Bobcat Blog

Knowing what we know now about Jon Dicke, a 2011 8^th-grade graduate of RCLS, it’s no wonder his earliest memory of RCLS is the school’s annual invitational basketball tournament. Now, since he is an Exercise Science/pre-medicine student and football player at Southwest Minnesota State University, it is clear that this one-time Bobcat has always been drawn to the thrill of sports. Indeed, basketball is not just his first RCLS memory, but makes up many of the graduate’s “greatest memories” from his first school, where he obtained the immeasurable value of foundation, friendship, and fortitude.

Two years ago, one RCLS 5th grader was a very different little girl than she is today. As her mom tells the story, she notes that  the change she has seen in her daughter since her move to RCLS "is nothing short of amazing. It truly is amazing what caring teachers and peers will do to a child’s self-esteem.” Relationships and the care and kindness that characterize them offer a “dimension” of academic achievement that is so often overlooked and undervalued. One girl's story shows us just how valuable this dimension is to a child––inside and outside the classroom.

Screen time - how much is too much? 

Since there is no clear-cut answer to such a question and since today's children are at a "disadvantage" if they don't have experience with new technologies, a more appropriate question might be "how can we make screen time a positive, productive experience for our students?" School counselor Aaron Bakke offers tips and tools for doing just that.

Our ultimate goal for our children determines the choices we make for them and guides how we help them learn to make decisions. As a parent, consider what "end" you have in mind for your child(ren). What's the one thing you'd want them to have if everything else were stripped away?

Wonderfully, Advent gives us the opportunity to "begin with the end in mind" every day and in every area of life. It is a time to consider and to teach the ultimate framework of life––of all reality.

I have known Matt and Alicia Cory for quite a while, and I thought I knew the answer to the question I was about to ask them, but I posed it to them anyway.

“Why are you at RCLS?”

“Small class sizes, the quality of the education, and breadth of programming” Matt announced, definitively and without hesitation.

It's not an easy thing to transfer kids from one school to another, so I couldn't believe it was as easy as that. It turns out, there is a whole lot of significance to each of those reasons.

On their first day of kindergarten at RCLS in 2001, Micaela Rud and Nathan Witte and their parents faced the start of their school careers like all young families do: a little nervous, a little excited, and with a whole lot of anticipation––hopes and dreams, if you will––about what their school years would bring. Now, 17 years later, Micaela and Nathan are a newly married couple, who paused in their academic pursuits just long enough to reflect on the foundation they received at RCLS, a place where they learned to learn, love, and believe.