see the sheer joy that comes over the children’s faces as they tear packages apart to see what Santa –  through your generosity – has brought them.  We were blessed with nice weather on Sunday, so several students were able to go outside and enjoy their remote controlled cars. The onset of spring and warmer weather will give others the chance to use new footballs, soccer balls and basketballs.

You can see more photos here.

On Saturday, St. Joseph’s spelling bee winners traveled to Mitchell, South Dakota (about 70 miles from campus) to take part in the annual Corn Palace Regional Spelling Bee. St. Joseph’s had nine spellers participate!

The Lakota children participated in a spelling bee.
St. Joseph’s had nine spellers participate in an advanced spelling bee.

Two of our students captured 3rd place in their age group and all were in the top ten at their grade levels.  Congratulations everyone!

You may recall that a team of high school students was going out to Rapid City to take part in the Lakota Nation Invitational’s (LNI) Knowledge Bowl.  One member of our team, a 9th grader named Liliana, took top honors in the geometry and grammar categories of the individual competition. Congratulations Liliana!

The boys’ basketball season got underway Monday with our 7th and 8th grade teams taking on Kimball – a small community just east of Chamberlain.  Unfortunately, the Braves came up short this time but look forward to improving throughout the remainder of the season.

We are looking forward to starting the girls’ inter-city basketball league this Sunday.

I hope everyone has a great week!  Let’s keep those dealing with the water contamination problem in West Virginia in our prayers that it all gets resolved quickly.

Thanks again for your generosity.

Sincerely,

Fr. Anthony Kluckman, SCJ

Chaplain

Rewind to the week before Christmas

St. Joseph’s students are back from break and will celebrate Christmas this Sunday!

Before Christmas break, St. Joseph’s students got into the Christmas spirit by getting busy in the kitchen! In Personal Living Skills class, students baked cookies, made our famous Oreo truffles and peanut butter balls. They had a fun time decorating and using lots of sprinkles!

Christmas is a lot more than baking and exchanging gifts though.  It is about giving and being thankful for what we have and being with the ones we love the most.

Sadly, there are many people who cannot be with their loved ones during the holidays or some who cannot provide for their families at Christmas because of different circumstances.  The seventh graders worked on a community service project to try and give back to people in need.

After some discussion, they decided that making baby blankets and donating them to the Chamberlain women’s shelter would not only keep babies warm, but would warm many hearts, too.

Being a part of this community service project was an excellent way for our students to give back this Holiday season and was a great addition to the food drive put on by the Student Leaders at St. Joseph’s Indian School.

Wopila tanka – many thanks – for the generosity you show the Lakota children which allows them to show generosity to others!

Pam

Personal Living Skills Teacher

Learning about the Dakota 38+2

Good afternoon! I am LaRayne, St. Joseph’s Native American Studies teacher.

Runners lead the Dakota 38 Memorial riders for the first 10 miles.
“Freedom Runners” ran from the starting point in Lower Brule across the Missouri River Fort Thompson, South Dakota – approximately 10 miles.

Before Christmas break, St. Joseph’s seventh and eighth grade classes learned about the Dakota 38+2 Memorial Ride – what it is for, why it is done and what we could do to help. These thoughts spilled over into campus-wide education, sharing, and giving from the hearts of our students and staff.

The Dakota 38+2 Memorial Ride commemorates the 38 Dakota (Sioux) warriors who were hung in Mankato, Minnesota, following the Dakota War of 1862 – the largest mass hanging in our nation’s history. Two more warriors were hung later, in relation to the same conflict. The ride of reconciliation was inspired by one man’s vision to heal the brokenness between cultures.

Two of St. Joseph’s family service counselors, Scott and Rob, brought in riders to speak to our older students and showed the movie about the Dakota 38+2 (the link to YouTube is at the end of this post).

Students discussed, questioned, learned and reflected on different aspects of this historical event, which created motivation to support the riders financially. The students set out to raise money to help defray the costs of food and shelter

Riders on horseback journeyed from Lower Brule to Mankato, South Dakota for the Dakota 38 Memorial Ride.
The riders participating in the 2013 Dakota 38 Memorial Ride.

for riders and horses, as well as occasional police escorts on busy roads between Lower Brule, South Dakota and Mankato, Minnesota.

Out of respect for our donors, we wanted this money to come from our personal pockets – not from the generous gifts of those who support St. Joseph’s.  With the help of students and staff, our efforts raised more than $1,200 from a penny war, a raffle, “Jeans Because” money and a soup and salad lunch for staff campus-wide. It was great to see the different acts of generosity and downright competitions that came alive at St. Joseph’s Indian School to support this cause!

