“For we walk by faith, not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5:7
Faith is at the heart of our mission at St Joseph’s. Indeed, our school motto Caritas Christi Urgent Nos translates as ‘the love of Christ spurs us on.’ Every aspect of our school from spiritual, academic, pastoral and extra-curricular is centred on sharing Christ’s love with others. Our school mission, FLAME, has emerged in recent years to compliment our school motto and has become embedded in the daily fabric of our activity. These mission principles are, faith, learning, attitude, mutual respect and enrichment. We offer CPD to all staff across the school as we recognise that all teachers are ministers of Christ’s love first and educators second.
Faith is evident throughout the school with every department promoting FLAME as well as their departmental saint as a role model for students, from St Carlo Acutis in ICT to St. George Lemaitre in Science, St. Homobonus in Business Studies and St Martin de Porres for our onsite Hairdressing Salon.
St Joseph, our patron saint
Our school saint, St Joseph, and the qualities he inspires, are central to our Catholic life and mission and ones which we hope to instil and inspire in our students. St Joseph is a role model for young people in terms of his faith in answering God’s call and his obedience in living the life God planned for him. His compassion, work ethic and knowledge of the law are to be admired and emulated. St Paul VI writes of Joseph dedicating his life as one of “sacrificial service” to others and we hope our students grow into a life of service to God and others in their community. Indeed, we encourage students to join our Faith in Action and Pope John Paul II Award groups to grow in these areas.
Living out Catholic Life and Mission
At St. Jospeh’s we live and breathe our Catholic Life and Mission in diverse and exciting ways. We have forged links with international students, this year welcoming American and Dutch students into school and sharing faith with them through in school retreats and more personal Q&A sessions. We have excellent relationships with our parish priests, Fr. Adrian Dixon and Fr Saji, who visit our classes to talk about their vocation in Q&A sessions, along with formally celebrating the Sacraments of Mass and Reconciliation with our students. We also invite military chaplains and prison chaplains into school to share their vocation stories. Further opportunities for our students to live the faith with other students across the diocese are given through inter-trust TOWIE debates. Additionally, we also welcome guest speakers from a variety of faith backgrounds to speak to our students, for example Jaswinder Singh for Sikhism, Deanna Van der Velde for Judaism and Wendy for Buddhism. We also promote inter-faith dialogue and have forged excellent links with the Anglican church who regularly work with us to build bridges between our Christian communities. Our next project currently underway, is to improve our multi-faith prayer spaces for students from other faith backgrounds.
Social Action
Service to others and living out Catholic Social Teaching is constantly promoted to our students who are involved in helping the vulnerable a wide variety of ways. Locally, we regularly support our community food banks, Hebburn Helps and Bede’s Helping Hand, though termly food donations. Students also create and personally deliver care parcels for elderly parishioners through our links with the local SVP at Christmas and Easter. On a national level, we support the Terrence Higgins Trust, Daft as a Brush and Cancer Research UL and internationally, we support Operation Christmas Child every Christmas. We have also fundraised for CAFOD, Orphan Child in Siera Leone and Ukraine. Our Faith in Action and Pope John Paul II groups often take a lead on these projects.
Our Parable of the Talents initiative has been enthusiastically received by staff and students where tutor groups are given £5 to plan, develop and carry out a charity event (and hopefully a profit) for a charity of their choice. We celebrate these exceptional acts of service with certificates, postcards home and through pastoral House assemblies.
Chaplaincy Provision
Our school chaplain is actively involved in promoting faith across the school and regularly assists students in delivering their Celebration of the Word and year group Masses. He is available for chats with students and staff and offers a range of opportunities for students and staff to develop spiritually. These include; God Camp, CYMFED Flame festival, Youth village retreats with YMT and in-school retreats to include all students. There is also provision for staff and students in our Wednesday worship after school service.
Sacred Spaces
Our sacred spaces initiative has become embedded and staff are encouraged to create a reflective sacred space in their room which students contribute to through writing prayers and delivering morning tutor reflections from. We are also creating a multi-faith prayer space to be launched in September 2024 for students from other faith traditions.
RSE
We have an engaging and bespoke RSE programme at St Jospeh’s for all Key Stages, both written and delivered through the RE team who are are RSE specialists. The content is firmly rooted in Catholic teaching for a local context in line with diocesan and county guidance. Annual consultation evenings are held for parents in the autumn term and the programme is evaluated through this and pupil voice.
At St. Joseph’s, faith comes first. It is at the heart of everything we do and we are blessed to serve in our vocations at St. Joseph’s. Your student will be welcomed into a community of Christ’s love and will be encouraged to become a FLAME unto the world, using their gifts and talents to bring Christ’s love to all those in their communities and the wider-world. God bless you all.
