Catholic Schools Week gets kicked off
The 2011 theme for Catholic Schools Week is “Prayer, Reverence, Service.”
Each activity that engages the students, families, staff and faculty at St. Joseph’s Schools this week will center around that theme.
Catholic Schools Week kicked off Sunday with a student-led mass and will end Friday.
Each school will begin its day, as tradition, by praying a decade of the rosary together. According to Matthew Tucker, primary school principal, the schools will pray together several times through the week, embodying the “Prayer” component of the theme.
“It’s great that we can stop our day and not worry about math or reading, and just pray together,” Tucker said. “We reflect as a school, what are we doing as a community for those around us?”
Tucker said the “Service” component will allow the school to “refocus on the things we can do for the community. It isn’t just about what the community can do for the students.”
High school students honored the service component of the week’s theme by facilitating a party for the consumers at Profiles Enrichment Center, a program of Independent Living Services.
According to Betsy Beacham, teacher and JOOI, Jr. Optimist/Octagon International club advisor, the JOOI club provided food for the party, and students at the primary and elementary school constructed cheerful cards and place mats for decoration.
“It is always a treat when the students from St. Joseph’s School come to visit,” said Jackie Fliss, executive director for ILS. “Over the last 13 years our consumers have benefited from the generosity and warmth of the St. Joseph’s students and staff.”
With “Reverence” in mind, Beacham said students will be posted on the streets in front of the primary, elementary and high schools to collect cans as students are dropped off for school.
“This is in reverence for the earth that God created,” Beacham said.
Wednesday’s weather permitting, students will leave the morning all-school mass in a procession to Simon Park in downtown Conway to hear a proclamation reading by Conway Mayor Tab Townsell, or Jack Bell, assistant to the mayor.
The school will express its reverence for elders by hosting a Grandparents Luncheon on Thursday in the high school’s cafeteria for elementary and high school students and their grandparents.
The week will conclude on Friday with recycling activities at the high school and elementary school, and primary school students will attend an awards assembly and informative session with St. Joseph priests.
(Staff writer Courtney Spradlin can be reached by e-mail at courtney.spradlin@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1236. To comment on this and other stories in the Log Cabin, log on to www.thecabin.net. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
