The White House and Catholic Schools

Two weeks ago I got an invitation to the White House. Of course, I was surprised and wondered what was happening to generate such an impressive social event on my calendar generally clogged with appointments with parents and alums of our school. I quickly found out that the event to which I was invited was a preliminary to Catholic Schools Week and featured a panel of Catholic School leaders who had been selected because they were perceived to be "champions of change." Honored to be included in such an illustrious group, I accepted. There followed a flurry of security checks and map questing. The day finally arrived, I found the location, made it through security, and found myself among a group of about 200 educators from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C. who had been invited to hear the panel.
The panel members were diverse: a senior student highy involved with service, a Jesuit priest who helped create the Critso Rey model of secondary schools for low income students, a superintendent of an urban school district, and a principal who had developed various initiatives to increase the success rate for her multi-cultural students among a few others. Each panel member had looked at challenges with creativity and shifted the status quo. Each had taken a risk, initiated some changes in how things usually were handled, and each had succeeded.
The uniting factor that I found the most interesting and important was that every single panel member had remained true to his/her mission despite the changing strategies that were employed. In every case, success was measured by an improvement in meeting the needs of students. Whether the strategy increased the probability of a student being able to enroll in a Catholic school or increased the probaility of success while they attended, the focus remained on the child....just where it should be!
During our celebration of Catholic School Week, we often look at programs, our traditions and our history of sharing our faith, excellence in academics, and the response through service to our community. In recent years, as schools struggle with economic recession, pressure from local public school systems to focus only on testing data, and the turmoil within the Church itself, there is a temptation to lose oneself in the day to day need to survive. This year as we celebrate Catholic Schools we celebrate all the "champions of change" who recognize that, at the heart of our schools, are tenets which will never change--the value of every child and the belief that he/she can succeed in both school and life, the necessity to share an old faith with a new generation who are then inspired to serve and lead with integrity and hope, and a commitment to prepare our young people to develop a work ethic that will enable them to work toward standards of excellence in all that they do.
My trip to the White House was inspiring not because of the location but because it is always inspiring to become aware of good people doing great things for children for all the right reasons! During Catholic Schools Week, I hope you are inpsired by someone like that--our schools are filled with "champions of change" who remain committed to children, our faith, and the future.