St Joseph'sCatholic Primary & Nursery School
Catholic Social Teaching
At St Joseph's we are developing our understanding of Catholic Social teaching and how our actions are guided by our faith. We sometimes refer to CST as "The Gospel on the Street" as the principles help guide us in or words and actions to help build a world of justice, love and peace. The serve as our moral guide.
We decided to use the CAFOD resources as a basis for a consistent approach across the school. Using the characters to enable all ages to identify the principles at their own level.
We are intially focussing on Stewardship / Common Good / Human Dignity and pupils are developing their understand of CST through RE lessons, weekly celebration of the word and prayer group.
Pupil can nominate others who have shown aspects of CST in our weekly celebration time. Our Chaplains are supporting our younger children to understand CST.
CAFOD have visited us to enhance the children’s understanding of CST and our next steps are to embed elements into our wider curriculum. The children at St Joseph's understand their role in supporting others e.g. through donating to the foodbank and writing cards to local care homes.
We are also starting our Live Simply journey and our action plan clearly states how CST is being embedded across the school.
The DCET public speaking competition also enables our older children to dig deeper into CST as the focus for their presentation.
Pope Francis says “Each of us has a part to play,” and you are probably doing this in your life already!
There are many ways of living out Catholic Social Teaching. - Let’s take a look at these three: Human Dignity, the Common Good and Solidarity.
Human dignity means that everyone is special. We are each beautifully made in the image and likeness of God. Because everyone is special, we should treat every person the way we would like to be treated ourselves.
Common good means that we are called to work for the good of each and all. What we do affects everyone and when we make choices we should think about how it affects others.
Solidarity means that we show that we care for others. We can be better global neighbours by speaking out for justice and working actively for the good of all our sisters and brothers.
We are living out all of these principles of Catholic Social Teaching every day.
By looking after others and the world around us, speaking out for justice and putting Catholic Social Teaching into action we are building a brighter world together.
Catholic Social Teaching is Social.
Pope Benedict XV1 wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself. Our lives are involved with one another, through innumerable action they are linked together. No one lives alone. No sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine: what I think, say, do and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse.” From the beginning of his Pontificate Pope Francis has stressed our need to take seriously these principles and try to live by them. “An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.”
We are supporting the Emmaus Project on Friday 15th March 2024!
Follow the link below to our DCET page where you can learn more about the public speaking competition which was focussed on CST!
This is "Prickles" the hedgehog! He lives with the class each week who have the most children walking / scooting to school on "Walking Wednesday". Our Eco group monitor this each week as part of our committment to being good stewards of creation!
To support CAFOD and our local charity we collected donations at our Christmas nativity services. The parents and their friends and families were very generous and we raised nearly £300
Dear St Joseph's - Just to let you know the donation weighed in at a magnificent 122.92 kg As always we really appreciate the wonderful support from St Joseph's and the Church. Please pass on our grateful thanks to all involved in supporting our Foodbank. Wishing you a very "Happy Christmas" Best wishes Maxine Highbridge Area Foodbank
We made Christmas cards which we took to Frith House to show them we are thinking of them (Millie and Hayden)
Supporting others in our local community - Amelia and Poppy asked for the school communities help with supporting their challenge for donate to the foodbank as part of their work with the Brownies.
On the 4th and the 18th October 2023, we were very excitied to have our CAFOD visit! Mervyn delivered the Brighten Up liturgy when we learned about how CAFOD help others around the world to make sure they have access to mobile medical units!
He then stayed with us to deliver the CAFOD Catholic Social Teaching workshops to all of our classes!
CAFOD workshops - Catholic Social Teaching
Louise White our Diocese advisor delivered training to our teaching staff as part of our CPD programme
Catholic Social Teaching
We are introducing a special "Catholic Social Teaching" award which will be presented each week to a pupil in the school who has been nominated for demonstrating their commitment to CST.
Our CST certificate - presented to children who have shown our focussed element of CST
Week Beginning 18th September 2023
Pupil nominations:
Millie - Common Good
Xanthe - Stewardship
Ava S - Common Good
Ava H - Stewardship
Week Beginning 25th September 2023
Pupil nominations:
Olympia - Stewardship
Alice - Human Dignity
Week Beginning 9th October 2023
Human Dignity - Lilah
The Common Good / Solidarity - Effie
Stewardship - Ava
Solidarity - Ava C, Lucian, Luca
Some comments from this weeks pupil nominations:
"She always makes sure I am ok and shows she cares"
"I saw them picking up litter and putting it in the bin"
"They think that everyone is special"
"They are always there if I need them"