Our School Profile
St. Anne is an elementary school of approximately 500 students from Junior Kindergarten to Grade Eight. It is home to students of many diverse social and ethnic backgrounds and serves the downtown core area of the City of Brampton. It is a fairly transient community and services students from numerous language groups with the three largest non English groups speaking Spanish, Portuguese and Tagalog (Philippino). The special education and ELL programs have a strong emphasis on integration for students needing intensive remediation. In addition to the regular English stream offered from J.K. to Grade Eight, the school also serves as a regional Extended French School for the area of North Brampton. For close to 50 years, St. Anne School has been a dynamic, Christ centered learning environment. Catholic Education, rooted in Christ, is called to a unique way of seeing and interacting with our world. Through the examples of our master teacher, Christ, we take our calling to “reach out into the deep” and “be community” for others seriously. Our Catholic view of academics, spiritual and moral development, sacramental preparation, prayer, discipline, and community, challenge us to use our learning for the benefit of others. We are called to be Christ for others.
At St. Anne School our commitment to academic excellence is a shared responsibility. As a Staff and School Council, we work hard bringing together students, parents, teachers, pastoral team, trustees and other partners to form a Catholic community in the service of the spiritual, intellectual, physical and emotional needs of students in our care. Our students come to us with a variety of strengths and needs, with their Catholic faith as their common bond. Our prayer life, liturgical celebrations, the sacraments, and our faith and values system form the foundation of our school program. The curriculum is broad, balanced and relevant to the needs and aspirations of all our students. A wide range of subjects and learning experiences are offered to develop the skills, abilities and talents of individual students. Accordingly, appropriate assessment procedures are employed regularly to motivate and encourage student success. To ensure coherence and wholeness, subjects are taught within the context of The Ontario Curriculum, Gospel values and sound educational practices.
History of St. Anne
St. Anne Catholic Elementary School celebrated 40 years of Catholic Education in the year 2008.
History of Catholic Education at Dufferin Peel Catholic District School Board
Information about the statue of St. Anne and the Blessed Virgin Mary located at the entrance to our school.
St. Anne, the Mother of Our Blessed Lady has been sculpted in the tradition of Roman Catholic art. St. Anne is cast in her maternal roles, teaching the young girl Mary, the sacred scriptures and guiding her with firm care. Mary’s sense of a special call to give herself to the Father is seen in her expression both of peace and willingness to serve. St. Anne’s serene expression reveals her desire to protect Mary and to see her happy in her vocation.
These two figures were sculpted from a single white pine log. The log is approximately 180 years old and comes from the State of Maine via the Province of Quebec. The statue measures 1.68m in height and 0.7m in diameter. The sculptor, Donald Anthony Picone, born in Dundas Ontario of Italian descent, was twenty seven years old. Mr. Picone studied wood sculpting in St. Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec.
Initial work began on this statue with the modeling of a clay miniature in November of 1981. After the submitted pine model was accepted in late December, work on the final design began in January of 1982. The statue was completed in May, the month of Our Lady, 1982. It has been finished with a special blend of natural bees wax to protect the wood as it ages. The statue was blessed on Saturday, February 5, 1983, following the evening mass by Archbishop Pocock at St. Anne church.
In 1990, the statue left St. Anne’s Church and given as a gift to the newly formed St. Jerome’s Parish. At the beginning of 2005, the statue returned to St. Anne’s Parish and was then gifted to St. Anne School. The statue was refurbished and arrived at the school in May of 2005.