Franciscan at Home

Catholic school educators: heed the challenge! Extend your vocation response to include the family.

The vocation of the Catholic school teacher calls us to be catalysts that lead students to come to know, love, and serve God. In bygone times, home and school worked “hand in glove” to form a Christian character within the child. Some contemporary families are enthusiastic about pursuing that call. Many others, however, admit feelings of inferiority when it comes to being the spiritual formators of their children. They count on us to fill in the gaps that they perceive exist. Those parents need us to evangelize them.

What? You might say, I am already on overload! Lesson plans that incorporate various learning styles and mediums, differentiating instruction, student support meetings, mainstreaming, maintaining the student information system, extracurricular activities, faculty committee work, school duties (arrival, lunch, dismissal) . . . and the list goes on. Now you want me to add intentional evangelization of the family? I have no more time! Well, the good news is that you do not need more time if you apply the adage, “work smarter, not harder.”

First, identify projects for liturgical seasons and other faith-formation topics that are part of your normal teaching curriculum. Then, develop interactive lessons that lead from the head (ideas) to the heart (affection, emotion). You may engage the students in the lesson with activities like becoming a character in the Christmas crib scene, defining the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit with modern examples, depicting timeline events of the Triduum, building a Jesse Tree, or choosing a favorite proverb or “Jesus one-liner” from the Bible. Within instructional class time, teach the students how to find Scripture citations and where to look for information on Church-related themes like feast days, novenas, litanies, women in the Bible, etc. Finally, Work with the full class or in small groups to produce a single, unified class project. Display it in the classroom for the season.

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Those who have children and those who teach children have firsthand experience of the child’s need to do his own work. The very young child expresses this need quite bluntly: “I do it!” As the child matures, the expression becomes more nuanced and polite: “May I try?” In what appears to be a regression, the adolescent expresses the same need, though not with the same charm: “Why don’t you trust me?” I would argue that the child’s desire to “do for self” stems not from unruliness but rather from an intrinsic need impressed upon his nature by God himself.

The Need Is in Our Nature

In the command to Adam to “subdue the earth,” God impressed upon the human soul both the dignity and the need for work. Reflecting on this passage from Genesis, St. John Paul II writes:

From the beginning . . . [man] is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. . . . work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature.[1]

In this same section the Holy Father explains that “work” refers to “any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual.” Just as the person has a need to diligently build his environment, he has a similar need to intellectually build his knowledge.

The Holy Father’s insight that work is a constitutive need of our nature should cause us to pause and wrestle a moment with its meaning. Most certainly, the comment should not be taken to its extreme, suggesting that someone lacking the capacity for manual or intellectual work is somehow not fully human. Yet at the same time, the statement lends itself to a consideration of how personal work is in some fashion so integral to the human person that to deny him the opportunity is to violate his God-given nature.

The Child’s Need for Independent Work

During her many years of being with children, observing how they live, learn, and develop, Dr. Maria Montessori came to see that the child possesses the same intrinsic need for work as do adults. In fact, this need may be even more critical for the developing child. She writes:

The reaction of the children may be described as a “burst of independence” of all unnecessary assistance that suppresses their activity and prevents them from demonstrating their own capacities. . . . These children seem to be precocious in their intellectual development and they demonstrate that while working harder than other children they do so without tiring themselves. These children reveal to us the most vital need of their development, saying: “Help me to do it alone!”[2]

Think of the work that a baby chicken must do to peck its way out of its shell. Any attempt to help the tiny creature—to do for it what it must do for itself—results in the chick’s premature death. A similar phenomenon happens to the child when adults routinely overstep and do the work that the child can and must do for himself: he experiences a kind of psychic death. Some children become unnaturally timid, overly dependent, or abnormally compliant. Other children become rebellious against authority. In both extremes, the child’s interior freedom has failed to develop properly. “The child’s desire to work represents a vital instinct since he cannot organize his personality without working.”[3]

Teachers, administrators, and others working in Catholic schools are devoted to their students. They want what is best for them. This is why they will want to increase the variety and level of support offered to parents.

