Catholic Schools: Communities of Faith, Knowledge, and Service
As you prepare your school communities to celebrate Catholic Schools Week, I hope the committee work we do in the Office for Catholic Schools helps all our schools grow in faith, knowledge, and service!
Communities of Faith
The Religion Standards - As I move from one school to the next sharing the Religion Standards with teachers, I emphasize the critical design choice to understand the progression of the essential concepts across the grade levels. Some schools have used the “Essential Concepts View” as a tool for articulating the challenges and/or gaps in the grades. Our schools are stronger when we all can stand firm in our faith.
Communities of Knowledge
The English Language Arts - The ELA Review Committee has worked diligently throughout this calendar year to assemble a virtual tool-kit of resources that will help principals implement the ELA standards at each level, pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. This material will be presented to the principals in March of 2015. If you are moving into the self-study of the accreditation process, the rotation of the curricular reviews is as follows:
- Math – 2015-2016
- Science - 2016-2017
- Social Studies – 2017-2018
We will continue our emphasis on Unit Designs. The Unit Design answers the necessary call for integration, helping our students make connections across the content areas. Look for upcoming opportunities for Unit Design training coming to a region near you!
Teachscape - This formative, data-driven electronic tool for principals and teachers, continues to be a valuable support for all. Currently, over 20 principals have completed 1,031 formative walk-throughs…imagine the data! Through teacher analysis and principal affirmation, teachers have a wonderful professional development opportunity that will bring about positive change! Would you like to be part of Co-Hort 3? Be sure to sign up here, we have a couple of spots left for the March 2, 3 time slot. Teachscape Third Co-Hort Registration
Educational Leadership Summer Institute – And the survey says? Overwhelmingly, principals appreciate the proposed topic and the changes. Yes to the topic of how our Catholic faith calls us to serve all God’s children, yes to the August dates and yes to the change in Edmonds and Olympia locations. The committee appreciates your valuable input! Be looking in the December mailing for the Save-the-Date card!
Communities of Service
Action 3 of our Strategic Plan states, “Aligned with the religion curriculum, a program of service learning on behalf of the community and parish, infused with the principals of stewardship and Catholic moral and social teaching, will be developed, implemented, and regularly assessed within each school as a means of teaching students the importance and the ways of building a more just and humane society, locally, nationally and internationally.” Progress to date? Within the Standards at every grade level, pre-Kindergarten to eighth grade, we ask students to “Participate in and reflect on service and how we can be Jesus for others.” Beyond this, we are developing a set of criteria and accompanying rubric to assess the service learning. This criteria and rubric will be available in the spring of 2015. Additionally, we are seeking ways to help our students make life connections. Specifically, three schools are involved in a pilot program for seventh graders, a “Mission Institute.” By spring of this school year, we will have developed three Unit Plans with the themes, “Encounter, Disturbance, Response.” Students will research and encounter a particular world issue, identify how and why this disturbs our understanding of the world, and then what each can do to respond as we continue to build the Kingdom of God. Be looking for more information about this new program!
We all continue to work on the behalf of all Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Seattle. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
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