As Catholics, few things are as rewarding as coming together with our colleagues from around the world to learn, grow, share, and connect. There are several such events happening over the next few months (some of them right here in Ottawa) and we’ve put together a list of the major ones.

CCSTA President Marino Gazzola and CCSTA Executive Director Julian Hanlon will be attending as many as their schedules allow, and we invite everyone to consider doing the same. These gatherings are always inspirational experiences.

Read more: Upcoming Catholic education events

The St. Clair Catholic District School Board has always made it a priority to consult with their wider community when developing strategic plans. So, when Director of Education Deb Crawford learned about an online tool that could make community engagement more accessible, inclusive, and far reaching, she was interested immediately.

“We were looking for ways to expand our strategic planning process,” says Mrs. Crawford. “We wanted to hear from a wide variety of voices, so that the people in our community would see themselves in our strategic plan.”

That’s where the online tool Thoughtexchange comes in. It’s a platform that allowed community members to give their thoughts on how they believed Catholic schools could better prepare students for the future. They were also able to see what others had posted and give those thoughts a rating. This simple process of providing your own thoughts and rating the thoughts of others has resulted in some incredibly valuable insight into their community’s priorities, says Mrs. Crawford.

Read more: St. Clair uses technology to give whole community a voice in creating strategic plan

Recently released statistics from the Ontario Ministry of Education show that Catholic schools in the province continue to succeed in creating well-rounded high school graduates.

Both French and English Catholic school boards perform well above average. The Ministry sets its target 5-year graduation rate at 85%, and 27 out of the 35 Catholic school boards with numbers available are at or above that benchmark. In addition, two Catholic school boards are less than 1% away from the province’s goal.

“As someone involved in Catholic education, I’m very proud of what our schools do in Ontario and across the country,” says CCSTA Executive Director Julian Hanlon.

Of course, Catholic education is about more than just math and science. It’s about the whole person – body, mind, and spirit. This is best exemplified in the Ontario Catholic School Graduate Expectations (OCSGEs) introduced by the Institute for Catholic Education (ICE) in 1998, and still used today across the province. These expectations help form graduates rich in integrity, faith, and love.

Read more: Ontario Catholic schools continue to flourish