It Is That Time Again!
Sister Ellen Rose Coughlin, SSJ
Superintendent of Schools

It is that time again! Soon our children and young people will be returning to school. Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with the twenty-six new teachers and three new principals who will be working in our schools this year. Both meetings addressed important topics for the teachers and administrators including the foundation principles of a Catholic school.
As our thirteen elementary and 2 junior/Senior High Schools prepare to open their doors for the new academic year,  I share some  considerations that were discussed at the new teacher and principal orientation meetings that identify the special marks of our Catholic schools. What does the world Catholic add to the understanding of school? 
In our Catholic schools:

• Students encounter Christ. Our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, reminds us,  “ . . . every Catholic educational institution is a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and truth” (Address to U.S. Catholic Educators, Benedict XVI).   In this encounter, students learn and experience what it means to live in relationship with Christ and with their brothers and sisters in Christ. Hopefully, they are drawn by the power of the Gospel to lead a new life that is characterized by virtue.  
• The academic program and environment address the whole person.  The origin, purpose and destiny of the human person are understood in terms of Christ.  In the Incarnation, Christ has united himself to every human being. He is the perfect man who reveals to all human beings their own true nature and their eternal destiny in communion with God. As students seek to know themselves and the meaning of their lives they are lead to Christ, for “he worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, he acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved” (Gaudium et Spes, # 22).
• Community is important. The aim of the Catholic school community is the transmission of values for living. Its work is seen as promoting a faith relationship with Christ in whom all values find fulfillment.  An authentic personal relationship with Christ leads students to recognize Christ in others and to reach out to their brothers and sisters in the human family. In the school community, children and young people learn that they are not isolated individuals who can live as if the world revolved around them. They are challenged to think and act beyond the “I” to the “we” of community.  Thus, service on behalf of others is recognized as a natural consequence to the community dimension of  the school.  Knowledge is perceived as a call to serve and to be responsible for others, not primarily as a utilitarian and pragmatic undertaking.
•  The doctrine, heritage and tradition of the Catholic faith are explicitly and systematically taught. This is accomplished not only in “religion” class but also through the integration of Catholic values throughout all subject areas and by the witness of administrators, faculty and staff that practice their faith. Faith is principally assimilated through contact with people whose daily life bear witness to it.
• Prayer and worship are essential aspects of the school community. Daily prayer, regular opportunities to participate in Mass and to receive the sacraments, observance of Lent and Advent and the celebration of feast and holy day are regular features of the school year.

Our Catholic schools are integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News.  Their effectiveness in this mission relies to a great extent on the teachers, administrators and staff who serve in these schools.  “Conduct is always much more important that speech; this fact becomes especially important in the formation of students. The more completely an educator can give concrete witness to the model of the ideal person that is being presented to the students, the more this ideal will be lived and imitated. For it will then be seen as something reasonable and worthy of being lived, something concrete and realizable” (Lay Catholics in Schools: Witness to the Faith, Sacred Congregation of Catholic Education).
I take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation to the teachers, administrators and support staff in our Catholic schools. Their dedication and commitment to our Catholic schools is a gift to the Church in the North Country. May God bless their efforts during the new school year.

Application for Principal