by Bernadette Alcantara, Director of Formation and Student Activities | Santa Barbara Catholic School
The Santa Barbara Catholic School began the year right by holding a week-long faculty orientation-workshop from August 1-5, 2011. This culminated in a Commissioning Ceremony of the Faculty and Staff in the school’s Holy Spirit Mass at the Santa Barbara Parish on the second day of school, Aug. 9, 2011. Facilitated by Sister Maria Rosario Gaite, RSM, the school’s Vice-Principal, the faculty went through activities that helped build a spiritual and learning community in the spirit of charity, the legacy of the foundress of the Sisters of Mercy, Mother Catherine McAuley. The teachers shared their innermost thoughts, feelings and prayers with one another regarding their own relationship with God, their journey in the teaching vocation and what inspires and moves them to persevere in forming the youth. They also talked about the issues and challenges they face in education today: the difficulties their students and their families experience, their own relationships with one another and concerns of the world in general. With those reflections and inputs on curriculum, cyberbullying, school law, teaching with the use of technology and spirituality from various members of the faculty and staff, they discerned collectively, formed and signed a covenant to help one another fulfill the school’s vision and mission more effectively this year. Hopefully, inspired by this experience, indeed, the Santa Barbara Catholic School faculty will truly be a community dedicated to God’s work.
“Let charity then be our badge of honour…so that it may truly be said, there is in us but one heart and soul in God.” -Mother Catherine McAuley, Foundress of the Sisters of Mercy