Schools

Triumphant return of French class at Seton School

Special To The Catholic Herald

Freshmen (from left) Vincent Verrocchio, Marie Heisler and Veronica Scheetz hold up the St. John Paul II banner that the 2017 student government members donated to Seton School in Manassas. COURTESY

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As the 2017-18 school year begins, Seton School in Manassas will have new teachers, the return of French class, a striking banner for the St. John Paul the Great Center, and new stained glass windows in Our Lady Queen of the Angels Chapel.

Three new teachers will join the faculty. Christan Summers, wife of Seton alumnus Craig (Class of 1990), is a veteran of more than 20 years of teaching, most recently at Church of the Nativity School in Burke. She will teach reading and grammar in the junior high.

Monica Wilson, a native of New Jersey, is a 2017 graduate of Christendom College in Front Royal. She will teach Latin I, II, III and IV.

The third new staff member is a Seton mother, Pamela Prevoznik, who will teach French and a section of Religion 8.

Foreign Language Department Chairman Jill Pogue reminisced about her French studies and her hope the class would return to Seton’s curriculum.

“I took French my senior year with Mrs. Johanna Haggerty (now Schuller) at Seton and I really enjoyed the beauty of the language, the culture and of course the bread and chocolate,” Pogue said. “French went on a hiatus for about five years after Mrs. Schuller’s retirement. But students would often inquire if we could bring it back.”

Pogue said that while watching a Seton soccer game she chatted with Prevoznik about her desire to restore French to the language department.

“Lo and behold, Mrs. Prevoznik knew French and expressed an interest in returning to teaching,” Pogue said. “Now our sideline conversation hope of bringing French back into the halls of Seton has become a reality.”

The banner depicts St. John Paul II, after whom Seton’s gymnasium/auditorium is named. When the gym was built in 1994, Pope John Paul II’s coat of arms was painted in the center circle. Now a banner honoring this great saint, donated by the 2016-17 student government, will hang in the center named for him.

St. John Paul II also is featured in one of the two new stained glass windows in the chapel. Opposite him is the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton window from the former chapel (donated by the Class of 2006). In the back of the chapel, above the St. Michael the Archangel fresco, is the new circular Holy Spirit window to inspire the students to a deeper devotion to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.

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