Unpackaging the document
October 2014
Education
Lynette Roberts-King
As Manager of the Catholic Education Office, Palmerston North Diocese, I lead a team of four to support our Catholic schools.
Most of our time is spent out on the road working with the schools and their professional development. We use the NZCBC’s The Catholic Education of School-Age Children as the basis for our work.
Last year we were challenged to open the door to the document and prepare schools to look at new ways of realising what Catholic education means, including the key concepts of encountering knowledge and virtues.
Our focus this year has been unpackaging the document and looking at the challenges and opportunities presented. We are encouraging schools to look at our special character and how people see us as the face of Christ.
Knowledge and faith teachings of scripture are also about our own life-long faith development.
Within our education structure we are called upon to evangelise and open up the Catholic school community to be more than just schools and to form broader Church communities.
While schools are not the solution to bringing families to parish they are an important part of it. Through our work, we are affecting the hearts and minds of future generations.
Hopefully, we will contribute to be a source and connection of faith and life synthesis that brings together a community of faith development through parish structure and the Eucharist.
In this job, I find more and more we are people of hope. So our work with schools is about joy, hope and another way.
If a child attends a Catholic school and experiences the joy and hope our faith brings we are succeeding in helping to lay down the foundations of early faith.
Lynette Roberts-King is Manager, Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Palmerston North.