St. Joseph High School celebrates its centennial

St. Joseph High School has provided a Catholic education in the Alle-Kiski Valley for the past 100 years, and events to recognize and honor that tradition are being planned as part of a yearlong centennial celebration.

“We are the first Catholic high school to reach this milestone in Pittsburgh,” says Shane Palumbo, a 1992 alumna who is the school's admissions director and celebration coordinator.

The celebratory events will start with a Mass of Thanksgiving with Diocese of Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik on Sept. 13 at the Natrona Heights school's athletic center.

In conjunction with the centennial celebration, organizers have planned a pilgrimage for about 80 students and their families to welcome Pope Francis as he visits Philadelphia on Sept. 26.

The beginning

St. Joseph opened Sept. 2, 1915, in Natrona, and it had just nine students in its first graduating class in 1917.

The school now serves more than 200 students from an area that covers 44 parishes and 21 public-school districts in four counties. St. Joseph shares its main building with Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament School, which serves pre-kindergarten through eighth-graders.

The school's current principal, Beverly Kaniecki, attended St. Joseph and graduated in 1964. She also had six younger siblings who graduated from the school.

“I attended SJHS in the old building in Natrona and remember, with 46-plus students in a classroom, the sisters used to switch classrooms for classes and not the students,” Kaniecki says. “During my senior year, instead of having a prom, faculty and students traveled by bus to attend the World's Fair in New York City. In order to make this trip possible, we sold two tons of the World's Finest Chocolate bars!”

Kaniecki started her teaching career at the school in 1979 as a math teacher — “I actually taught my youngest twin sisters calculus.” She became the first lay principal in 1991. Her husband and two daughters also are alumni.

In 1993, Kaniecki hired Christine Janicik Harmon, a 1982 alumna, as the school's counselor.

“When I was a student, we didn't have a school counselor, and, after my experiences in counseling both youth and in the drug and alcohol field, I realized how important a dedicated and enthusiastic school counselor could help SJHS,” says Harmon, whose maternal grandparents, mother, three younger brothers and extended family also attended St. Joseph's.

The school relocated from Natrona to Natrona Heights in 1977.

Harmon says during her student days, the school had fewer opportunities.

“We had no gym of our own, very few sports for women, and our class choices were very limited — two languages, art for most as an elective, a few computers,” she says.

Curriculum changes

There have been significant changes in career and college preparation since her student days, Harmon says.

“My class of 1982 was the first class to have offered the chance to take a college-in-high-school course: Calculus 22 from the University of Pittsburgh,” she says. “We now offer over 15 courses for college credit.”

Students also have a broader choice of electives to pursue their interests, including psychology, communication, web design, arts, music appreciation, computer programming and robotics.

“Robotics was a programmable robot arm that was used with physics and other classes when I was a student,” says Jonathan Woytek, a 1996 alumnus who teaches robotics, programming and web design and serves as the school's technology coordinator. “It was programmed on an Apple II. That was great fun and started to open my eyes to things that were possible.

“Now, robotics is an entire set of elective classes that I get to teach, bringing some of my experience at academic research robotics back to the students,” Woytek says. “Every day, I get inspired by them to try new things and develop new projects to then help to push them a little further. Hopefully, I can help their eyes to be opened the way mine were when I was a student.”

St. Joseph underwent a $9 million project including construction of a three-story educational and athletic complex next door to the parish. The 33,500-square-foot Walter Dlubak Athletic Center opened in December 2008.

The school's Science and Technology Center opened for the 2009-10 academic year. The state-of-the-art classrooms were enabled with wi-fi, laboratories and rooms for guidance counseling, faculty and alumni relations.

Woytek says technology changes are ongoing and require upgrades.

“Technology marches ever onward,” Woytek says. “We were always upgrading when I was here as a student, and we continue to upgrade now. I remember learning to type on electric typewriters, and by the time I graduated, we were working on some of the first inter-computer networks to connect the yearbook production machines so that editors could share files more easily. Now, of course, every student gets an iPad, typing is no longer a subject, and the entire building is covered by high-speed wired and wireless networks.”

Kaniecki says Latin, literature, geometry and religion, which were first offered in 1915, continue to be taught at the school today.

“Our mission has always been to graduate men and women whose lives are rooted in our core values: sanctity, justice, honor and scholarship,” she says.

Upholding traditions

The school maintains several traditions, including class celebrations, prom, a Remembrance Day prayer service for alumni and friends, ring day and an overnight trip for seniors.

“The events that are traditions now such as ‘ring day' and senior overnight retreat were important to my friendships in high school, and I love that they are still a part of SJHS,” Harmon says.

“Ring day is when juniors have the class rings they picked out at the end of sophomore year blessed and presented to them by a senior,” Harmon says. “This occurs during Mass celebration in early October, which marks them as upperclassmen and women who are the leaders of the school.”

The senior overnight trip is a retreat in late May where students celebrate Mass, participate in small groups with teachers and share meals.

Harmon says the students also “use this time to reflect on the past and future while recognizing positive attributes about each member of the class. It is sometimes a time to make amends and wish the best for classmates.”

While students went to the St. Joseph Motherhouse in Baden for the retreat when Harmon was a student, they have since used Gilmary Retreat Center in Coraopolis and, this past spring, used the Bishop Connare Retreat Center in Greensburg.

“One of the things I loved about the school is that our class was a family,” Woytek says. “This is a theme that still exists today in the school. When we get together as a group at an event or even just running into others at a local gathering, it's like we never left. Conversations pick up where they left off, everyone shares what is happening in their lives, that sort of thing. But, more importantly, the friendships and connections and trust relationships that were made years ago remain intact, and that's an amazing thing.”

Kaniecki says friendships she made at St. Joseph have lasted a lifetime.

“I have remained good friends with several of my classmates. In fact, we just celebrated our gold reunion (50 years) last June. We had a combined gold and silver reunion at SJHS and had a great turnout.”

Kaniecki says alumni and the community have continually been factors in the school's success.

“Throughout the years, there has always been a working group or an advisory board or a campaign board of active volunteers moving SJHS forward,” Kaniecki says.

Debbie Black is a contributing writer for Trib Total Media.