Campus Ministry

Parenting and Teaching: Our Call and Our Vocation

From time to time we are gifted with a visit by one of our alumni from way back who, for some reason, may be reminded that Saint Jeanne de Lestonnac School exists and that it played a significant role in his/her life.

One such joy was ours a while back when the president of a prestigious Catholic high school in northern California came back to tell us about his gratitude for the education and formation he received at Saint Jeanne’s. He was in the process of having to make a decision about giving one of his students a second or third chance at “redemption” for some mistake. He remembered his growing-up journey at Saint Jeanne’s!

Although he credited Saint Jeanne’s for seeing him through hard times during his childhood, adolescence, and teenage years in school, we feel compelled to give credit where credit is due. This great success story would not have happened if parenting had not been closely linked to his schooling process. To be tempted to give up on students, to avoid the growing pains of second and third and more chances that are challenging is possible, but to give in to any such temptation is not an option! And, what is true of teachers is also true of parents. It fares well for teachers and parents to assume, as their own, the child’s endurance tests that growing up entails.

Might we even go so far as to assert that those very growing pains will be looked upon later, perhaps much later by all concerned, as the source from which the ability has emerged they manifest in the successes for which everyone involved should take credit and celebrate.

In the midst, then, of the growth process of children, parents and educators can focus on rejoicing over the sacred trust that God has commended to us in the children at home and in school. Whether to praise and affirm them or gently correct their mistakes, we are invited to say like Jesus: “Let the children come…”, and we can embrace this challenge as God’s gift to us and as a vocation that is complementary, parents as parents and teachers as teachers, serving together in the mission with which He entrusts us all: THE CALL, THE VOCATION, TO CARE FOR HIS CHILDREN!