Even with snow and COVID, it was Catholic Schools Week

By Mary Beth Peabody

The Feb. 1 edition of the Wall Street Journal featured an opinion by editorial board member William McGurn titled “Catholic Schools Are Beating Covid.” In it, McGurn recognized “an especially unsung hero: the Catholic-school teacher,” and said Catholic schools are “among the few real alternatives parents have today.” Strategically timed, the article circulated broadly during National Catholic Schools Week.

In the Diocese of Camden, Catholic Schools Week was a chance to celebrate all that McGurn cited in his article. Despite a pandemic and a major winter snowstorm, schools found new ways to celebrate time-honored traditions and created new traditions for unusual times.

“We decided that the tradition wouldn’t end, it would just have to be adjusted,” said Guardian Angels Regional School principal Sister Jerilyn Einstein, referring to the annual sit-down luncheon for 200 parish and community seniors. “We took our lunch outside and provided a ‘drive thru’ boxed lunch for a treasured generation who sometimes are forgotten,” she said.

ShopRite of Gibbstown offered generous help with the lunches, which were distributed by cheering eighth graders at Guardian Angel’s Paulsboro campus.

Rita Retkovis has never missed a Catholic Schools Week luncheon at Guardian Angels. 

“We didn’t expect it,” she said of this year’s event. “The kids did a great job. They have good manners, they’re polite, enjoyable.” A member of host parish Saint Care of Assisi and the Paulsboro seniors club, Retkovis said she and a friend were able to pick up lunches for fellow seniors who were not able to get out.

Lunch was also a focus at Wildwood Catholic Academy, where students in the lower division collected non-perishable food items and decorated lunch bags for The Lazarus House food pantry in Wildwood.

Every school found a way to serve others as part of Catholic Schools Week. Students adorned four large trees at Assumption Regional Catholic School in Galloway with donated socks, scarves, hats and gloves, ready for delivery to Catholic Charities of Atlantic County. Saint Margaret School in Woodbury Heights took an abundance of donated toiletries to a local food bank and assembled 50 care packages for military personnel. Saint Joseph Regional School in Somers Point also reached out to service men and women with student-made cards. 

Hosting local first responders is a long-standing tradition for many schools during Catholic Schools Week. This year, thanks came in the way of delivered meals, gift baskets and hand written messages from Saint Mary in East Vineland and Saint Teresa in Runnemede.

In lieu of large assemblies, to celebrate vocations and careers, Our Lady of Hope (Blackwood) and Our Lady Star of the Sea (Atlantic City) schools invited clergy to visit classrooms. Camden diocesan priest Father Peter Gallagher paid a virtual visit to the Holy Angels (Woodbury) community where he was assigned before returning to Rome.

At Bishop Schad School in Vineland, students dressed with religious vocations in mind. Students at Our Lady of Hope and Resurrection Catholic School (Cherry Hill) dressed for future careers, some of them bearing a striking resemblance to their teachers.

The snowstorm that blanketed much of the diocese at the beginning of Catholic Schools Week gave students at Gloucester Catholic High School a chance to provide Small Acts of Kindness by shoveling snow from neighbors’ driveways. At many schools, the snow meant Catholic Schools Week activities continued into the following week. For Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in Berlin, those events included the National Honor Society Induction and Dance for Education. 

The following week ushered in another milestone as well: the 100th day of school. In a “normal” school year, the 100th day is a great opportunity for younger students to practice their counting skills with edible treats and other treasures. While those traditions prevailed, the 100th day this year also marks another day of providing, as McGurn describes it, a lifeline to children.