At St. Michael’s, all our actions and decisions are based on the belief that every person is precious in the eyes of God. We all treat each other how we would like to be treated; with respect, courtesy, and kindness. Each child that attends our academy is nurtured to give them the opportunities to grow and develop academically, socially, and morally. To this end we explicitly teach our students the virtues that we encourage them to develop. We do this through our virtues curriculum which is shared throughout the academy on every book and across our walls.
For each of these virtues we also examine role models that exemplify the characteristics inherent to each virtue. These characters include a range of people, young and old, with and without disabilities, of different ethnic origins and of different religious beliefs. They all bring stories of confidence, resilience, justice compassion, respect and responsibility and honesty and self-belief. We work with our students to embed these virtues and encourage them to emulate these role models in their own lives.
In just two and a half years (2024-2026), the school has raised well in excess of £3000 for a range of charitable causes such as Cafod, Fair Trade, Young Minds, ‘4Louis’ and many more. This month alone, we have brought in donations of tinned food, toys and toiletries and we have created over sixty hampers for Stockton Borough Council. Two weeks ago, some of our student councillors supported the SVP to makeup more than one hundred food bags and the pupils were so grateful at being given the opportunity to help the work of our hardworking parishioners and volunteers. On Thursday this week, our school choir went along to sing carols and Christmas tunes for the residents of Hadrian Park Nursing Home.
Yet our work is never complete! We now have a brilliant new state ofthe art all-weather, multi-sports pitch which we have named the‘Anniversary Ground’ to mark the sixty years our school has been inexistence. We hope that, in time, this facility will be used by the widercommunity, primary schools and local sports teams. We will also beplanting trees in February across Billingham to support the localwildlife and we hope to create more opportunities for our primaryschools to join us in school for any new ideas we come up with.