TUESDAY:  Celebrating Your Students

Schools celebrate students during National Catholic Schools Week by planning enjoyable and meaningful activities for them and recognizing their accomplishments. They encourage students to reflect on the benefits of Catholic education and how the grounding in faith, knowledge and service it provides will help them throughout their lives.

TIP: All students contribute to your school in ways big and small. Share stories on your school’s social media and/or website or create a special newsletter that recognizes current student accomplishments as well as alumni accomplishments. This is a great marketing tool for national fundraising days such as #iGiveCatholic, Many Gifts, One Nation: A Day of Giving to Catholic Schools or your own fundraising events. 

Ideas for Celebrating Your Students

• Line school halls with student work emphasizing the themes of CSW.
• Have a door decorating contest between classrooms. Set a theme for the friendly competition, and let students invoke their creativity and work with their teachers and each other to design and create the best classroom door decorations.
• Schedule times for older students to read aloud or partner on special projects with younger students.
• Have older students dress as saints and prepare skits to teach younger children about them. Consider having saint stations for groups of younger students to move between.
• Start a pen pal program with another Catholic school.
• Let your students show off their technology skills by creating videos to help promote the school.
• Share a list of colleges and universities at which your graduates matriculate.

COVID Tips

• If school is in-person, take pics or short videos of students in their favorite places around the school and ask them to say why they enjoy those places. Share the pics and narratives on the school’s website and on social media, using #CSW2024.
• Teachers can post student shout-outs on Zoom and on social media using creative templates or animation.
• If teaching remotely, hang a creative school spirit sign behind you and see if any of the students notice.