posted by John Borst

Editor’s Note: A Place of Honour is a 35 page resource document created by religious and family life educators Tony Cosentino and Joe Bezzina. It is freely available for downloading in pdf format at the CARFLEO website. The CARFLEO website has many addition resources for religious education teachers. This excerpt is posted with permission.

A Place of Honour.

Reaching out to Students at Risk in Ontario Catholic Schools

Executive Summary

Tony Cosentino, Renfrew County Catholic District School Board

Joe Bezzina, London District Catholic School Board

Reverence for the dignity of all persons, made in the image and likeness of God lies at the heart of programming for students in our Catholic schools. Catholic education’s distinctive programming calls all staff to share responsibility for student education and formation, for integrating the worshipping community’s faith into every subject and aspect of school life. In this way, Catholic schools help students embrace their baptismal call to be fully alive in Christ. Therefore, all Catholic school programs, especially those that reach out to students in need, must:

1. Uphold the dignity of the human person as image and likeness of God:

Authentic Catholic school programming bears a healthy Christian understanding of what it means to be human (i.e. a healthy Christian anthropology). This is expressed in our concern for the whole person – for their spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional and social well-being. We recognize each student as a gift to our school communities, and provide a place of honour to the ones who struggle in our midst. Our witness is a reminder that all persons are sacred, and have irreplaceable value in the Body of Christ.

2. Respect Catholic Education’s dual mandate:

Catholic Education makes a unique contribution to public life by:

• implementing course expectations and directives from Ontario’s Ministry of Education and
• actively sharing in the Church’s evangelizing mission.

All who are involved in Catholic Education are accountable to the Ministry of Education and to the Catholic faith community. All are responsible for the integrity of Catholic Education’s distinctive curriculum. This distinctiveness is expressed in the language and vision of the Gospel and the Church’s living Tradition.

3. Invite all staff to assume their shared responsibility for students’ education:

Students at risk occupy a special place in our Catholic school communities. We recognize our fundamental responsibility to reach out to those in need. To do this effectively, we must all be involved.

4. Challenge students to grow and live life to the fullest:

We challenge students, through our programming and witness, to live the Gospel –

• to integrate faith and life,
• to become caring family members and responsible citizens,
• to lovingly serve the needs of others,
• to reflect critically on life issues through the lens of the Gospel,
• to contemplate, imagine and change the world for the better,
• to develop their character and grow spiritually,
• to grow in knowledge, skills and abilities
• to use their gifts in life and at work
• to be life-long learners.

5. Be distinctively rooted in Gospel values:

Our programs must recognize all people’s call to holiness. They must encourage all students to embrace their role in humanizing and shaping culture with the values of our faith. Our programs for students at risk define success in terms of embracing one’s vocation, rather than in terms of money, power or social prestige. They defend the dignity of every person and promote the common good. In this way, they develop in each student a social conscience that makes a preferential option for the poor.

Our programs preparing students to enter the world of work must have a Catholic understanding of work and workers in God’s plan for humanity.

Human work is fundamental to our dignity as image and likeness of the God who worked six days to bring creation into existence and rested on the seventh. Work is a call to holiness, within which we support our families and the common good. The value of work is rooted in the supreme worth of the person who labours, and not in the kind of work that she or he does. Work therefore, must never be demeaning, for through our labours – each in our own small way – we can transform the world with the power of the Gospel.

6. Reflect a Eucharistic Vision of Life:

The Eucharistic community is the model for our mission as Catholic educators. The care of the first Eucharistic communities for their poor and needy members is echoed in our attentiveness to the needs of students at risk in our schools. We draw life from our Eucharistic encounter with Christ in order to live and work together as his body. Eucharist is the spiritual nourishment that enables us to live out the call of baptism. It empowers us to reach out to all students with the heart and mind of Jesus and form them to be his disciples.

© copyright CARFLEO 2008

For those who wish to pursue the document in more depth, the following are the detailed table of contents:

Table of Contents and page number

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