Christian Community Day 2012
For close to 30 years, I have been moved and inspired by the Ottawa Catholic School Board's unique professional development day which is held on the Friday before Thanksgiving weekend. This celebration of Catholic education is appropriately called Christian Community Day. This year, we gathered on Friday, October 5 at the Ottawa Convention Centre.
Following a series of poignant vignettes reminding us of powerful Christian messages such as forgiveness brings peace, and greetings from Ottawa Catholic School Board Chair Mark D. Mullan, Mr. Julian Hanlon took the stage to deliver the annual Director of Education address. Mr. Hanlon focused on three topics: our United Way Campaign, the board's communication strategy, and student success.
 | ||||
| Director of Education Julian Hanlon's Address
Framing the United Way Campaign within the context of our mission in Catholic education and our board's spiritual theme, By Our Works We Show Our Faith, he first commended all staff for raising an incredible $562,000 last year, making ours the top campaign in 2011 in the City of Ottawa! He then appealed for a generous response again this year and showed a student-produced video which hi-lights the amazing work of our own United Way partner organization the Catholic Education Foundation of Ottawa:
In speaking about student success, Mr. Hanlon focused on the work of John Hattie. In Visible Learning For Teachers, Hattie synthesizes the results of more than fifteen years of research involving millions of students. His meta-analysis represents the biggest ever collection of evidence-based research into what actually works in schools to improve learning. As Mr. Hanlon stated, the biggest message for teachers from Visible Learning is simply this - Know thy impact.
A surprise to some teachers, Mr. Hanlon revealed that research indicates that while factors such as class size and teacher knowledge of subject content have relatively low impact on student learning, factors such as feedback and student expectations (self-reported grades) have high impact.
A great moment during Christian Community day was the performance of Jan Bentham's song Works of Mercy by two students at Sacred Heart High School
The keynote speaker at Christian Community Day was Steve Bell. Along with humour and Christian music, Steve Bell spoke about the nature of prayer and his understanding of God. He explained that the most important part of prayer is the hang - not so much the words we speak to God but the time we devote to simply being in communication with God.
 Steve Bell emphasized that the very nature of God is relational, familial - "the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father." Creation, he went on to say, is a consequence of God's "ecstatic overflow of love". It is a beautiful image of the Creator as is Bell's notion, drawn from his own experiences as a songwriter, that "We are the song that God had to create."
Christian Community Day concluded with a Eucharistic celebration presided over by Archbishop Terrence Prendergast. His Grace began mass by acknowledging the Unity Cross that was on stage. It has become a powerful symbol across the Ottawa Catholic School Board of our Christian community. In his homily, Archbishop Prendergast expressed gratitude for the "life changing" impact some of his teachers had on him, and in doing so, reminded all of us of the powerful influence that educators have in the lives of students of all ages.
Click on the link to view a presentation on Christian Community Day:
|
No comments:
Post a Comment