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☆ The" Sou Diocese of Savannah ☆ hern Ooss Vol. 81, No. 17 Thursday, April 26, 2001 $.50 PER ISSUE NCEA convention draws more than 12,000 educators to Milwaukee The delegation from the Diocese of Savannah enjoys the convention. M ore than 12,000 Catholic educa tors spent their Easter vacation in Milwaukee learning how they could do their jobs better. Teachers and school principals from across the country who attended the annual National Catholic Educational Association’s annual convention April 17-20 picked up everything from new teaching exercises to broad concepts of Catholic education and innovative ways to raise money. The four days of workshops and general sessions began with a keynote address by Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, who urged the educators to think globally and to form students as leaders who would see beyond their own culture. He war ned that too often “people outside the United States see globalization as Americanization.” To counter this perception, he said, Catholic school students must leam “to critique profoundly where we live,” and understand that the United States might not have all the answers. He urged educators to continue to form the moral, intellectual, spiritual and social dimensions of their stu dents, as a way to stand apart from the ever-growing secularism in society. “Secularism is proposed as a solu tion,” Archbishop Weakland said, and many believe religion should be kept quiet because of the perceived divi siveness it creates, but “we have to leam how the values of every religion contribute” to the good of all. “The world needs us,” he said of the Catholic perspective on the many necessary aspects of education. He praised Catholic schools for their emphasis on virtues like discipline, respect and loyalty, which he said make their students more than just “brain people.” The archbishop also briefly touched on the issue of school choice, which was the focus of a daylong sympo sium at the convention. “If I have been an advocate of school vouchers, it is because they give poor parents a more level play ing field in selecting a good education for their children,” he said. “More over, we Catholics have a good track record in being able to help the poor.” The April 19 keynote speaker, Ho ward Fuller, likewise praised school- choice initiatives, describing them as “a critical weapon in the arsenal that is needed to achieve effective educa tion for all our children, particularly for our poorest children of color.” Fuller, who is founder and director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Milwaukee’s Marquet te University, was superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools from 1991 to 1995. In 1990, Wisconsin was the first state to offer a publicly-funded, school-choice program for children of low-income urban families. And since 1998, eligible families have been able to use state-funded vouchers to send their children to religious schools. About 40 percent of Milwaukee’s 9,638 choice students attend Catholic schools in the city. Fuller said Catholics are often needlessly defen sive or apologetic about including their schools in a choice program. But, as he sees it, “Why apologize for wanting to save something that serves people well?” The convention’s closing speaker, Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, stir red controversy among a few church officials even before her appearance in Milwaukee. When the NCEA an nounced its choice of the well-known spiritual writer and lecturer as a key noter, church officials in the dioceses of Peoria, Illinois, and Pittsburgh cited objections to her writings critical of church teaching on the ordination of women, homosexuality and other issues, and announced they would not allocate diocesan funds to pay for their teachers to attend the convention. Sister Chittister acknowledged some rare nervousness April 20 in front of the crowd of educators, but told them she was “really happy” to be there and “even happier that you’re here.” She urged the teachers and school administrators to become con summate questioners and to recognize that the “courage to question the seemingly unquestionable is the essence of spiritual leadership.” Sister Chittister, who holds the Bruggeman chair of ecumenical theol ogy at Jesuit-run Xavier University in Cincinnati, encouraged the educators to pass on this notion of questioning to their students. “Teach them to question,” she said. “Teach them to think.” She also told the educators to teach their students not to despair when looking at the future of wo men’s roles in the church. “The disci ples who were with Jesus didn’t want him talking to women either,” she said. “Like Jesus, teach them to silence the silencing.” In the hundreds of workshops dur ing the convention, teachers also were encouraged to think about new ways to present poetry and math problems, as well as ways to help today’s youth navigate through issues of sexuality, self-esteem and peer pressure. During one workshop, Maureen Blum, principal of Our Lady of the Lake Elementary School in Seattle, said her school participated in a bully ing prevention pilot program after one student had yelled out that he “wanted to kill everyone in his class.” In the aftermath of recent school shootings, Blum said, “our eyes have to be open to students who don’t think they belong.” The school came up with a definition of bullying and followed a curriculum that included videos such as “How To Enter a Peer Group,” “How To Make a Friend,” and “What To Do When Someone Is Bullying You.” At the end of the lessons, stu dents signed an anti-bullying pledge. Blum told her Catholic school col leagues that she was convinced the message was getting through when she recently overheard a student on the playground tell another student: “That is bullying. If you do not stop, I am getting an adult.” At an April 18 workshop on “To Play as Jesus Did: Athletics and the Gospel Mission of the Catholic School,” Augustinian Father Richard J. McGrath told his audience why he is convinced that Catholic schools benefit in many ways by having suc cessful athletic programs. The priest, who is the author of a book about athletic programs in Catholic schools, said those benefits include positive name recognition in the community, more opportunities for students and parents to participate in Catholic education, and development of student-athletes’ talents. Eight educators attended the NCEA con vention from the Diocese of Savannah: Sisters Rose Mary Col lins, SSJ, superintendent of schools, Joan Felicia O’Reilly, IHM, and Ber nadette Taraschi, and Clare O’Reilly, Cindy Andrews, Betty Gatsch, Linda Johnson and Grace Ledwitch. A priestly triumvirate —page 3 Christmas in April —pages 7 Evangelization and faith