The two great commandments are to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself (see Mt 22:36–40). Catholic leaders are called to create and ensconce Catholic culture by striving to fulfill these two great commandments—and to guide the ministries that they lead to do the same. In my role as a high school vice president of faith and mission, I work alongside our principal and president to ensure that our school is a catalyst in the Eucharistic Revival and that the comprehensive operations of our school community serve these two commandments.

The first commandment calls Catholic leaders to prioritize facilitating first-generation encounters with Christ. To fulfill the second, we must foster a culture of evangelization in which we love our neighbor as ourselves and testify to Jesus’ kingship. Living out these commandments as Catholic leaders is especially exciting in this three-year sequence of Eucharistic Revival being guided by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The USCCB is calling on leaders to create personal encounters with Jesus, reinvigorate devotion, deepen formation, and engage in missionary sending. What follows are reflections on how we are answering this call in our school community. I hope that it can serve as inspiration for other Catholic leaders during this time of Eucharistic Revival.

As the students cleared out of my classroom at the end of the day, I leaned back in my chair, staring at the peeling painter’s tape framing a poster in the front of the class of Christ washing the feet of his apostles. It hadn’t been a bad day, but it hadn’t been a good day, either. My colleague—a good friend who accompanies me, sharing concerns and joys about teaching and life—entered the room. Neither of us said anything until I asked, “What am I doing when I come into the classroom?” This question was born out of frustration, but it was sincere. And it had been on my mind for weeks. He offered some words of encouragement. We talked for quite a while. But nothing satisfied my question.

As children, many of us learned the “Alphabet Song.” It is a universally known jingle that helps small children learn the ABCs of the English language. Other cultures use a different tune but the purpose is the same. At the start, a child merely repeats the sounds sung to him. In due time, he gradually learns that the sounds have corresponding symbols. (During this developmental stage, children in a Montessori environment trace sandpaper letters, providing a heightened sensorial experience that strengthens the sound-symbol relationship in the child’s mind.) Once the child understands the sound-symbol relationship, he is capable of arranging the alphabet letters to form words, then sentences, and eventually entire paragraphs. One need not be a trained linguist to recognize a kind of pedagogy in this method of language acquisition. If we were to draw an analogy to children’s catechesis, we would find that there, too, is a kind of pedagogy for the acquisition of religious language—or there should be.

The 2020 Directory for Catechesis exhorts catechists to ensure that our “linguistic form” be appropriate for the persons receiving catechesis.[1] Where children are concerned, there is more to this task than merely paraphrasing doctrine. Children’s catechesis requires a unique pedagogy of language. First, there is a particular religious alphabet—fundamental doctrines—which serves as building blocks for the child’s faith. Second, there is a particular scope and sequence to doctrine—one that follows the child’s natural spiritual and intellectual development. Finally, the particular expression of doctrine should evoke a sense of wonder that sparks continuous investigation and meditation.

Notes

The Rosary is arguably the most widely prayed, most enduring devotion in Catholic history. Many have spoken about the power and beauty of the Rosary. Pope St. Pius X said, “Amidst all prayers, the Rosary is the most beautiful, the richest in graces, and the one that most pleases the Most Holy Virgin.”[1] October, the month of the Rosary, is the perfect time to introduce this beloved prayer to children and to encourage families to pray it together. The following are some recommendations for handing on this treasure of the Church.

