Notre Dame’s St. Peter Chanel Society, which is comprised of leadership donors making annual gifts of $1,000-$50,000 to The Notre Dame Fund, welcomed 31 new members yesterday as NDF director Gregory Simon distributed official membership pins to all of Notre Dame’s fourth graders.
The students earned their memberships because they collectively donated $1,000 to the NDF as a result of a special project related to the school’s International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program “Unit of Inquiry.”
Fourth-grade teachers Molly Campbell and Kathy Dugan’s classes recently completed their Phase Four Unit of Inquiry on the economy, which required the students at the end of the study unit to run an actual retail store. The fourth graders developed products to sell in the store after market research was conducted, and the store remained open for a week as the “salespersons" were visited by parents, students and faculty, all of whom purchased the goods for sale.
After calculating the net profits after expenses, the students decided to donate a portion of those profits to The Notre Dame Fund, which goes toward helping to provide programs for students in all three divisions of the school.
Campbell and Dugan then invited Simon to visit the fourth-grade “student businesspersons” and he was presented with the $1,000 donation.
According to Simon, the donation qualified the fourth-grade class to be members of a very elite group of givers.
“Through their annual contributions, SPC members provide the school with the resources necessary to fulfill our mission to form Christian people, upright citizens and academic scholars,” he said. “It was such a big surprise when I received the call from the lower division about their gift. It is beyond exciting when we see this kind of generosity from such young people. I really think they get it when we say The Notre Dame Fund slogan, ‘every student, every day.’”
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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." The Marist Fathers and Brothers sponsor NDPMA's Catholic identity and manages its educational program. Notre Dame is accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools, the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.