How Not to Staff a Catholic School

How Not to Staff a Catholic School by Mark Bauerlein at First Things. It is long past the time for bishops to recognize that the ed schools that certify teachers and the state education offices that license administrators are opposed to Catholic doctrine. Schools of education are, in fact, among the most ideological zones of the campus. Please, bishops, stop relying on those adversarial bodies. You don’t need them and your parishioners don’t want them. And if you have school officials working for you who are loyal to those secular institutions, if they really believe that Catholic schools need the affirmation of the state and the university, you should fire them now. Read The Classics are Back: St. Patrick School Switches to Classical Curriculum Model by Daniel Meloy at Detroit Catholic. The difference, said Monica Burke, principal of St. John Paul II Classical Catholic School, is "it's all cross-curricular" now. “Instead of saying in English class, we’re going to learn about English now, it really just blends into each other," Burke said. “So, in science class — we call it Nature Science — if they are learning something in nature, they are looking at a story or a poem, or something in history that goes with that. And all of it is with the foundation that this is all God’s world, and this is God’s plan for us, so it’s really beautiful.” Read Denver-Area Catholic School Admonishes Fellow Catholic Schools for LGBTQ Support, Adopting “Ideological Errors of Our Age” by Elizabeth Hernandez at The Denver Post. Earlier this year, the Archdiocese of Denver confirmed a plan to review the theology curriculum, hiring practices and “Catholic identity” of the high schools under its purview following the retraction of a student publication and the firing of two teachers at Regis Jesuit High School last year. Two Regis Jesuit teachers were fired in December after administrators removed the winter edition of the school’s student publication from the internet because it featured a student opinion column arguing abortion should remain legal. Read The Rise in Enrollment at Catholic Schools is an Opportunity that Should Not Be Ignored at Our Sunday Visitor. Teaching is a special vocation in our Church. In serving their students, teachers are seeing Christ before them, in need of their love and mercy. Instead of merely transactional institutions, Catholic schools can become places where the Gospel thrives, where parents and young people belong as true community members and where all are known and loved as persons rather than statistics. In such a place, vocations to service are fostered, and those children will grow to be young men and women who will have the formation and strength to hear and follow Christ’s invitation for their lives, wherever it may lead. Read Walking With Generation Z: Steps Toward Flourishing by Benjamin Ericksen at Catholic World Report. Young people... are much more likely to flourish when they are strongly religious. For example, 17% of those who are not religious say that they generally feel that what they do in life is valuable and worthwhile, but this number jumps to 37% for those who are very religious. Furthermore, when asked if they were flourishing in various aspects of their lives, those who were very religious were much more likely to say that they are flourishing a lot. Read Our Public Schools’ Sinister Secularity by F.X. Cronin at Catholic Exchange. As a teacher and administrator in public schools for twenty-five years, this subtle, sinister bias affects more than hiring. Much more. It affects the curriculum and textbooks. It affects classroom instruction and the moral content and emphases at all grade levels. And, it affects the culture and values of schools and districts, not just in left leaning districts and states, but, to some degree, virtually all public schools across the nation. Read Parents Can Leave the Failing Public School System by Ginny Gentles at Real Clear Education. With states like Arizona now offering universal education savings accounts (ESAs) that allow parents to direct their child’s education funding, more parents than ever before are empowered to leave the failing public school system. The NAEP test scores paint a heartbreaking picture of the harm the system has inflicted on millions of children. Parents in every state should demand access to education options that meet the needs of their children. Read School Districts Defiant after Youngkin Proposes Transgender Student Policy by Jeremiah Poff at Washington Examiner. School districts in Northern Virginia are expressing hostility to a policy proposed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin that requires schools to address students based on their biological sex unless a parent gives written approval otherwise. Officials in Alexandria Public Schools and Fairfax County Public Schools were among those who reacted negatively to the newly proposed policy announced by the Virginia Department of Education last week. The policy heavily emphasizes parental rights and requires a written parental request for a school to address a student by a different name and pronouns or allow the student to use bathroom and locker room facilities that do not correspond to their biological sex. Read America Benefits When It Protects the Rights of Religious Schools by Shmuel Klatzkin at American Spectator. On his Facebook account, Rabbi Daniel Green reported on a mass meeting Wednesday in a Brooklyn synagogue that protested the ruling. He paraphrased a speaker’s words…. “Religious people are forced to pay property taxes, he explained, which fund public schools — but our children do not benefit from these schools. We pay out of pocket to our own religious private schools. AND THE STATE NOW WISHES TO CONTROL OUR OWN SCHOOLS TOO!? And then they blame our yeshivas for taking some additional government funding, like lunch money—because our children don’t deserve to eat unless we teach them state-mandated secularism?! Our response to state government: Give OUR property taxes that WE PAY—to OUR schools of choice.” Read Justice Alito’s Important Defense of Religious Schools by George Neumayr at American Spectator. “Does the First Amendment permit a State to force a Jewish school to instruct its students in accordance with an interpretation of Torah that the school, after careful study, has concluded is incorrect? The answer to that question is surely 'no.' The First Amendment guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion, and if that provision means anything, it prohibits a State from enforcing its own preferred interpretation of Holy Scripture. Yet that is exactly what New York has done in this case, and it is disappointing that a majority of this Court refuses to provide relief.” Read Throwback Thursday New Program Offers Alternative Credentials for Catholic School Teachers by John Lavenburg at Crux on June 15, 2022. A Catholic education organization has launched a national teacher credential program that gives Catholic educators formation specific to the vocation, and also a potential alternative to a state teacher license. The Catholic Educator Formation and Credential program was created by the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (ICLE). Elisabeth Sullivan, the organization’s executive director, told Crux that the initiative is, in part, a response to the secular philosophy of the often-required state teacher licenses that don’t always align with the approach and values of Catholic education. Sullivan said the problem with modern secular teaching training is that it’s based on a pragmatic philosophy of education that “undermines the wonder and mystery at the heart of faith,” whereas the Catholic education model focuses on liberal arts. Read