Dear Upper School Families,

What a successful Middle and Upper School Admissions Evening! Thank you for helping to spread the good news about all that is happening at Visitation. We appreciate that you are each a part of our community and we look forward to welcoming new families!

Today was an early release day. In the morning, ninth graders engaged in a day of service and had the opportunity to meet with Sister Katherine Mullin, VHM, a member of the Visitation Monastery of Minneapolis and three seniors who have been working with the Vis Sisters for the past year. They shared the importance of bridging work between our school community and their Monastery, and then had the opportunity to work on projects benefiting the North Minneapolis community. Tenth and eleventh graders took the pre-SAT or ACT, and our seniors worked on their college applications with the college counselors and English faculty. I’m also looking forward to the sophomore grade retreat that will take place on Friday. The students will go to the NET Center in West Saint Paul by bus and return to campus in time for athletics and any other extracurricular activities. These moments are pivotal as the girls are able to deepen their faith and grow their heart-to-heart connections with one another.

It is also a joy to watch the girls continue to learn. Just this week, I attended a session of AP US History. Working in teams, the girls analyzed Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne Portrait of George Washington. It was an exercise that empowered the girls to recognize what they could infer symbolically about this portrait as well as discover what the portrait reveals about the artist’s idea of the first president. Immediately, there was lively discussion as the students discussed the work’s context and how it fit into what was happening at the time of its creation in 1796. The hour flew by and by the end of class, I knew the girls were that much more confident to tackle the course as well as the summative exam that will take place this spring. I also loved that amidst the learning, the girls were encouraging one another in and beyond the classroom, as our student athletes needed to leave early to participate in section competitions. Moments like this one remind me that Visitation is such a special place of learning and living.

Sincerely,


Anna Bachman Barter, PhD
Director of Secondary Education