A letter from Valley Catholic Middle School Principal Dr. Jennifer Gfroerer
Dear VCMS Families,
On Thursday evening, Sept. 24, VCMS held our fourth annual Middle School Lock-In, an event designed to give our students a chance to simply be together, have fun, and build community while also supporting the Valley Catholic Gala.
For four hours, our campus was filled with middle school energy. Students shared pizza and snacks, visited food carts, played games, watched movies, and spent an hour outside in a glow-in-the-dark foam party. With a neon and “mad scientist” theme woven throughout the evening, there was plenty of joyful chaos and a great deal of laughter.
Our original goal was to welcome 100 students. In the end, more than 190 joined us.
We are incredibly grateful to the VCMS staff members who made that possible. They donated an enormous amount of time, energy, creativity, and, in many cases, their own resources to create an evening that our students could enjoy. We are equally grateful to our families for supporting the event and, through their participation, helping us raise funds for the Gala.
Most of all, we are grateful to our students. They came ready to have fun, but they also brought something equally important to the evening: gratitude and respect. Throughout the night, we heard students saying, “Thank you,” to staff members, volunteers, and others who were helping them. Those small moments mattered. They reminded us that community is built not simply by gathering people together, but by the way we choose to treat one another when we are together.
The Lock-In gave us the opportunity to accomplish two things that matter to us: creating a joyful, community-building experience for our students and contributing to the larger Valley Catholic community through our support of the Gala. The extraordinary turnout allowed us to do both – far beyond what we originally anticipated.
Thank you to everyone who gave time, resources, encouragement, or support to make the evening possible. We are deeply grateful for the many hands and hearts that continue to make experiences like this possible for our students.
Dr. Jennifer Gfroerer
