The purpose of Catholic School’s Week (CSW) was to offer members of our local and school community an opportunity to reflect on the role and work of ICCS with our young people, by opening our doors to the community. Aside from core academic subjects, Catholic Schools like ICCS work to contribute to the faith development of our students, working to infuse in them qualities of personal integrity and moral courage through our Christian Living Classes that focus as well on character development.
Catholic School’s Week was celebrated from January 28th – February 1st. There were events held on each day of the week:
January 28 – A Mass was held for the students and staff of ICCS
January 29 – Open House for members of the Business Community as well as Alumni of St. Theresa’s and St. Joseph’s Schools.
January 30 – Open House for parents of ICCS students.
January 31 – Open House for Grandparents of ICCS students.
February 1 – A “March for Catholic Education” was held in which staff, parents and students of ICCS and the Holy Spirit Catholic Pre-School in Molineaux marched through the streets of Basseterre with the Police Drum Corps. An enactment of the Living Rosary was also held that day for the students and staff of ICCS as well as parishioners of the Catholic Church and members of the Catholic School Board.
Aside from these events there were several other activities that were going on throughout the week. Homerooms participated in a door decorating competition in which their classroom doors were decorated with a religious theme of their choosing. The doors were judged based on 4 criteria; spirituality, creativity, originality and class participation. The winning door was Mrs. Williams’ Grade 6 class.
Another activity was the creation of prayer chains by each homeroom. During homeroom, each child wrote a prayer on a slip of paper. All prayers were then linked together to form a chain. Chains were carried to Mass on Monday and then starting with Kindergarten and working up to Grade 11, the chains were all linked together by two representatives from each grade level. The chain spread throughout the Church. It was a beautiful display of the power of prayer and it really demonstrated how far our prayers can reach, and how many people they can surround.
The final activity that ran in conjunction with CSW was a coin drive. A key component in developing productive members of our society is also to teach them the value of helping and supporting others. The purpose of this coin drive was to raise funds for the Holy Spirit Catholic Pre-School in Molineaux. The school is largely funded through donations. Therefore, ICCS decided that they would be the perfect recipient of the funds raised throughout Catholic Schools Week. To encourage participation in the coin drive, it was determined that an incentive needed to be given as a reward to the class that raised the most funds. The ‘prize’ would be the chance for the winning class to go to the Holy Spirit Catholic Pre-School and spend time with the children of the school. The coin drive was an enormous success, and as a result of the overwhelming success, coins are still being counted to determine the winning class.
Overall, the week was an enormous success. We had many visitors to our campus who came for tours of our school on the Open House days. These visitors were greeted by members of the ICCS Parent Teacher Association (PTA), and given tours of our campus.
ICCS would like to extend sincere appreciation to the numerous guests that came through our doors last week. In addition, heartfelt appreciation is given to the Parent Teacher Association for organizing the greeters for the week.
Please be on the look-out next year for Catholic School’s Week and take the time to visit our campus and learn all about the wonderful things happening here everyday at ICCS.
For more information tune into Catholic Radio (89.7) on Saturday, February 9th at 10:00 am or visit www.iccs-stkitts.org to see additional pictures from the week (Click on ‘Current Events’ then ‘Photo Gallery’)
Stay tuned for the following upcoming events for ICCS:
General PTA meeting – Thursday, February 7, 2013 at 5:00 pm in the Church
Sports Day – Saturday, February 23 at 11:00 am at the Newtown Playing Field
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