1. Remind Your Learners That Mary Is Our Mother

Motherhood is associated with a gentle, approachable strength. Many children feel most comfortable going to their mothers first when they are distressed or in trouble. When Jesus commends his mother to St. John at the Cross (Jn 19:26–27) he is, by extension, offering her as mother to the whole Church. And indeed, she is—for the Church is the Body of Christ and Mary is his mother. As our mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary wishes to encourage us, to protect us, to nurture us, and to teach us by always pointing us to her Son. Jesus is a good Son who loves and listens to his mother, so we can be certain that he hears whatever questions, worries, and problems we place at her feet. As Pope Leo XIII wrote, “How unerringly right, then, are Christian souls when they turn to Mary for help as though impelled by an instinct of nature, confidently sharing with her their future hopes and past achievements, their sorrows and joys, commending themselves like children to the care of a bountiful mother.”[2]

My daughters’ high school religion teacher was known to ask his students, “Do you know da Way?” Although this often led to fun banter between the students and their teacher, it also helped the students focus on their relationship with Jesus. Wise Catholic school administrators will ask themselves this question but move one step forward. To “know the Way,” to have a relationship with Jesus, good administrators understand they must communicate with the Son of God—and communicating with Jesus means they are investing in their prayer life.

Catholic school administrators are busy people. They are required to attend meetings, answer their pastors’ questions, be visible throughout the school, substitute teach, supervise hallways, be available to parents, respond to inquiries from their superintendent . . . truthfully, they are lucky if they are given a moment to breathe. But it is within this incredibly hectic environment that good Catholic school administrators prioritize time to pray. They understand St. Francis de Sales’ maxim, “Every one of us needs half an hour of prayer a day, except when we are busy—then we need an hour.”

Community prayer is naturally a part of a Catholic school administrator’s life. The position demands that one is a visible leader; thus, the position demands prayer in community. It is important, however, for administrators to remember to invest into their personal prayer life, as well. Spending time alone talking with Our Lord allows them to strengthen their personal relationship with Jesus, making them stronger for those they lead.

During his tenure as the secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education (now part of the Dicastery for Culture and Education), Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, delivered a talk that outlined the five essential marks of a Catholic school. His fifth mark called for schools to be “sustained by a Gospel witness,” a responsibility borne primarily by the dedicated men and women who serve the students in the classroom every day.[1] The archbishop wrote, “More than a master who teaches, a Catholic educator is a person who gives testimony by his or her life.”[2] Later published as The Holy See’s Teaching on Catholic Schools, the archbishop’s text has become the framework on which the Office of Catholic Schools in the Diocese of Columbus has built its strategic vision for the future of Catholic education in central and southern Ohio.

In our diocese, we have actualized the archbishop’s vision of education into a mission of being an authentic and unapologetically Catholic school system. In order for this vision to become a reality, it requires us to strengthen and fortify in a deliberate and well-structured way the witnesses who make Catholic education happen in every classroom. Archbishop Miller emphasized the importance of those who serve in the ministry of schools by citing Gravissimum Educationis: “it depends chiefly on them whether the Catholic school achieves its purpose.”[3] With that high calling in mind, we must regard our administrators and teachers as ministers of our faith and support them in their essential mission as catechists.

Forming Missionary Catechists

Starting in 2019, the Diocese of Columbus recognized the importance of actively and intentionally forming our administrators and teachers so that they can be excellent catechists. Dr. James Pauley observed, “Today’s catechist is a missionary, though not in the sense of traveling to distant lands. Rather, we offer the content of the Gospel to people who live near us, yet who experience cultural influences increasingly foreign to Christianity.”[4] In Catholic schools, administrators and teachers are missionaries in their classrooms, inviting their students to know and love Jesus Christ every day while combatting the foreign influences of the secular culture.

In the foreword to Dr. Pauley’s book, Dr. Scott Hahn emphasized, “Everybody needs a catechist. Even catechists need to be catechized. Even theologians need to be catechized. We all need to revisit and review the basics.”[5] In that same spirit, we realized that we must intentionally catechize the catechists of our diocese through a program of formation for the nearly 1,200 school employees in our diocese. Our goal was to ensure that a common, baseline knowledge of our faith and vision for Catholic instruction was shared among everyone coming into contact with our Catholic school students. Enrolling our new school employees in Franciscan University of Steubenville Catechetical Institute proved to be the ideal method for achieving this goal.