For the students at St. Mary’s School of Piscataway, it was a blessing to be back together for the first day of school on Aug. 31, 2021, and along the way, they and their backpacks received a special blessing. 

The day began with the students assembling outside the school in Clinton, Maryland, with Father Samuel Plummer, St. Mary’s pastor, saying a prayer and sprinkling holy water on younger students seated together on a walkway and older students standing side-by-side in the yard, for the school’s traditional “Backpack Blessing” inaugurating the new school year.

“Blessing the backpacks was a lot of fun,” the priest said in a later interview, adding, “If I am honest, I was trying to fling the holy water more at the kids than the backpacks.”

Lynsie Reavis, the principal of St. Mary's School of Piscataway, noted, “This was the first time we’ve all been together since the pandemic started… it really was the perfect way to start the school year off.”

Like other Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Washington, St. Mary’s campus closed in mid-March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The school offered virtual learning to all its students until after Easter 2021, when it adopted a hybrid model, with about 40 of its 140 students returning for in-person learning, while the rest continued with online classes.

 As St. Mary’s students were learning virtually, school and parish administrators had several improvements done to the campus, including repaving the parking lot and driveway, fixing the school building’s siding, and putting in new flooring in the cafeteria.

 In January 2020 just two months before the coronavirus shutdown, Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory blessed St. Mary’s new Media Center, which opened thanks to generous contributions from parish and school families and from Jeff Kinney, the best-selling author of “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” book series who grew up in the parish. The media center in the remodeled school library features state-of-the art technology and an expanded selection of books, with the school having new Chromebooks, Kindle Fires, virtual reality goggles and new educational software. 

On their first day for the 2021-22 school year, St. Mary’s students were once again all together for in-person learning at the newly renovated school with its new Media Center.

“It was a great joy to see the students back together on the first day of school,” said Father Plummer. “Even though this is now my second year at St. Mary’s, this is really the first time I have seen all of the kids together, since most of the kids learned from home last year. Having kids laughing, singing, playing and praying really animates the life of a parish. Seeing them gave me a renewed enthusiasm as pastor.”

He credited St. Mary’s principal, Lynsie Reavis, and Kathleen Weslowski, the school’s assistant principal, second grade teacher and admissions director, for their hard work in increasing the enrollment there. St. Mary’s School of Piscataway exceeded its goal of having 150 students for this school year, marking the second straight year that enrollment has increased there, despite the ongoing pandemic.

This spring, Weslowski  was one of 10 teachers in the Archdiocese of Washington to receive a 2021 Golden Apple Award for teaching excellence.

Reavis said it was wonderful to see everyone again and to resume in-person learning as a school community, and she noticed how students had grown during the pandemic while they were apart for all those months.

 “It’s not the same online. Everybody did their best,” she said. “The impact is greater when they are in the building.”

St. Mary’s principal noted that a special benefit of all the students being back is that not only can they learn together, but they can also pray and grow in their faith together in their religion classes and at an all-school Mass in St. Mary’s Church every Friday.

On the first day at St. Mary’s School of Piscataway, Reavis walked down the hallways and looked in classrooms, and as she viewed the students wearing face masks as a coronavirus safety precaution, the principal said she could still see the excitement and smiles on their faces, as they were together again.