Not only did Kathleen Weslowski, the second grade teacher and assistant principal at St. Mary’s School of Piscataway in Clinton, Maryland, recently receive a 2021 Golden Apple Award for teaching excellence, but her principal, Lynsie Reavis, also baked her a basket of golden apple cookies – vanilla sugar cookies with gold frosting, with the teacher’s initials on the green leaf of each apple and the year of the award on each stem.
“She gives all of herself to everything at St. Mary’s,” Reavis said. “She’s been here since she was a student at St. Mary’s, and she gives her all so all of our students can be successful.”
Weslowski, who also serves as the admissions director at St. Mary’s School, was surprised with the Golden Apple Award while she was leading a virtual class in art to her second graders on May 28. The Golden Apple Award, giving annually to 10 Catholic school teachers in the Archdiocese of Washington for teaching excellence and dedication to Catholic education, is sponsored by the Donahue Family Foundation and includes a $5,000 check and a golden apple.
Vicky McCann, the archdiocese’s director of curriculum and instruction, was among Catholic Schools Office representatives there to present the award. The surprise guests there to congratulate Weslowski included her husband Brian and their children Matt, who is 20, and Katie, who is 17. Weslowski hugged her family members and principal and was handed a bouquet of gold balloons.
“We hear it (this honor) is very well-deserved. You wear a lot of hats” here,” McCann said.
Reavis quipped, “All the hats!”
Before the surprise presentation, Father Samuel Plummer, St. Mary’s pastor, said in an interview that Weslowski is totally dedicated to the school and its students.
“She’s grounded in her Catholic faith,” the priest said. “She believes in the beauty of the Church and the mission of the Church, and she wants to share that with her students so they also know the Lord as she does.”
In a statement nominating Weslowski for the Golden Apple Award, Father Plummer wrote about the impact that she has had on her students, noting, “As the longtime second grade teacher in our proudly Catholic school, she has catechized literally hundreds of children to trust in the mercy of the Lord in the Sacrament of Penance, and to receive and adore Him in His Real Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist.”
The pastor praised Plummer for what she has done for the entire school, pointing out how she was “instrumental in establishing our Pre-K program, and building a new 21st century Media Center where once there was a dated library.”
And Father Plummer also commended Weslowski’s work as a teacher, assistant principal and as the school’s admissions director during the COVID-19 pandemic: “Not only did Kathy help keep all of our current students engaged wherever they were, she increased enrollment in 2020 in a school in hard-hit Prince George’s County.”
St. Mary’s School of Piscataway’s enrollment increased to 143 students for the recently completed 2020-21 school year, after having 135 students the previous year, and the school is doing well in its enrollment for the upcoming year.
Interviewed after the ceremony, Weslowski said, “First of all, I’m completely overwhelmed, because I work with such a great team… My coworkers are amazing. Another reason I’ve stayed here so long (is) we’re so close. We’re a big family here.”
Now in her 20th year as a teacher at St. Mary’s, Weslowski graduated from there in 1985 and then graduated from the now-closed La Reine High School in Suitland in 1989, and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Maryland and later a master’s degree in elementary education from Trinity College in Washington.
“I was glad to be able to come back. This school has been a part of my life so long, it was an honor to come back and be able to give back to the school that gave so much to me,” Weslowski said.
Noting how Catholic schools have been a part of her life since she was young, the Golden Apple teacher said, “I got so much from my education in Catholic schools, that I wanted to give back. In Catholic school, you’re able to teach the most important thing. I’m able to teach them about Jesus and reach them spiritually.”
The longtime second grade teacher said it has been a special privilege to prepare her students over the years to receive their First Holy Communion and First Penance. “It’s such an honor to be able to do that, and to be a part of such a big day in their lives,” she said.
Asked how she feels about her students, Weslowski said, “They’re like my own. At home if I talk about ‘my kids,’ I’m talking about my two and the kids I’m teaching.”
