TRISH McCarthy said God placed teaching on her heart as her mission to share His love.
Ms McCarthy runs a program for pre-service and early career educators to encounter Jesus and enhance their formation through Australian Catholic University’s La Salle Academy.
She stressed how important it was for Catholic schools to have well-formed teachers.
Why this was important went back to the mission of a Catholic school, which she said was an extension of the local parish.
Catholic schools’ primary mission was to evangelise, she said, and included everything the school did to communicate the person, message and story of Jesus.
Having well-formed teachers was essential to achieving that evangelisation goal, she said.
Ms McCarthy said Catholic schools across the country were recognising that.
“That’s a significant and critical shift that’s beginning to unfold in the Catholic education sector,” she said.
Her work through the Signum Fidei program was central to that shift in thinking.
The program was designed to lead pre-service teachers to encounter God so they could be a source of authentic witness, she said.
The program had three modules:
- Module one looked at Catholic life and nurturing the spiritual journey.
- Module two was teaching theological content, including the key Church documents that backed up why Catholic schools existed and what their mission and identity was. This module also included a retreat experience.
- Module three was a ministry placement in a local school or as part of a mission experience.
An example of how they engaged the pre-service and early career educators was by giving them the opportunity to reconnect with God through the Sacrament of Penance.
“It’s not something that’s forced,” Ms McCarthy said. “It’s just an invitation to participation in the life of the Church so they can speak with credibility and authenticity (when they teach it).”
She said the touch of God experienced in the sacraments could empower the “new fire” outlined in the Church’s documents on the New Evangelisation.
Ms McCarthy said she hoped well-formed teachers empowered their students with this new fire too.
Her own journey in teaching started while growing up on the beaches of Wollongong, south of Sydney.
“I started off wanting to be a teacher when my PE teachers would take us surfing and they’d have several classes in a row,” she said with a laugh.
“So they were essentially out surfing all day, and I was like, ‘Sign me up’.”
After a few years of classroom teaching, she moved onto Youth Mission Team and later worked with Wollongong diocese, where she had her own radio segment Milk and Honey on Journey Catholic Radio.
All of these moments, she said, were important on her own journey of formation and encounter with Jesus.
To find out more about ACU’s La Salle Academy, visit: acu.edu.au/about-acu/institutes-academies-and-centres/la-salle-academy
