When Jesus is the Heart of Your School

By: Elizabeth MacDougall

I often hear that DMCS students make an impression on people outside the school community.

“I was pleasantly surprised by your students. I slipped on some ice and fell, and the middle school children ran over and asked if I was okay! Kids from a different school would probably have just laughed at me.”

Or the photographer taking school photos: “Your students are so well behaved! I’ve been to many other schools, but I haven’t seen students as polite as yours.”

On other occasions, I’ve seen DMCS students go out of their way to be loving to another child.

When a student was having a hard day and didn’t want to pick up his belongings, another child piped in: “I’ll pick them up for him Miss MacDougall!”

When a child joins the DMCS family, my heart warms with pride to see how welcoming our students are.

“Do you want to play with us?”

“Miss MacDougall, can I show (-----) where the bathroom is?”

If anyone is sitting alone at recess time, there will usually be at least one child who invites them to play.

Of course, this is not to say that DMCS children are perfect, or that they don’t have their off days. But these are some examples of times when the children have responded in a beautiful way to the lessons of love we strive to surround them with daily.

In the classroom and in our Chapel, we talk about how much God loves each one of them, personally, and infinitely. We do the best we can to show the children that we, their teachers, love them very, very much.

One important way we show the children that we love them is by giving them boundaries. It’s not too often that people talk about boundaries as part of love, but they are crucial.

Since Jesus is at the heart of what we do here at DMCS, we seek to imitate him. Jesus showed us how to love by his actions, and he taught us how to love by his words. He left us His Church because He knows how much we need guidance. The Church gives us boundaries.

G.K. Chesterton, a renowned Catholic thinker once said: “Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.”

As human beings, we need to be given a space in which we can best love, and that includes knowing where our actions cease to be loving. This is where Church doctrine comes in. The Church’s wise teachings give us boundaries so we know what kinds of actions will and won’t make us happy and fulfilled. God created us out of love, for love, and when we act contrary to that, we become unhappy.

If we need boundaries as adults, how much more our growing children need them!

That is how we DMCS teachers strive to love our students: by taking steps to safeguard their playground, both literally and figuratively.

When the children pause their game to ask the lonely child to play, they are doing so because they’ve lovingly responded to what we teach them everyday. We teach them what would be a loving thing to do, and what actions would unloving. When they act in a way that is unloving, we correct them.

We give our children boundaries, and within those boundaries is the space they can grow to become truly themselves. We want each child to know and develop what makes him/her special and unique. He/she has something to offer that no other person ever has or will.

Saint Catherine of Siena famously said: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the whole world on fire!”

Jesus is the beating heart of our school, and by teaching our students how to love, we hope they become the best versions of themselves and set the world on fire with the love of Christ.