A caring family member

Caring:

Catholic education promotes caring in the CGE:

"A caring family member who attends to family, school, parish, and the wider community."(Institute for Catholic Education, 2018) Both are similar in caring for their students in a positive, compassionate, and empathetic manner, to promote student well being and success.(Institute for Catholic Education, 2018; OCT, 2018)

We care about the "whole person", which includes the souls of our students. We take into account the spiritual needs of our students, and we nurture them. (Institute for Catholic Education, 2018)

The OCT standards of practice, do not define the type of care to be given to other members outside of the school, whereas the CGE extends "care" to the whole community, even outside of school and family. (Institute for Catholic Education, 2018; OCT, 2018)

The first assignment posted below, considers how teachers carefully observe students in Mass, to see what the challenges are that face student engagement in Mass. Only a caring teacher, will take the time to reflect on the challenges and their solutions to helping students become engaged with Christ, during Mass. I believe this assignment correlates with the CGE of "being a caring family member who attends to family, school, parish, and the wider community", because in this assignment, in order to identify needs or struggles, one must truly care on a genuine level, to come up with solid challenges and solutions! A person who does not see the relevance of the Mass themselves, or the value of fellowship in the Church, will not care to consider ways to "help students see the relevance of Mass in their daily lives" as this assignment asks us to do.

The second assignment titled: "The Principal of Double Effect" gets students to use a caring approach to resolve a tough scenario. The situation given was one that required discernment, analysis, and a lot of care. This is why I chose to include this assignment under the CGE of "being a caring family member who attends to family, school, parish and the wider community", because the choice that I concluded with in this assignment, showed my ability to care for not just the student at school, but their family as well! Below is the Scenario, and my analysis of the situation, along with my final action plan. I believe I acted in the most caring manner in this scenario, although the Principal of Double Effect" applies, because one student out of the two would find my action, potentially unfair.

This does not mean that it was an uncaring decision however. It reminds me of how so often humans may blame God for actions that they think is "uncaring", because they do not see the behind the scenes scenario, as is the case in the scenario below.

Scenario Copied from: Queen University's Religion Part 1 Online Course:

Assignment 2: Principal of Double Effect

"Imagine that you are a coach for a senior sports team (students in grade 11 or 12). You have selected your top ten most talented players out of twenty students who tried out and you are about to declare your team publicly. Before that happens, a colleague, whose opinion you respect, approaches you. She confides that Stewart, a student who was not successful in making the team, ought to be placed on the team because his emotional health is at risk if he doesn’t get on the team. Stewart has suffered the breakdown of family following the recent death of a parent. Under the circumstances, being a member on this particular sports team is the only feasible way of coping with the loss and breakdown at this time. You accept your colleague’s judgment that membership on the team is critical for Stewart’s well-being but you’re not sure it is fair to the player who would be bumped off the team to make room for Stewart. You consider that Stewart is a strong player who placed eleventh out of the twenty who tried out. If you agree to place him on the team you will have to bump out the student who placed tenth on the list. That particular student, Andre, has been trying for three years to make the junior and senior teams and now he finally did. He is in his graduating year so he will not have an opportunity to try out again. If you cut Andre from the team to make room for Stewart, Andre will recover from the disappointment because he has a strong support system. Due to reasons of confidentiality, you cannot reveal to Andre the real reason for cutting him if you choose to go that route. The team will also be marginally weaker with Stewart rather than Andre. What will you do? (Hint: you will need a guiding, ethical principle. One such principle could be the criteria for being on a high school sports team. You might consider criteria such as ability to be a team player, work ethic, ability to improve character, physical talent, or a combination of values arranged in a hierarchy. When you determine your guiding principle, choose an action that conforms to the principle.)" (Queens University, 2018)

"Now test your guiding principle by applying the principle of double effect to the above scenario to determine if your action (adding Stewart or keeping Andre) was correct. If you believe the principle of double effect does not apply, explain your reasoning." (Queens University, 2018)

D2l.educ.queensu.ca. (2018). [online] Available at: https://d2l.educ.queensu.ca/d2l/le/content/176922/viewContent/1174879/View [Accessed 5 Apr. 2018].

Dpcdsb.org. (2018). Catholic Graduate Expectations. [online] Available at: https://www.dpcdsb.org/students/catholic-graduate-expectations [Accessed 5 Apr. 2018].