As a community, our faith is lived-out in all aspects of school life. Each classroom has a Collective Worship Board which is updated half-termly with key dates for the diary, Gospel messages from each Sunday’s Mass and any feast days that are approaching. We also have an active Catholic Life group which is largely lead by our pupils and some, including myself, have achieved Faith in Action Bronze Awards. I am currently working towards the Silver Award.
All prayers in morning form are led by our pupils who take on different responsibilities to bring the word of God alive. We have prayer journals in all form classes which we creatively design and enable us to reflect upon the weekly theme according to the liturgical year. We also have whole year group prayer sessions which again, are planned and delivered by our pupils. Furthermore, our weekly assemblies, fortnightly Masses, Rosary sessions, Blessing of Hands, Remembrance services, Marian processions and termly concerts are always extremely wellattended, and a real sense of community and togetherness can be felt at these times.
Thanks to our highly committed staff, we have also been on several residentials to the Youth Village for retreats, Lindisfarne and Rome. These journeys have been really fun and have given us great memories. They have also been spiritually transformative and have provided us with many opportunities to reflect on the deeper questions we have in our own lives.
Bearing witness to what Christ wants from all of us is something that we, as a school, work extremely hard to achieve, particularly regarding our community work and outreach. In the Summer term last year, our efforts were rewarded when we achieved two Trust awards for ‘Community mindedness’ and ‘Environmental change-makers’. Our stewardship council had an innovative idea to grow salads, strawberries and vegetables in our raised beds and planters, with the fresh produce being donated to the Billingham Food Hub. Another student council team created a banner to encourage safer parking in the community and nine members of our Faith in Action team stocked shelves at the food hub and learned about the importance of serving people in need.