As the COVID pandemic rages on, with positive cases soaring to all-time highs across the country, the teachers, administrators, staff and families of Catholic schools continue to prove that they’re up to the dual challenge of educating our children academically and helping to form them spiritually.
Given the reality of “COVID fatigue,” it hasn’t always been easy. But Catholic school leaders across the country have noted that they have seen Catholic students and schools thrive amid difficult circumstances.
“Our students have been in school full time since September 2020. We created additional classroom and lunch spaces to ensure social distancing requirements,” Mary Alvarado, principal of St. Cecilia School in Tustin, California, told Our Sunday Visitor. “Teachers and support staff continually collaborated to ensure student growth — spiritually, academically, socially and emotionally. With grace and faithfulness, our parents showed an amazing degree of support for the staff by adjusting to the ever-changing policies.”
Kudos are due especially as parish and school communities prepare to celebrate National Catholic Schools Week, an annual celebration of Catholic education in the United States, which will be held this year from Jan. 30 through Feb. 5.
‘Our faith is foundational’
Our Sunday Visitor talked to leaders at schools from the suburbs of Detroit, to metropolitan Phoenix, to Kansas City, Missouri, and to Orange County, California, and each has praised the efforts of their community to keep kids safe over the past three academic years.
Since its initial outbreak in early 2020, COVID-19 and its variants have infected 65 million people in the United States and killed more than 847,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In America and worldwide, the pandemic has shaken economies, overwhelmed hospitals, exhausted medical testing and disrupted education at all levels. Things as they were are no more, and Catholic educators, through faith, family and fortitude, are finding new ways to work in the Lord’s vineyards.
“Here at St. Cecilia, in March 2020, over a matter of days, our in-person learning switched to distance learning,” Alvarado said, recalling the beginning of the pandemic. “The faculty exemplified the meaning of the word ‘endure,’ all the while guiding the student body through uncertain times of which no one had any prior experience.”
The cohesion of school and family within a Catholic setting is a blessing, said Tina Chiappetta, a parent at St. Joseph Catholic School in Lake Orion, Michigan, in the Archdiocese of Detroit.
“Throughout all of the challenges we have all faced, the sense of family has been pervasive at (St. Joseph’s),” Chiappetta told Our Sunday Visitor. “The administration and staff have given so much of their time, talent and heart to the students and their families as we all adapted.”
Alvarado might have spoken for every diocesan educator Our Sunday Visitor contacted for this article.
“As a Catholic community in Orange County, our faith is foundational,” Alvarado said. “We have learned to accept that there are some things we cannot control. What we can do, however, is take each day at a time and keep things in perspective, all while relying on God’s providence and trust that whatever comes our way, he will give us the strength to handle it.”
‘A close family’
With the pandemic continuing to present difficulties, Jon Myers, principal of Holy Family Regional School in Rochester Hills, Michigan, turned to the school’s faith community and the generosity of his teachers to overcome staffing shortages and COVID fatigue.
“I am grateful to my teachers and staff who are committed to in-person instruction,” Myers told Our Sunday Visitor. “There are many times when our teachers and staff have given up prep periods to cover for one another, or have taken on additional days to make sure that we have coverage in the classrooms. We are blessed to have retired teachers who have come back to our school community to assist us in this time of need as well. We have identified school parents who have teaching degrees and have used them as substitute teachers. Our school community functions as a close family, and we work together to do what is necessary to keep our kids safe and in school.”
Katie Lyon, principal of St. Mary-Basha Catholic School in Chandler, Arizona, told Our Sunday Visitor, “We have been extremely blessed that the staffing shortages haven’t had as much of an impact on us. Our teachers are committed to our school and we have a great pool of substitutes who are not only experienced teachers who help out when they can, but are also parents of students who attend our school.”
‘God has chosen them’
As the pandemic grinds on and as COVID burnout threatens, Our Lady of Good Counsel School parent Emily Martin counts on faith to carry on.
“We have fought off the ever-present COVID fatigue by doing our best to stay steadfast in our faith and to maintain normalcy for our family,” Martin said. “This would not be possible without in-person learning. The kids have grown in confidence, excelled in learning, and formed friendships and relationships amongst peers and teachers.”
Attending a Catholic school in these times makes all the difference, said Ben Brigulio, a parent at Holy Family Regional School in Michigan.
“Our school was in person all last year and never once shut down. This year, again, things continue moving forward, and I can see how our first and third graders are thriving, especially when compared to their public-school peers,” Brigulio said. “Academically, they’re definitely ahead in terms of content, but our kids have also learned life skills that you don’t get when virtual schooling.”
Looking from where her schools were at the start of the pandemic until now, Karen Kroh, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, says that it is the communities’ faith that has pulled them through. When school opened in the fall, Kroh told her staff, “God has chosen them at this specific time for their specific school and their specific students to lead and guide our schools, students and families.”
“Faith continues to be the foundation of all our schools,” she told Our Sunday Visitor. “We feel blessed to be able to use our faith to support our school communities through these unprecedented times. We will continue to practice caution as we navigate this unprecedented time so we can have students in school learning and growing academically and spiritually. As I pray every morning, ‘Jesus, I trust in you.'”
Joseph R. LaPlante writes from Rhode Island.
| NATIONAL CATHOLIC SCHOOLS WEEK 2022 |
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The National Catholic Educational Association encourages schools to celebrate a different theme every day throughout Catholic Schools Week, held this year from Jan. 30 to Feb. 5. For more on these themes and other resources, visit ncea.org/csw. Sunday: Celebrating your parish |
