This past week was the annual Catholic Schools Week which is celebrated at many Catholic schools across the nation. At St. Edward High School, we spent the past week with many fun activities such as dress downs, treats, challenges, and more! Also, many clubs decided to participate in this week such as Catholic Outreach, National Honors Society, and Interact Club. With the school year looking a little different this year, the teachers and faculty wanted to make sure that this year’s Catholic Schools Week was filled with much fun as possible while keeping the current safety protocols.

Every in-person day, students were able to dress down with fun themes to follow that included twin day, clash day, and green and gold. Being able to dress down was great way to get the students involved in a safe way. Students were also able to pick out candy before their classes and were also able to get a hot chocolate at lunch for a nice, sweet treat. At the end of the week, there was a skills challenge and an early dismissal that gave all the students a great way to end this year’s Catholic School Week.

This year, clubs had to find a new way to participate in this week’s events. Catholic Outreach decided to hand out prayer buddy bracelets on which each student wrote their name which were then later exchanged with another student. Each student was then asked to pray for the person they got. “This is hopefully a small way to connect our students – some even from different days (Green or Gold) – in a year when not everyone gets to see everyone else on a daily basis as we were used to in the past,” says Catholic Outreach moderator Ms. Adams.  National Honors Society also held its yearly blood drive which many students participated in. Catholic Outreach, NHS, and Interact decided this year to make cards for the 6th graders at our feeder schools since the 6th graders are not able to visit as they normally would. “Normally, sure, we would have the 6th and 8th graders come here at some point in the year, but doing more long-term things like the pen pals I think will connect us better than in the past even when they could come here to visit,” says Ms. Adams. Even with this year looking a bit different, we still got to have many fun events and we’re lucky enough to be able to continue with our hybrid learning. I hope everyone had a great Catholic Schools Week!