Schools

This past week the Meitler team had the privilege of gathering at the Carmelite Retreat Center in Darien, Illinois to host the pioneer cohort of the National Catholic School Mentorship Program at a three-day Leadership Institute.  The goal of this two-year program is to equip school leaders the knowledge, skills and tools needed to apply the findings from the 2016 study “The Catholic School Choice: Understanding the Perspectives of Parents and Opportunities for More Engagement” in their local schools.

The Leadership Institute was comprised of eleven transformational principals from around the United States selected by their dioceses, representatives from Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA) and the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA), who sponsored the program, as well as a dynamic list of workshop presenters.  The principals formed study groups with the goal to work together on creating an enrollment management programs for their schools.  The study groups meet monthly with the Meitler team joining in those sessions for ongoing support and coaching. 

The days at the Leadership Institute were action packed, engaging, fun and provided the principals with opportunities to form collaborative relationships with one another.  We parted ways grateful for the assurance that our work doesn’t end here; we are on a journey together.  As a champion of Catholic education, I left the Institute feeling energized and hopeful that the work of our schools may currently be “the best kept secret” but soon will become “the best known secret”!

An unintentional consequence of my intentional decision to step away from serving in a school as a principal to serving many schools as a consultant has been the need to establish a new rhythm to the summer months. While there is certainly down time in the summer for a school’s faculty and staff, the summer months for school personnel provides the time necessary to “reboot” the business of the school in order to prepare for the next learning year. Weekend events, church festivals, summer sports, building work, cleaning projects, new school packet preparation, school tours, enrollment details, creating teacher schedules, hiring, room assignments, handbook changes, website updates and curriculum work filled and ordered the days. We often counted down to the start of the school year worried we wouldn’t get it all done in time. The days were clear, hurried and numbered. 

As my summer rhythm has less order, I am ever more grateful for the work being done in our schools. I am grateful for the time committed by teachers, staff and leaders to summer preparations in anticipation of the new school year.  I am grateful for the countless hours, long after the students have left the buildings, teachers devote to advance their own learning, instructional practices and curriculum planning. I am grateful for the time, energy and money teachers spend creating a classroom environment that is conducive for learning.  I am grateful for a school calendar that naturally builds in time for this “reboot.”   I pray our teachers and school leaders also find some time to lose track of a day, enjoy  a bit of summertime fun and “reboot” their own spirits so when the children enter their classrooms for the new school year they are refreshed and ready to tend to our most precious gifts.

Dr. Jackie Lichter

As a young child I recall my kindergarten experience included numerous opportunities for free play, socialization, listening to my teacher read stories on the carpet, and spending time outdoors. Fast forward 50+ years, and four and five-year-old kindergarten classrooms include full reading, writing and math curricula with pre- and post-tests to measure success. Students were “tested” prior to entering kindergarten and parents were perhaps encouraged to wait a year before enrolling their son or daughter because he or she simply wasn’t ready for the demands of the program. In those instances, I found myself repeating the same question: how can a child not be ready for kindergarten when it is the first year of mandatory schooling in the United States? Or perhaps a child was encouraged to repeat four-year-old kindergarten so he/she would be better prepared for five-year-old kindergarten.

Now the pendulum seems to have swung back in the other direction with many Catholic schools focusing their early childhood efforts more on intentional play and less on direct instruction in reading, writing and math. That is not to say children are not learning to read, write, draw conclusions, and understand one to one correspondence. They are simply learning these in ways that appeal to and engage their sense of wonder and their desire to play.

I for one am happy with this change. It seems as if the Next Generation education understands this well. The term “Academic Preschools” is surfacing in articles about early childhood education. However, this method looks much different than the worksheet based, trace my letters, fill in the bubble tests that emerged of late in kindergarten classrooms. Rather, children are playing with things such as “programming toys” to learn the basics of science, engineering, arts, math etc. Programming toys are screen free and engaging and spark a child’s interest in STEAM. See the following website for an example of programming toys.

Intentional play centers, coupled with opportunities for free play, appear to have similar results. Students learn to read, write and understand math concepts using toys, building blocks, dramatic play and bucket frogs. Give two children a bucket of green, red, and yellow frogs and they will be quickly sorting them by colors, creating patterns, or using blocks to create places for the frogs to live.

I again am pleased with this movement in education. Young children have the capacity to learn at a rate that far surpasses adults. I say let them learn in ways that are fun, engaging, spark wonder, and teach them the very skills a Next Generation education emphasizes to not only solve problems but to also know how to learn, how to lead, and to see opportunities where others see constraints. KIBO robot kits are great example of this in action and there are many more programming toys on the market today. Teachers can even create their own!

Dr. Jackie Lichter

I recently came across a great quote that described Catholic school culture as “…a way of life rooted in Christ, a Gospel-based creed and code and a Catholic vision that provides inspiration…” (Flynn, 1993). I have spent time reflecting on this image as it relates to my work in Catholic schools, as both a principal and a Meitler consultant, and my response has been a loud AMEN! Truly what unites Catholic schools across the country is the shared commitment to centering the work of the school in Christ and operating with a Gospel-based creed and code.

One simply needs to walk the hallways, interact with children, teachers, staff, and parents to feel the lived presence of Christ and to experience people living out a creed of beliefs and abiding by a strong moral code. The article went on to name some key Gospel values that animate Catholic schooling: faith, service, courage, justice, hope, love, reconciliation, and community. As I have interacted with faculty, staff administrators, parents, and students, I have felt a profound sense of community, service, courage, and love. Community in the sense of belonging to the mission and other smaller communities of friendships formed through the Catholic school experience. Service is experienced in the commitment made through their involvement, care, almsgiving, and sacrifice. Courage experienced in a family’s ability to discipline itself to make the sacrifices necessary to send their child/ren to a Catholic school. And love felt toward God, self, and neighbor. My heart is grateful for the opportunity to visit and experience firsthand, the mission driven work done in Catholic schools!

Dr. Jackie Lichter

In any arena, given enough time, trends emerge.  Emerging, in our work with Catholic schools across the country, is the reality the landscape in Catholic schools is rapidly changing. Parents are well informed savvy customers when it comes to choosing a school for their son/daughter. In some cases, the student is the one making the decision.  The religious formation of the work of Catholic schools is essential.  Equally, if not more important in the minds of some parents, is academic preparedness.  Schools are less focused on measuring content knowledge and shifting to measuring students’ ability to collaborate, think with an entrepreneurial lens, solve complex problems, have a well-developed ability to communicate interpersonally, locally and globally and to use technology to create rather than consume. Catholic schools are unique in that they CAN offer a place that both nourishes one’s relationship with Jesus Christ and provide an environment that prepares the students for the current century in which they will live, grow, work and ultimately leave their mark. This is not to say, Catholic schools should abandon more traditional means of educating students; rather, in addition schools need to intentionally change the landscape of the learning environment to better match the college and work world the students will enter.  Ultimately, the goal of any school, from an academic standpoint, is to radically increase student engagement in the learning process.  Ideally, Catholic schools radically engage students as disciples and as scholars!  Shifting the landscape of what space looks like for students in school is long overdue!  The classrooms today resemble the classrooms of the late 1800s with some technology smattered about.   Catholic schools are one of the few places that have remained relatively unchanged. We don’t need to abandon teaching the classics; however, when teaching novels such as To Kill A Mockingbird, we need to approach it in news ways that allow students to not only talk about racism but to commit to be change agents in a world still fractured by issues of race.  The Catholicity of a school is ultimately what defines it; however, we also can’t ignore the fact that Catholic schools are first and foremost an academic institution that is rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Jackie Lichter