Our littlest children (first, second and third graders) brought in little bags of coins to add to their pickle jar for the penny war.  Staff members could add coins to any age group, and this is where the competition began.  During the last minutes of the penny war, it was evident that the staff was just as competitive as the kids in wanting to win the penny war and give to a great cause!

St. Joseph’s students and staff were at the send off on December 10, 2013.
St. Joseph’s seventh and eighth graders, along with several staff, attended the send off ceremony for the Dakota 38 Memorial Ride.

The purpose behind teaching this historical event to our students is to help them understand the events of the past and how they are linked to their ancestors.  Because we want our students to understand who they are, they must learn and understand where they come from. This is just one example.

The culmination in learning about the Dakota 38+2 was to be a part of the send off ceremony for the riders who departed from Lower Brule, South Dakota on December 10. Taking full advantage of the opportunity, we made this day a class field trip for the seventh and eighth graders.

Several adults accompanied 38 students for this great day.  We were honored to be a part of smudging, singing, honoring, listening, praying and building.

Our Lakota students built relationships with one another.  They built relationships with other communities, people, youth, Lakota leaders, other adults and the horse culture.

We were honored to be in the presence of Arvol Looking Horse, the 19th generation pipe carrier of our sacred cannunpa – pipe – blessed with prayer while a female elder and several male singers sang prayer and horse songs for the ceremony.

We had four young men from St. Joseph’s take advantage of running a few miles with other representatives from Lower Brule and Crow Creek to serve as runners for freedom.  Next year, we hope to have many of our students and staff help send our Dakota 38+2 horse riders off by running with the pack.

As staff, we hope this day will live in the memories and lives of these kids for years to come.  In the meantime, we will do our part to honor who we are and where we are going in mind, body, heart and spirit.

Learn more about the Dakota 38 by watching the trailer for the documentary on YouTube.

Cold weather has arrived!

What a difference a week makes! You may recall how I was saying it was still nice weather-wise here at St. Joseph’s. However, the bottom fell out this past week.

Fr. Anthony and the Lakota children.
Fr. Anthony spends time with St. Joseph’s students.

We got over 5 inches of snow and the temperature went down, down, down…

The Daily Republic, a daily newspaper in Mitchell, South Dakota (about 70 miles from Chamberlain), leads off the news the other day with an article on how the area has set low temperatures that broke a 105-year-old record.

Chamberlain was even mentioned on the radio when we hit 14 degrees below zero. The cold has had an effect on some of our water lines and has brought about a drip in the rec center ceiling.  Our Lakota students do not seem to mind, however, and love to be out sledding as long as they can.

A big thank you goes out to our maintenance crew on campus! They are quick to clear paths so our students can get to school and staff can get to work when we have snow.

We moved our regular Sunday Mass to Saturday evening so the Dancing Dolls & Dudes had Sunday morning to get ready for their recital in the early afternoon.  There was a great turnout for the dance presentations, which includes kids from the Chamberlain and surrounding communities; dancers as young as 3 and 4 year olds up through sixth graders took part.

When I drove up to the National Guard Armory, where the performance was held, I felt like St. Joseph’s Indian School was a visiting basketball team. So many of our Native American students were participating and watching, we had our large yellow bus and one or two of our smaller buses parked in from of the Armory!

Seems hard to believe, but our girls’ basketball season is drawing to a close.  Our last home games for our younger grades are this week.  Last Saturday, the 8th grade girls hosted their annual basketball tournament.  The snow prevented some of the teams from coming, but the rec center hosted a round robin tournament and we came in third.

Hope you all have a great week and that you are able to take advantage of the Advent Season and prepare the way of the Lord.

Fr. Anthony Kluckman, SCJ

Chaplain

Where we going?

Where we going?

This is an interesting question that can be answered in many different ways.  On this particular

The Lakota children decorated a Christmas tree at the South Dakota Hall of Fame.
Jacob and his classmates helped make small drums and drumsticks to use as decorations for the Christmas tree.

day at St. Joseph’s Indian School, the answer was to decorate a Christmas tree at the South Dakota Hall of Fame.  This is about 4 miles from campus, right along Interstate 90.

South Dakota leaders and luminaries are honored here – it is a great stopping point along I-90.  Each year, the Hall of Fame invites community leaders and organizations to decorate Christmas trees in the Hall of Fame.  St. Joseph’s was one of the first organizations to arrive and picked a choice spot to put up our tree.

