Students from kindergarten to eighth grade filed into the gymnasium of the Woods Academy in Bethesda to attend the Jan. 27 Founders Day Mass celebrated there by Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory. During the cardinal’s visit to the Catholic private school – which is fully enrolled with more than 320 students and has a Montessori preschool and also a lower school and middle school – he also blessed the Woods Academy’s newly renovated South Wing.

In his homily at the Mass, Cardinal Gregory asked students if they had been home when all the lights went out, because of an incident such as a storm or power failure.

“When the lights go out, you get a little frightened, because we’re not made to live in the darkness. We are people of the light,” Cardinal Gregory said. “And so when the lights go out, when the electricity goes out, something strange happens in the house, it becomes a little dangerous, a little scary. And then all of a sudden, when the lights come back on, everything seems to be normal again.”

He went on to say how if a house is dark long enough, people will look for a candle or flashlight to see a little light. Cardinal Gregory noted that Jesus asks people to be the light of the world, and he referenced the song “This Little Light of Mine.”

Cardinal Gregory said the Mass was celebrating both the school’s founders and the feast day of St. Angela Merici. He said the Woods Academy has a relationship with St. Angela, an Italian religious educator, who founded a school for children.

"Angela decided that four children also had lights and that she went out and she encouraged four children to let their little light shine as well. So today the church honors St. Angela Merici," Cardinal Gregory said.

St. Angela established the religious Organization of Saint Ursula, generally known as the Ursulines, an order of women religious. The Woods Academy originally opened as Ursuline Academy. In 1975, a group of dedicated parents re-established it as Our Lady of the Woods Academy and subsequently The Woods Academy. In 1977, the school moved to its current location at the intersection of Burdette and Greentree Road in Bethesda.

Following the Mass, Cardinal Gregory blessed the new South Wing of the school, following renovations that started there last June. The new structure includes a new service learning kitchen, library, and collaborative learning spaces. 

The cardinal walked through the halls and into classrooms still under construction, language classrooms in session and a couple of the Montessori preschool classrooms with children ages three to five. Students also asked the cardinal for blessings and to pray for family members.

Ines Vega, a Woods Academy parent and a member of the trustee board and Campus Development and Community Relations committee that was involved with the renovation project, noted, "What we were trying to do is we were trying to incorporate the strategic plan goals for the school, which is embracing of course our community elements and as well as our innovation and special curriculum elements like our world languages. We have an innovation lab for all of our technology and different curriculum components," Vega said.

For Vega, the supportive community at the Woods Academy is what makes it a stand-out school. 

"It's such a welcoming community and the learning process is very supportive for each child and how they kind of build on each other. The teachers and all the adults in the building are there for each child and their special interests," Vega said.

Joining a Catholic community was important to Vega, who is originally from Colombia. She said that without family close by to contribute to faith formation, Catholic education helps expose her children to faith. 

"As a community, when we have young children, our extended family also helps us in faith education. But being away from our extended family here...when we were younger and had young children, we wanted to have a strong faith-based education for them where they could explore that aspect of their lives," Vega said. "Also just the values that are Catholic, but also universal values that are embraced here. Especially like putting your faith into service projects and serving the community is a very big aspect of the Woods Academy that attracted us here."

Eighth grader Elizabeth Tedla will soon be graduating from Woods Academy after 11 years of education. Although she is excited for the next chapter of her life, she cannot help but reminisce over the friends and memories she made while a student there.

"I like how they're all inclusive and if you're new here, you have friends instantly and everyone's really welcoming, which I really like," Tedla said of her school.

Tedla, whose favorite course is Spanish, has already begun to experience the new buildings in her language class. 

“It feels really nice and when you walk in, it’s really bright…it feels really energetic, which is nice when you're walking through. If you’re having a tough day, it’s bright lights and bright colors,” Tedla said.  

Tedla will soon be taking a class trip to Toledo, Spain later this semester for nine days. 

"I think that's going to be really fun, and we're preparing for it. We're taking tests, and we're experiencing how we're going to talk, and there's extra lessons you get to do so you can talk to people in Spain in Spanish," Tedla said. 

Jodie Shoemaker, the Assistant Head of School at Woods Academy who has worked at the school for 21 years, noted, "I always knew that I wanted to be in a faith-based school, in particular Catholic. I joke, I've been in Catholic school my entire life. I grew up going to Catholic school, went to Georgetown University as well. So yes, that's primarily what drew me here." 

Shoemaker said that the project to renovate comes after a few years of upgrading different parts of the school.

“It was time and we needed to upgrade some systems. We really wanted to focus on making some more flexible learning spaces for our community. The library and our innovation lab are kind of the heart of our school, and we really wanted to make those really beautiful showcase spaces for our students and families,” Shoemaker said. 

The school administrator said the day’s Mass was the first time she saw the cardina,l and she felt the homily was particularly relevant to the Woods Academy’s vision for its renovations. 

"I knew he loved children, and he likes to visit schools, so I was very excited to have him here. I was proud and a little emotional about our students and teachers today. They just celebrated so beautifully,” Shoemaker said. “I think that Cardinal Gregory's homily was so, so fitting for what we're doing here. One of our special focuses on these spaces was to really increase the amount of natural light that was coming into them so that they would be warm and inviting and very special places for the students, and for him to talk about letting your light shine, I feel like the kids can come in here and really feel what that means."