The Importance of Community Involvement for Your Child’s Education

The Catholic curriculum follows two basic principles of religious teaching much often relegated to the back burner in public schools: love yourself and love your neighbor. Building self-esteem generates feelings of goodness and generosity and easily leads to being good to others. The tradition of community involvement in education leads to changes within neighborhoods, streets, or entire cities. Our Catholic Diocese schools in Orlando, Florida realize the importance their students have on the school’s community as well as their individual neighborhoods.With a wide range of socioeconomic and cultural differences inside the classroom, Catholic students recognize that every person is a unique child of God. As different cultures are studied, students are made aware of their own actions and how they may affect other cultures either positively or negatively. This idea stimulates an understanding among students regardless of their cultural backgrounds.Moral teachings are enveloped in each subject in a Catholic school, and students are taught in a safe, nurturing environment. With a strong sense of “right” and “wrong,” students are able to reach out to those in need in their communities by organizing canned food drives and donating clothing or toiletries to Catholic Charities. Involvement in foreign communities is evident in planning and participating in mission trips to spread the Gospel message, teach English to young children, or help in a clinic.Graduates of Catholic schools are more likely to vote in local, state, and national elections. They are civically engaged by writing letters, forming committees, and asking for aid for those in need. The worldview engendered during their educational years leads Catholic school graduates to recognize social wrongs traditional graduates may not realize and to determine a course of action to correct those wrongs.Working with those less fortunate makes children realize how very blessed they are. As food is given away at a food bank, or supplies are handed out after a natural disaster that blazed through a neighborhood, students internalize the amount they have not in dollars, but in a secure home, a vehicle, and food when they are hungry. Jesus told His disciples that when they feed the hungry, they are, in fact, feeding Him. This lesson provides a strong sense of caring for those in the community who are less fortunate. In return, students are given the grace of thankfulness and blessings.The bonds of school and community are strong for the Catholic Diocese’s schools in Orlando, Florida. The interaction between students and the community may be one on one or an entire school club assisting a nursing home involved and may lead to lasting friendships between the two organizations. As students better understand the world around them and their place within it, they can see how society may benefit from the small changes they can perform. Their community services will also build a solid foundation in which to apply any public interaction in business later in life. In other words, the benefits are not merely a one-way street and may take a while to realize, but every kind act for the community will eventually be repaid to the individual responsible for that kindness.