We took six of our younger Lakota students from Student Leadership Committee to help.  They were all excited and couldn’t wait to help. The first challenge was matching all limbs to the right spot on the trunk of the artificial tree. We had to make sure to spread out the branches to make the tree look full and big.  The students did a great job of keeping the branches separate and sticking them in the right holes.  The tree looked full and big by the time we fluffed all the branches out!

Then, up went the lights! I helped string the lights from the top of the tree to the bottom with two of the girls guiding me around the tree and ensuring I had enough lights to make it the tree look bright.  Once we finished putting the lights up we plugged them in to make sure they worked.

To our surprise, the lights twinkled and blinked.  We didn’t remember the lights flashing last year… but hey, what a bonus!  The students thought it was neat; they oohed and aahed, mesmerized by the lights.

After the lights were checked and the students refocused, they started to hang small hand drums up and down the tree.  The drums have St. Joseph’s logo on them and the students help make them.  Then we pulled out small dreamcatchers, a few wooden flutes and drumsticks for the students to hang.  The last ornaments to go up were homemade snowflakes with pictures of the students in the middle.  The final touch was small wooden teepee to top of the tree.  After a few alterations, the tree was finished and looked great!

The students helped clean up the mess and put the tree in place.  We loaded in the mini bus once again and headed back to campus.  The students were in a great mood and sang a few bars of Jingle Bells on the way, only they changed the verse to “Jingle Bells, Frank smells…” 

We had a good laugh over their version of a classic Christmas song.

All the fun aside, where are we going? can be a very hard question to answer.

But on this day, we were blessed to be able to tell the students, “we are going to spread the Christmas spirit and share our school with the rest of the community.”

St. Joseph’s tree at the South Dakota Hall of Fame was decorated by younger Lakota students.
St. Joseph’s younger students helped decorate the Christmas tree at the South Dakota Hall of Fame.

On this day, we were blessed to give the students a firsthand lesson about citizenship, generosity and belonging.   On this day, we were blessed to teach a lesson about life. On this day we were blessed to help our Native American students learn a little bit more about where they are going and who they will become.  Life lessons and teachable moments happen every day, and we are blessed to put them to good use!

Here is hoping you all have a great Christmas season full of family and blessings.

Merry Christmas!

Frank W.

6-8 Residential Coordinator

 

Another wonderful week in the neighborhood

It has been another wonderful week in the neighborhood – the weather has been great!

The campus was very quiet this weekend since the Lakota students and St. Joseph’s staff were on Thanksgiving break.  I helped chaperone the bus that took the students to their homes in Eagle Butte and Pierre, South Dakota.  It was good to meet some of the students’ families and everyone seemed very upbeat to be home for the holiday.

St. James Parish and Fr. Guy Blair, SCJ, hosted their second annual Thanksgiving meal open to anyone in the community.  It was an outstanding success and served over 400 people. They had over a 150 takeout orders for people unable to leave their homes.  It was nice to see that a wide variety of locals join together to help others.

Friday after Thanksgiving kicked off the Christmas season with the annual Parade of Lights in downtown Chamberlain.  Some very bright and inventive floats brought out a lot of oohs and aahs from spectators who braved the chilly evening.

St. Joseph’s Indian School was blessed with the presence of a bald eagle that sat high in a tree along the banks of the Missouri River.  It was a majestic sight.  Deer hunting season opened recently in our area, which may explain why I’ve seen seven deer on three separate occasions within the last 10 days or so.  They seem to know there will not be any shooting on campus.

This coming weekend will be the Dancing Dolls & Dudes program.  St. Joseph’s students have been involved in this over the last few years.  It will definitely be one of those Kodak moments!

Hope you have a great week and that God’s blessings will be with you throughout the new month as we prepare for the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Fr. Anthony Kluckman, SCJ

Chaplain

Thank you to our Veterans

Good afternoon from a snowy South Dakota!

We had a little dusting of snow early this morning.  With the leaves still on the ground, it makes for a slippery situation.  I’m sure the students were not in mad dashes across St. Joseph’s campus today.

First of all, Happy Veterans Day!  A big pilamaya – thank you – to all who made the commitment to serve in the Armed Forces of our country to keep us protected and free.

There is a Veterans’ Day powwow in Lower Brule today.  LaRayne, our Native American Studies teacher, took 10 drummers and 5 dancers to take part.  The Summerlee Home (4th and 5th grade girls) went up yesterday to join in the festivities and enjoy a meal with the community.

Friday night, several of our staff represented St. Joseph’s Indian School in a fundraiser for the Chamberlain School District Foundation.  It was loosely based on an Old Fashioned Community Spelling Bee.  Nine different teams took part in the event at the city civic center, which was recently rebuilt.

