PROVIDENCE — The morning gets underway like any other school day. With a lesson. But not from any ordinary teacher. Standing at the front of the altar, rather than behind the pulpit, where he normally delivers homilies, the 10th Bishop of Providence asks those assembled to hold up a hand and spread out their fingers. “See this [thumb]? Who’s it pointing toward? You! So, when you pray, you should pray for yourself,” Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski, C.Ss.R., begins. “With our index finger, let’s pray for those closest to us. Family, friends, teachers, right?
“This is a powerful finger in the middle, a strong finger,” he continues. “We pray for people in power and authority. Presidents and governors and mayors and all those folks. The ring finger is the weakest. It can’t move by itself. It needs other fingers to help. So, we pray for people who are sick, weak, who need help struggling with problems and difficulties.
“Finally, with this [pinky] finger, which is farthest from us, we pray for people far from us and far from Jesus and His church, that Jesus might touch their hearts so they come back to Him. Isn’t that cool? But we don’t pray with just one hand. Put your two hands together. It’s pretty simple to pray, right? Jesus wants us to spend time with Him. That’s basically what prayer is. If you know how to talk, you know how to pray, because prayer is just talking with Jesus and growing in our love and friendship with Him.”
Whether or not the bishop intentionally chose the location for his lesson—at the front of St. Thomas Catholic Church’s altar—it nonetheless provides appropriately historical symmetry. When St. Thomas opened its regional school in 1926, students lacked a schoolhouse or even a proper classroom. Consequently, the school’s first teachers—invited nuns from the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, based in Scranton, Pennsylvania—gathered their young charges in an open area behind the altar.
For the next three decades, the Sisters taught St. Thomas Regional School students in whatever nearby available space they could find—the boiler room in the basement, for instance. A fact that might be difficult for most of us today to imagine, but not for soon-to-be-85-year-old Jim Murray, one of the school’s earliest students. He serves St. Thomas today as an usher, usually at Saturday evening Masses, but is here a day ahead of time to see and hear Bishop Bruce Lewandowski celebrate a special 100th anniversary Mass for Murray’s elementary school alma mater.
“I remember when we made our First Communion,” recalls Murray, standing at the door looking out onto the church’s front lawn and its statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. “The boys were in our white suits, the girls in white dresses. We all posed for pictures in front of the statue. It really was a neighborhood church. You knew everybody from school and we played together afterward.”
St. Thomas Regional School has undergone a century’s worth of change. The most obvious being that 15 full-time staff now oversee 180 students, from pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade, in a separate school building tucked behind the church at the bottom of historic Fruit Hill Avenue. That ratio of 1 adult for every 12 students has proven so appealing to many area families—some whom aren’t even Catholic—that St. Thomas Regional now enjoys much more demand than the school can supply. Admission has become necessarily quite selective.
The manner in which students learn has further adapted to modern technologies and methods, as interim principal Tracy Colagiovanni, a 30-year St. Thomas employee, explains.
“We do station rotation learning, so it’s all individualized,” Colagiovanni said. “Kids in each classroom are broken up into three distinct groups of between one and seven students: those who are on grade level, those above grade level, and the ones that might need a little extra help, a little bit below grade level.”
For 15 or 20 minutes, a teacher presents a lesson to one group, tailoring it to that particular level, while the other two groups are simultaneously working on individual assignments at different tables in the classroom. When time’s up, the groups switch seats and the process continues throughout the day.
“It’s that personalized, individualized attention,” adds Colagiovanni, “that really makes us stand out from everyone. That’s a big selling point for parents. We also teach religion. All our rooms have smartboards (digital chalkboards), and last year, we bought brand new Chromebooks for the kids.”
Yet at least some of what endeared St. Thomas to folks like Murray remains. Angela Boulay has been a parishioner for more than two decades and the church’s secretary for nearly five. “It’s so welcoming,” she observes from her office in the rectory. “When I sit here with the window open and I hear those kids out there, they’re just so happy. No matter when you walk through those halls, they’re eager and spirited, and you can just see that.”
Julie Mayhew, St. Thomas’ music director and a more recent alumna, agrees. “What I remember most about being at St. Thomas School is the sense of family and community. It’s a small school, you know all the people in your class, you’re with them for eight years, and all the people that we were friendly with through church, also had their children here at St. Thomas. So, there was that constant sense of being surrounded by your faith family. We’d see them here in school every day, and then every weekend at church, and we’re also involved in all the ministries and volunteering, that constant sense of being part of a huge faith community, which we loved. That really sticks with me.”
In addition, Mayhew’s mother, Irene Zanni, taught 5th and 6th graders at the school for several years during the 1980s. Zanni even had her own son, Matthew, as a student back then. “It was wonderful,” she remembers about her teaching experience at St. Thomas, “because it was a beautiful community for the children. Very supportive, giving them a good Catholic background. My late husband and I really wanted our kids to have that, and I very much enjoyed being part of it.”
Immediately following the centennial Mass on September 11, the Bishop walked outside with the St. Thomas community to the back of their school building for another ceremonial moment – the blessing of its new playing field with holy water. “A hundred years!” the bishop marveled as Mass concluded. “Let’s go for 100 more! What do you say?!” The congregation erupted in cheers, as St. Thomas Regional School appears well on its way there.
