TORONTO - Not many 11 year olds are encouraged to dangle from a rope down the side of their school. But being a member of the De La Salle College Cadets means Aidan McCarthy is not your average school kid.

He is one of 12 students — 11 boys and one girl — who are part of the De La Salle (Oaklands) Cadet Corps program. Now in its 100th year, the program is one of the few remaining — if not the only — Catholic cadet corps in Canada. It is part of a century-old tradition of training leaders at the private Catholic school for Grade 5-to-12 students run by the De La Salle Brothers.

TORONTO - After two months of cutting tiles for a mosaic honouring the school’s patron saint, St. Francis of Assisi, James Cardinal McGuigan High School teacher Patrizia Montefiore and three students who contributed to the project stand proudly beside the new mosaic.

The St. Francis mosaic has become an instrument to spread the saint’s message of peace, charity and environmental stewardship at the school.

TORONTO - May 11 marked the first Toronto Catholic District School Board collaboration with students to promote leadership on pro-life issues.

The TCDSB hosted it’s annual Respect for Life Week but turned its usual keynote address into a student leadership day which drew more than 70 students to learn about the issues and how to take action.

TORONTO - Nancy Kirby says her first priorities as Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association president will be ensuring “equitable and adequate funding” for Ontario’s publicly funded Catholic schools and tackling the $68-million gap in special education funding for Catholic schools.

Kirby, 57, was elected OCSTA’s president at its annual conference in Thunder Bay April 30.

For Iraqi families that have endured months and years living as refugees in Damascus and Beirut, just landing in Canada doesn't solve all their problems.

But the Ontario's publicly funded Catholic schools come close. Take a virtual visit to St. Andrew's Catholic School in Etobicoke.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TORONTO - A new project aimed at reducing the gap in reading and writing test scores for aboriginal students is producing impressive results, according to Mary-Catherine Kelly.

Kelly, Northwestern Catholic District School Board Director of Education, facilitated a presentation on the Oral Language Project at the 80th annual general meeting of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association from April 29 to May 1 in Thunder Bay, Ont.

TORONTO - Aside from the annual Lenten Masses at St. John's School, alumni Angela Carroll remembers joining her Grade 4 classmates in the hallway as the school set up TVs in the hallway to watch Paul Henderson's 1972 history-making goal against the Soviet team.

Carroll is now a teacher at her old school on Kingston Road in Toronto's east end and will be joining alumni in celebrating St. John's centenary milestone May 8. Carroll says the event will be special, not only because she is an alumni, but her husband also attended the school, and their children are now students there.

Some of the most profound moments in my spiritual life — outside of  the sacraments and giving birth to my children — have been experienced in an ordinary Catholic elementary school right near my home in Mississauga, where I have run both a Rosary Club and Saints Club. The joys of praying with children, witnessing the prompting of their souls and feeling the abundant grace as they sang with united hearts, often left me speechless.

At times it could also be gut wrenching. Prayer petitions about everything from cancer, family break ups, job losses, to the death of a dear pet, tugged at our hearts. But in those moments of prayer, on Friday’s at lunch time, we had each other and our faith.

TORONTO - Ontario's Catholic bishops, teachers and trustees say they're eager to co-operate with the education ministry as it revamps the province's controversial sex education curriculum.

A joint statement issued April 28 by the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario, the Ontario Catholic School Trustees' Association and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association, said the three groups look forward to participating in a review that was announced earlier in the week by Premier Dalton McGuinty. A new province-wide sex-ed curriculum that was to launch in September was sent back to the drawing board by McGuinty following howls of protest from several parent groups.

TORONTO - Like most refugees in Canada, Khulood Jarjass appreciates her new homeland for its relative safety, the freedom, the opportunity to dream again of a future for herself and her family. But what really excites the mother of three and former high school math teacher is a free Catholic education for her kids.

“When I heard in Canada it’s free — Oh my God!” she said. “I was so happy.”

Her kids range in age from seven to 13, Grades 2 to 7, all in St. Andrew’s in Toronto’s Rexdale neighbourhood. The Jarjass kids spent a year-and-a-half in crowded Syrian classrooms with a mass of other refugee students. Their teachers couldn’t help but look at the Iraqi students as an added burden and the Syrian kids saw the Iraqis as invaders in their schools. Syrian and Iraqi kids fought in and out of the classrooms.