It was an open house for the new facility and a chance to raise some money for an outdoor classroom for the Chamberlain school system.  The teams had fun as they competed in spelling, puns, scrabble and penmanship.  While the MC stated ‘this might be the first and last spelling bee,’ it seemed everyone had fun and even the audience was able to take part.

I hope you all have a great week.   We continue to keep you in our prayers, asking God to bless and reward you for your generosity to the Lakota children at St. Joseph’s.
Fr. Anthony Kluckman, SCJ

Chaplain

A little snow on the way?

Dear Benefactors,

It looks like our Indian Summer may be over in South Dakota – that dreaded word ‘snow’ is in the forecast.  It won’t be a lot, but it does remind us we are moving later into the year and our warm, sunny days will not be around for a while.  We saw some evidence of snow and slush yesterday up in Fort Pierre on my way to a board meeting in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.  We visited the abused women’s shelter and residential care center for Native American youth in that community, both sponsored by St. Joseph’s Indian School.  They are doing wonderful work as they reach out to the local community on a variety of fronts.

Several of the homes for St. Joseph’s older students got together and headed to Mitchell, South Dakota to go through a haunted house and pay a visit to McDonald’s as well.  They had a great time!  With our Halloween party and costume contest coming this Thursday, it may have given them some ideas for costumes.

Last Wednesday, I was invited by the local Kiwanis to be their guest speaker. I shared an update on recent happenings on campus, encouraging them to visit our new Alumni and Historical Center. I also filled them in on Fr. Steve’s new role as Provincial for the Priests of the Sacred Heart.

Our students worked with an artist in residence last week to create Christmas ornaments for the National Christmas tree in Washington, DC! Currently 48 ornaments are nearly ready to go. St. Joseph’s Indian School is the only school in South Dakota to take part in decorating the tree, so this was a very special opportunity indeed. Stay tuned for more information on this exciting project!

On the sports front, the Chamberlain High School football team has qualified for the State playoffs! The first game will be tonight. They are hosting Todd County, whom they recently beat. We hope they are able to repeat the victory.  Several St. Joseph students are contributing their talent and skills.  Go Cubs!

Sunday, our inter-city basketball league got started. This program gives St. Joseph’s Lakota students and local 6th, 7th and 8th graders the chance to play basketball on Sundays.  They play together on four teams and compete against each other every Sunday afternoon.  We see it as an important way for the students to meet each other now so that when they enter high school they’ll know each other a bit better.

The experience of playing together also helps them to be aware of each other’s talent, which is great in high school.  The upcoming boys’ varsity basketball team for Chamberlain High School should be a good team this year. Last year, the “C” team was undefeated; it had several St. Joseph’s players on the team, so we’re looking forward to an exciting year!

 

I hope each of you has a great week.  May God’s blessings be with you now and always.

God bless,

Fr. Anthony Kluckman, SCJ

Chaplain

Enjoying Fall Activities

Good afternoon tiyospaye – extended family,

The pheasant hunting season opened in South Dakota over this past weekend and it sounded like the hunters were out doing their best.  I heard several shots across the river as we finished Mass Sunday morning.

We are in a period of transition at St. Joseph’s Indian School now, as the fall sports wrap up and the students get ready for the indoor basketball season. Yesterday, the girls in fourth through eighth grades signed up for their basketball teams.

The boys will start having their inter-city league on Sundays.  This program blends students from Chamberlain with St. Joseph’s Lakota students on teams that are made up of sixth, seventh and eighth grade boys.  It is a way for the students to make new friends before they meet up as classmates in high school.  The first game will be Sunday, October 27. The girls will have their inter-city season after the holidays.

Several of our seventh and eighth grade boys have joined the local Explorers Club in Chamberlain, which gives them the opportunity to be part of a service group. They do various community projects throughout the year to raise money – raking leaves, shoveling snow and a car wash, to name a few. Then, the boys decide as a group who or what cause would be a worthy recipient of the funds.  Last year they donated their money to several local people who were dealing with cancer.

They also remember to have some fun! The group has taken trips to a Minnesota Vikings football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

Students who are new to St. Joseph’s are taking part in a program called ‘co-pilot,’ which matches them with another student to help them belong, enjoy and develop relationships at St. Joseph’s. It parallels our big brothers/big sisters program.

From my office, I can see the students playing outside after school. Kids will be kids, and it warms my heart to see them play games like Red Rover, Red Rover and tetherball. With Halloween just around the corner, many students are also busy getting their costumes ready.

Hope you all have a great week.

Sincerely,

Fr. Anthony Kluckman, SCJ

Chaplain