Growing in Faith

faith moves mountains

GROWING IN Faith

ENHANCING SPIRITUALITY IN OUR LIVES

On our fi rst day back together after a long time of distance, we announced our spiritual theme for the year: “We are people of faith”’ Staff participated in a virtual commissioning service where this theme was highlighted. Our Faith Development Day was postponed until February in the hope that we could be together. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the day had to run entirely virtually. Despite this, it was an inspiring and deeply spiritual event for our staff and we experienced the healing power of our faith. David Wells, our guest speaker, spoke about going after the virtues and gave specifi c examples of how faith, hope, and love can make us well. Catholic Education Week continued to play a major role in our growth, though it looked a lot different again this year. Catholic Education Week was bursting with faith-driven and inspiring events for everyone. This year, we continued to be creative in fi nding ways to include everyone and bring everyone together virtually. The theme “Nurturing Hope”. Throughout the week, students, staff, and their families came together virtually to participate in activities for all ages which included prayer, reflection, and other suggested activities to do at home. We launched a social media campaign and asked people to reflect and share a response to two questions: What does Catholic education mean to you? or how do you nurture hope for the future? People were invited to share their thoughts and pictures using hashtags: #mytbayCatholic #Nurturing Hope #CEW2021. We created a digital library and David Bouchard did a virtual read-aloud of his book: “We Learn from the Sun”. Retreat kits were created for teachers to use with their classes in grades 7 & 8 and 9-12. The theme focused on the importance of supporting small-scale farming and included interactive activities and a virtual guest speaker from Development & Peace. Social media kits were created for principals which included a message for each day of the week about the sub-theme and suggested activities for families. We launched our “Ask a Priest” video series where we saw a local priest answer questions from some of our students. We closed out the week with a board-wide virtual prayer service. We did a lot in one week towards strengthening home, school, and parish connections. It was an incredible celebration of our faith and the gift of Catholic education.

Teaching Faith in our Schools

As part of our Growing in Faith evolution, we have encouraged various teachers to volunteer as “Faith Ambassadors”. These teachers attend workshops and champion new faith-based initiatives within their school communities. In light of our spiritual theme, our Faith Ambassadors participated in professional development about what it means to be a faith leader. Our System Faith Leader continues to visit schools when possible. Later in the year, we found creative ways to support staff and students with virtual liturgies in schools. Our Religious Education Consultant continues to update and maintain a Religious Education website for Faith Ambassadors and staff within our system. The site includes resources for curricular support as well as resources to support faith activities, prayer services, school masses and news about events. Our Board has been investing annually in a new program produced by Pearson and the Canadian Catholic Bishops. The Growing in Faith, Growing in Christ Program was created to support teachers in delivering a comprehensive program that directly meets the expectations in the Ontario Religious Education Curriculum, grades 1 through 8. The digital resources within this program were an invaluable resource for teachers when we had to pivot to At Home Learning. An implementation kit was created for Fully Alive and shared with principals and educators to assist with the roll out of the new curriculum changes and exemption policy and to provide some guidelines for teachers teaching the content online. We started a pilot project for our monthly virtues which has two goals: to introduce priests and deacons of our diocese to students in schools and to improve virtue education in grades 7 through 12. A video message and a teacher resource with prompts for discussion and ideas for taking the learning further are shared with schools each month. We launched a new program for Kindergarten. Teachers were introduced to the new document produced by ICE and Sowing Seeds was purchased as the primary educator resource. A cannon of storybooks was purchased to support more in depth inquiries into the themes. Long range plans were created as a guide for learning throughout the school and liturgical year and other supplemental resources were shared on our internal website.