- 7 hours ago
- 6 min read
It's Fall Festival week! Hope to see you all there!
Upcoming Events
Friday, October 10 - Family Friday. Coffee after dropoff. Please bring treats/pastries/fruit to share. Outside if weather is nice, in cafeteria if not.Â
Friday, October 10 - Fall Festival! 5 pm -7 pm at the school. See section below.
Tuesday, October 14 - Advisory Council (5:30 pm - 6:30 pm) & SAPSA Meeting (6:30 pm - 7:30 pm) Â Â
Thursday & Friday, October 16 & 17 - NO SCHOOL (MEA) Â Â
Friday, October 31 - NO SCHOOL (Conference Prep) Â
Fall Festival
The Fall Festival is almost here!! It is this Friday, October 10, 5-7pm at the school. Thanks to all who have stepped forward to volunteer!
We still need:
Wolf Ridge Calendars for Sale
Wolf Ridge Calendars will be for sale at Fall Festival!
Each year, SAP Elementary 5th graders take an unforgettable trip to Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, MN. This 5 day, 4 overnight camp experience builds core memories through outdoor adventures and experiential learning about MN History and the Lake Superior Area. The cost to attend is $300/student but NO child is turned away for lack of payment.Â
One way scholarships are provided is through the sale of calendars featuring Minnesota Wildlife. This year's photographer is Dominique Braud.Â
Calendars cost $20Â and ALL proceeds go towards funding Wolf Ridge scholarships for 5th grade students.Â
School Directory
The St. Anthony Park Elementary School Directory is the main resource for student and teacher contact information. It includes class and staff lists, as well as SAPSA, Advisory Council and district contact information.
We are currently compiling the School Directory for the 2025-26 school year.
Every family will receive a copy. You are not required to submit your contact information for the directory, but we encourage you to do so! You can submit contact information online HERE.
Remembering Dexter Jr.
We have sad news to share—Dexter Jr., the beloved science room guinea pig, passed away last week at the ripe old age of 5.
Dexter Jr. was just about the friendliest guinea pig you could ever meet, and he loved being visited by his students, eating his fresh veg, and all the adventures he had at SAP Elementary. His friends Pumpkin and Pancake will carry on the school guinea pig tradition.
Ms. Wilson had these words to say about her departed friend:
Dexter Jr was my little work buddy who brought so much joy and smiles to so many.Â
His little squeaks of communication were always the first thing I heard in the morning :-)
I will miss taking him to the cafeteria for lunch and to visit the office staff as well.
Thanks to Minnepau Vet Clinic for their help in his final days.
Book Fair
The Literati Book Fair is now open for online ordering! Click HERE to start shopping for books. Orders purchased online will ship at the end of book fair week.
The book fair itself will be held in the school library November 5-7, during conferences.
Inside & Outside with the Nature PreK
Ann Griffen, a teacher at SAP Elementary's Nature PreK, sent us this fall update:
Hello! My name is Ann Griffin and I am the lead teacher in Nature PreK.  This is our 3rd year at SAP. We are a program through ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education). We are play based and nature centered. We have both a full day option with child care and a half day option for families. We spend most of the day outside and go outside in all kinds of weather.
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We have had a wonderful fall! We learned about nature through our 5 senses.Â
We have: painted with nature, cracked acorns for the squirrels, ate and cooked with food from our garden, created delicious mud pies in the mud kitchen, climbed trees and used a rope to climb a hill, gone on daily hikes, created fairy houses in the park, observed turkeys, worms, dragon flies, and bumblebees, and recorded our observations in our nature journals. We have learned about our new friends and used our imagination to build houses and castles. We are excited to watch as the seasons change throughout the year. Â
Fall Bulb Fundraiser
Get your tulips, daffodils and wildflowers here! Buy bulbs to plant this fall and enjoy next spring, while supporting our school! Shop online. Orders will ship directly to your home. The bulb sale is sponsored by Flower Power Fundraising. SAP Elementary receives 50% of all sales!
Orders accepted until October 15.
Order bulbs HERE.
History Lesson—St. Paul's First Teacher
(This is one of a series of short articles by the Wolf Pack Press on the history of SAP Elementary and the St. Paul Public Schools.)
Harriet Bishop was the first public school teacher in St Paul, and also the first teacher in what was to become the state of Minnesota.
In 1846 Dr. Thomas S. Williamson, a teacher and missionary living with the Dakota at Kaposia (located in modern day South St. Paul) noticed that the small but growing settlement across the river, previously known as Pig's Eye but now re-christened St. Paul, had no school. He wrote a letter to the Board of National Popular Education, asking for a teacher to be sent to the frontier hamlet:
I suppose she might have twelve or fifteen scholars to begin with, and, if she should have a good talent of winning the affections of children, (and one who has not should not come,) after a few motnths, she would have as many as she could attend to.
He added that:
A teacher coming should bring books with her sufficient to begin a school, as there is no bookstore within three hundred miles.
The letter was received by Catharine Beecher, a sister of author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who at the time was running a seminary to train young women as teachers in Albany. Bishop, one of her students, accepted the offer. She arrived in 1847, the same year as St. Paul's first doctor.
Her first schoolhouse was a located at the corner of St. Peter Street and Kellog Boulevard, a "mud-walled log hovel, a primitive blacksmith's shop," as she describes it in her memoir Floral Home:
Some wooden pins had been driven into the logs, across which rough boards were placed for seats. The luxury of a chair was accorded to the teacher, and a cross-legged table occupied the center of the loose floor.
A friendly hen, unwilling to relinquish her claim, on the ground of preoccupancy, daily placed a token of her industry in the corner, and made all merry with her loud cackle and abrupt departure. Snakes sometimes obtruded their heads through the floor, rats looked in at the open door...
St. Paul schools were racially diverse from the very beginning: Bishop's class had students with French, Swiss, English, Dakota and Ojibwe ancestry. Only a few of her students were fluent in English; one of them translated her lessons into French and Dakota.
A dynamic and resourceful figure, Bishop soon raised funds to build a better school. She was active in the temperence and women's suffrage movements, and married John McConkey, a widower with four children, in 1858 (they divorced in 1867). Harriet Island was named after her, and The Harriet Bishop, a paddlewheeler, currently docks there.
Sources:
A History of the City of Saint Paul to 1875 by J Fletcher Williams
Floral Home; or, First Years of Minnesota by Harriet Bishop
"Harriet Bishop: A Doer and a Mover" by Norma Sumerdorf, published in MNHistory Magazine
Spirit Wear
Rep your favorite elementary school! T-shirts ($15/kid, and $20/adult) and school signs ($10) are available for pre-order now. Email president@sapsamn.org for preorders. Or, look for in-person sales at school events.
For existing orders, shirt pickup is moved back to 10/10, not curriculum night as I initially planned.
Have a great week, Wolf Pack!
If you have suggestions for content or questions about anything in the Wolf Pack Press, please reach out to Joel Van Valin at communications@sapsamn.org
