Marks of an excellent Catholic teacher

Catholic school staff hope to deepen their witness through new program

Finding ways for faith to permeate in the classroom can be a challenge for today’s Catholic teachers. But through the program ‘Five Marks of an Excellent Catholic Teacher’, staff members at Glenmary Catholic School in Peace River are hoping new insights will help them meet this challenge head on.

From early January to mid-March of this year, Vice Principal Patrick Connellan, school counsellor Monique Randall and teacher Jessie Gaucher have been meeting to review the ‘Five Marks’ program and booklet, which offers guidance from Sacred Scriptures, the saints, and Church teaching on how their witness can help make the Catholic school a more faith-filled and holy environment.

Teacher Jessie Gaucher graduated with her Bachelors of Education in 2024, and is now in her second year of teaching at Glenmary School. She hopes this program and the discussions that emerge from it will help her especially in her religion classes.

“The challenge of being a Catholic teacher in a Catholic school, especially in religion class, is that you have students from many different backgrounds,” she said. “There’s usually a few practicing Catholics and some strong Christians, and you also have students who are atheists, or some who have never given religion the time of day. And you always have a few who don’t want to hear anything about your beliefs or what the Church teaches.

“This program definitely has helped me, just by providing the chance to talk to people who have taught religion, who know what its like to interact with these different groups of students. The chance to share in these struggles together relights a fire in me as well and it strengthens my own faith. It shows the importance of trying to reach those students even more and of trying to share my faith even more. People might see this program as doing work after school, but these meetings for me have just been a nice place to chat, and it’s been revitalizing.”

Each of the program’s “five marks” detail the ways Catholic educators can both live out and share the Faith with their students. The first mark reflects on how Catholic teachers must recognize that each student is a child of God, made in His image and with an eternal destiny. The second mark reflects on how teachers are called to have a Catholic vision of the world, and how to bring that vision to their classroom. The third mark reflects on how faith can permeate in their curriculum, and how they can help students foster a love for wisdom and truth. The fourth mark focuses on the teacher’s personal relationship with Christ, their involvement in the Church’s sacraments and how to be models of the virtues Christ exemplified. The fifth mark focuses on how teachers can help build a peaceful and unified environment among students and in the school in general.

Patrick Connellan came to know about the program when attending a meeting for the Council of Catholic School Superintendents of Alberta. He brought it to the staff at Glenmary School to see if anyone would be interested in getting together and reviewing it, to deepen their understanding and their witness as Catholic educators.

Jessie and Monique volunteered to join, with local pastor Fr. Nel Esguerra joining them for some of the sessions. They met for a total of five Wednesdays. They individually go through the selected readings for each mark, and come prepared with reflections to share with the group. Patrick notes the sessions have operated as a roundtable discussion, where everyone leads and everyone provides their input.

“I was the person who was handed the documents, but it’s my first time doing the program as well, so I’m in the trenches with everyone else,” Patrick said. “Overall, it’s been an opportunity to talk about our faith, to grow as Catholic teachers, to discuss the struggles we have, and just a chance for us to share some insights.”

For Patrick, the sessions have been a way for him to ponder how he can, as a vice principal, help school staff in their own faith journeys. This also includes those staff members that are not Catholic, but are still called to share in the mission and vision of a Catholic school.

“A lot of times it can seem that the administration of the school or the faith coordinator needs to do it all. The third mark was especially relevant to that, because it talked about authentic witnessing – not just giving lip service but actually participating in the Church as a whole – and seeing how everyone shares that role,” said Patrick.

This is only an excerpt. Read the full story in the March 2025 edition of Northern Light