• Principals - If you haven’t encouraged your teachers to register, now is the time! Tomorrow is our deadline. We take our numbers and begin placing the presenters into the available spaces based on class sizes. So, please, if you haven’t done so already, encourage teachers to register. Please use school email addresses to register!
• Teachers - This will be a great day! Your input has been taken into consideration. Mass together, more accessible locations for our north and south regions, hosted in two of our high schools – Bishop Blanchet and Bellarmine Preparatory, breakout sessions, vendor exhibits, and lunch – all combined make for a great day. Be sure to carpool! You will sign in two times, at the beginning of the day, and when walking into your assigned breakout session. We need this information for the clock-hour form that will be given to you at the end of our day together. Please use school email addresses to register!
• Teacher Presenters - By next week, you will receive your room assignment and enrollment number for your breakout session. We will also confirm your tech needs. Please bring enough hand-outs for all participants! If you have additional resources to share, you might consider an annotated bibliography for those interested in further researching your topic.
Religion Curriculum Review Committee
The first meeting of the Religion Curriculum Review Committee will be held at the Tacoma site during a breakout session. I have asked the Executive Principals from all regions to identify 2-3 representatives who can provide a year-long commitment to this process, offer grade level expertise, and share valued perspectives. This review promises a greater focus on standards for student learning and cross-grade level articulation. Additionally, we hope to offer examples at all grade levels of teacher-designed units integrating religion and core content grade level standards. Each 6-9-week unit requires identification of the standards, Catholic teachings, objectives, skills, activities and standards-based assessments. The unit design was the focus of our exciting work during the NW Catholic Educational Leadership Institute this past summer at Seattle University.
Statement on Adopting the Common Core
Rev. Stephen C. Rowan
Superintendent of Catholic Schools
Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Seattle teach according to the curriculum standards required by the State of Washington and more. We teach at least what the State requires so as not to lose families from our schools who might rightly wonder if we were doing enough for their children according to the State’s educational experts. However, we are committed to doing more, not only raising the standards of teaching and learning for all subjects but also including the teaching of religion, which grounds the mission of the school. The State’s educational standards will vary with changes in educational philosophies and with changes of administration in Olympia and in the other Washington and will represent, to a great extent, the wisdom of the day. However, if we did not teach more than the State requires, we would be failing in our mission to offer “excellent religious, academic, and co-curricular programs.” We set a higher standard than the State because we are free to do so and because we believe it is right, and the results are clear from annual assessments of student learning and from regularly-scheduled accreditation visits to our schools.
Additional Resource for Teacher and Parent Education on Catholic Identity and Common Core
Diane Cronin, Principal of Our Lady of Lourdes in Vancouver and member of the Executive Principals Committee, shared a great presentation she attended through the Portland Association for Catholic Education, given by Lorraine Ozar, Ph.Ed., on integrating Catholic teachings with the Common Core State Standards. In this PowerPoint, she presents the Catholic Identity Benchmarks as the premise in our effort to offer core standards and more. Dr. Ozar’s slide presentation provides a great overview as well as ideas for all principals to use in a parent presentation. The link to the Catholic Identity Project is given at the end of the presentation. Thank you Diane!
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