SATURDAY:  Celebrating Families

Parents, guardians and other family members play a vital role in Catholic education. Not only do they volunteer at the school, they instill values and expectations for academic excellence in their children at home. We acknowledge the role of families in Catholic education and celebrate their contributions to the success of our schools on the last day of National Catholic Schools Week, and all year long.

TIP: Many schools often seek tips on how to get parents involved in their school life. Families often want to be more involved, they just don’t know how. The answer is simple: schools should provide clearly articulated, meaningful and impactful tasks. Be specific and share the results of their efforts. Let the success of your Catholic school be owned and shared amongst everyone!

Ideas for Celebrating Families

• Celebrate academic excellence by hosting classroom visits for families and friends.
• Organize a family picnic or potluck.
• Create a large-scale family tree celebrating all the families in the school. Make a spiritual tree of baptisms, marriages and ordinations – including the name of the parishes where family members took these sacraments.
• Create a bulletin board or other display that highlights each family in the school. Include pictures, quotes or testimonies from each family or student.
• Host a family welcome night for families new to the parish to meet members of the school community.

COVID Tips

• Students can find out how many family members attended Catholic schools and in particular their own school. It can be a friendly class competition and the results of all can be posted on the school website and on social media using #CSW2024.
• Suggest that students share with family members the areas of the school that are favorite places. Then ask the rest of the family to share some places that they find special to them at the school or church. Take videos of each one talking about their favorite places and share with the class and perhaps on the school website.
• As a family, attend Mass on this day either in person or livestreamed and take some video of it to post on the school website and on social media using #CSW2024.