Like other Catholic school teachers and administrators, she continued her work during the pandemic, transitioning to virtual learning after Catholic school campuses closed for safety reasons last spring.
“Last year, it was a little difficult at first,” she said, adding, “You know what? The kids are resilient, and they were able to pick up right where we left off… The kids have been amazing through the whole process.”
After Easter this year, St. Mary’s welcomed students back to the school, while some students continued their online classes.
“It was an amazing moment to have them back in here,” Weslowski said. “I missed them so much. It’s so hard to reach them online like you do in-person.”
Weslowski played a central role in two major events at St. Mary’s School in Piscataway over the past five years.
In 2016, she invited Jeff Kinney, the author of the best-selling “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” children’s book series, to visit St. Mary’s School. Weslowski and Kinney both grew up in the parish and participated in the youth group there and have remained friends over the years.
During his visit, Kinney regaled the students with stories about how some of the misadventures of his “Wimpy Kid” characters were based on his funny experiences as a youth at St. Mary’s Parish, and later as a student at Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville, where he graduated in 1989. He told them that the “cheese touch” in his books was inspired by a mysterious piece of cheese that youth noticed on the playground outside St. Mary’s School. In the book, characters fearfully avoid being touched by that cheese because of the bad luck it seemingly forebodes.
Remembering her famous friend’s visit back to St. Mary’s, Weslowski said, “It was a big moment. I kind of lived that time with him. It was fun to be able to share that part of St. Mary’s history with him.”
Then in January 2020, the new Media Center at St. Mary’s School opened, thanks to a generous contribution from Kinney, and also thanks to contributions from parishioners and school families who together pledged nearly $1 million for the parish’s capital campaign.
That campaign provided funding for the Media Center, the remodeled school library that now features state-of-the-art technology and an expanded selection of books. Donations supported class sets of Chromebooks, Kindle Fires and virtual reality goggles, new educational software, a dry-erase lab table and an automated checkout system.
“I was just so proud when Jeff gave us the money. He said, ‘I just want to do this for the kids,’” Weslowski said, adding that he wanted “to further their ability to have books in their hands.”
The school’s veteran teacher and administrator added, “We designed that library for the kids. They deserve everything that we can give to them.”
Weslowski’s classroom includes a traditional display of letters shown in cursive writing, along with statues of Jesus and Mary, an open Bible, and stuffed animals and Lincoln logs. As children sit in the classroom’s reading corner, they can read a book to their stuffed animal.
“The greatest blessing is watching them grow, seeing where they start and where they end, especially spiritually,” Weslowski said. “They’re so excited about their faith, and I get to be a part of that.”
She hopes St. Mary’s second graders leave her classroom knowing “I love and care about them very much, and I’m always here if they need me. I also hope they leave with an increased knowledge of their faith, and hopefully (they will) be closer to Jesus because of what we do here.”
Before the surprise Golden Apple Awards presentation, Weslowski’s husband Brian, who works as an IT contractor for the government, said, “She’s definitely dedicated to her kids, that’s for sure.”
Their daughter Katie, who will be a senior at Bishop McNamara High School this fall, had her mom as a teacher at St. Mary’s, and said she’s very passionate about teaching and very dedicated and creative.
“She had fun ways of teaching everything,” Katie Weslowski said, remembering how her mom made a poster to illustrate the water cycle, and in a recent exercise to teach her students about shapes, she had them design a playground.
Tomuke Ebuwei, a middle school math and science teacher at St. Mary’s School, noted how her students who had been having an online class that morning were happy to learn that Mrs. Weslowski had been named as a Golden Apple teacher.
“They were very excited, because a lot of them had her in class, and they know how great a teacher she is,” Ebuwei said.
Lynsie Reavis, St. Mary’s principal, said she baked the golden apple cookies for Weslowski because “I wanted to do something personal, something special for her.”
Praising her colleague and friend, the principal said, “She is St. Mary’s. You can tell this is really her calling, and God has called her to teach the Catholic faith to all of these children all these years, and you can tell she really believes what she teaches.”
