BRIDGEPORT—St. Raphael Academy is unique among the four campuses of the Catholic Academy of Bridgeport (CAB). Located in the Hollow neighborhood of Connecticut’s largest city, the school educates 242 children in preschool through third grade and serves as the lower campus to CAB’s St. Augustine campus, which is located less than a mile away and serves students in grades 4-8. And soon, St. Raphael will become home to the “Happy Hollow Outdoor Learning Center,” thanks in great part to a $100,000 grant from Impact Fairfield County (FFC).
When complete, the center will include an outdoor classroom, sensory play areas, raised garden beds, a new play structure, and a sports court, along with other infrastructure and security improvements. According to Sister Elizabeth Doyle, ASCJ, principal of St. Raphael’s, all of these elements will provide unique learning opportunities for the school’s students. And yes, even the mini sports court will provide a different aspect of childhood education, such as teamwork, social problem-solving, and gross motor skills.
“Cooperative play, learning the rules of a game, learning strategy … those are really important learning experiences in childhood that give us skills for our whole lives,” she said. “And having the right space where you can really do that is important. We do the best we can with the space we have now, but it will be much better to have a true organized sports court.”
CAB applied for a grant to Impact FFC last fall and made it through several highly selective rounds over the course of many months, including presenting to a Visiting Committee on the site of St. Raphael in the spring. CAB went on to become one of five finalists from an initial pool of over 60 applicants and was invited to give a pitch to Impact FFC members at their Annual Meeting in May. Because Impact FFC empowers women to engage in local philanthropy through deeper knowledge and active participation in grantmaking, it was no surprise that a large percentage of the organization’s 264 members were present at that meeting when they voted to name CAB as one of two $100,000 winners.
According to Angela Pohlen, CAB’s Executive Director, “It’s organizations like Impact FFC that believe in us and who believe like we do that when it comes to our kids, good is never good enough and great can always be greater. Impact FFC is making us greater. This grant award will affect a permanent improvement on our St. Raphael campus and significantly impact the experience of generations of students to come.”
One of the focal points of the Happy Hollow Outdoor Learning Center is the opportunity it will provide for creative teaching and learning in an outdoor space, including opportunities for cross-curricular lessons in science, art, theater, and other disciplines. Once complete, getting St. Raphael’s students out of the school building and into the outdoor space is high on Sister Elizabeth’s priority list. According to her, many students might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience the great outdoors.
“This is a very urban environment; our children live in multi-family homes or apartments (and) most don’t really have a backyard space to play in,” she said. “So I want The Happy Hollow Outdoor Learning Center to feel nature-rich, and give students the opportunity to really explore nature, dig their hands in the dirt, plant things and watch them grow, and watch the butterflies come. It’s one thing to learn about the lifecycle of a butterfly, and it’s another thing to be able to go outside and observe it with your own eyes.”
CAB’s St. Raphael’s campus is open through the school year from 7 am to 5:30 pm, and it hosts a day camp for six weeks in the summer. With those extended hours comes an opportunity to have formative childhood experiences students might not otherwise get. “This is the place not only where they learn and go to school, but it’s also where they get to do after-school activities and have free play, downtime and an opportunity to be outside,” Sister Elizabeth said.
“This is the place where they have the time and the space to do all of those childhood things, not just learning at school. So for our community, it’s really important to have a space like The Happy Hollow Outdoor Learning Center that expands a child’s experience beyond just the classroom.”
At the core of St. Raphael’s lies its Catholic identity, and Sister Elizabeth stressed God is at the center of everything they do. A student’s spiritual development is just as important as their intellectual and emotional development. And Sister Elizabeth said the Happy Hollow Outdoor Learning Center will provide no shortage of opportunities to demonstrate the glory of God’s creation and to see the beautiful things he has made.
“I love doing little meditations with the children: the kind where you can go outside, everybody finds a leaf and picks it up, and you just contemplate it,” Sister Elizabeth said. “You look at the little veins in the leaf, see all the different colors in it, hold it up to the sunlight and see its different parts. And if God made this leaf so intricately and beautifully and with such care, how much more did he do that for you, and your heart, and your body, and your life and your family? Seeing God’s beautiful creation helps us realize how much he loves us, how he created this space for us, and how he created us.”
(The Catholic Academy of Bridgeport is one school on four campuses: St. Andrew, St. Ann, St. Augustine and St. Raphael. It educates 920 students each year, 92 percent of whom identify as people of color, 87 percent of whom come from families living at or below the poverty level, and 40% of whom are non-Catholic. Each year, CAB must raise close to $3 million just for need-based assistance. To learn more about CAB, please visit www.catholicacademybridgeport.org or call 203.362.2990.)
