An entryway art gallery that includes reproductions of faith-related works is one of many ways St. Jerome School, Oconomowoc, demonstrates its commitment to incorporating the Catholic faith into school subjects and experiences. (Submitted photo)
A Waukesha County school is being recognized nationally for its focus on not just faithfully teaching Catholicism to its students but how it integrates the faith into all academic subjects and the very life of the school.
With its mission being to “promote and defend faithful Catholic education,” the Cardinal Newman Society has chosen St. Jerome School in Oconomowoc as a featured school in the latest edition of its Newman Guide.
“That recognition is a reassurance to families that, where in some cases a school is taking steps to not understand the faith in its fullness, we’re an organization you can trust that we’re here to partner with you to help form your kids,” St. Jerome Principal Teri Chudy said.
“It is for being intentional and being serious about making sure that the faith is illuminated, through your mission statement, through what you teach, how you teach it, your policies, the staff that you hire, the seriousness of a leader to form the staff in a way that they can teach the way they need to teach to bring kids to the faith.”
St. Jerome School is one of 22 K-12 schools nationally recognized in the Newman Guide, and the only school from Wisconsin listed. The society started the guide in 2007 to identify model Catholic colleges and expanded it in 2023 to include elementary and other schools.
Schools apply to be included in the guide and submit evidence that they meet its standards.
The Cardinal Newman Society awarded St. Jerome based on its performance in achieving five key elements: prioritizing the salvation of souls; modeling a joyful Catholic community that witnesses Gospel values; giving students living encounters with Christ through prayer, Scripture and sacrament; forming mind, body and soul to resist relativism, overcome individualism and discover vocations to serve God and others; and imparting a Christian worldview of life, culture and history.
“I think the Newman Guide really points to what the mission of Catholic education is in the Church as a whole, which is to form the whole person to understand their place in the world as a beloved child of God,” said St. Jerome Pastor Fr. John Gibson. “All of the education that we do, all of the work that we do in our parishes and schools, would flow from that.”
It flows with a well-communicated intentionality to bring the faith to everything, and not just present the Catholic faith as a moral and ethical code.
“One example would be our history program. We’ve been using a series called Catholic Textbook Project for a number of years now,” Chudy said. “It integrates everything, so when the kids are learning a specific time period in history, they’re learning about the saints that were living at that time. They’re learning about what was going on in the Church at that time.”
She added that English classes and literature not only present quality books, but an examination of characters.
“We consider their traits and their decisions and whether they’re virtuous or not virtuous and consider that in a different way than maybe most schools consider it,” Chudy added. “We see it through our Catholic worldview.”
Chudy, in her eighth year at St. Jerome School and her third as principal, said that part of the approach to creating such a unifying educational philosophy stems from a substitute teaching opportunity with the parish’s faith formation department.
“When I got there and saw what Catechesis of the Good Shepherd was, it was this program that was paying attention to the whole child, their development. There was history integrated with it. There was Scripture integrated. There were the beautiful things that we use at Mass (that) were all integrated. And that really resonated with me,” she said.
“Then we had the opportunity to implement Theology of the Body … through children’s literature. And the books that we got as teachers to find these themes, they were well-loved books that you probably never thought the themes of Theology of the Body being integrated into.”
Fr. Gibson says that even though St. Jerome doesn’t want to treat inclusion in the Cardinal Newman Guide as a point of competition, he recognizes that the uniqueness of the award provides opportunity to be a magnet for Catholic families within the Archdiocese of Milwaukee seeking this type of education for their children.
“Things are changing a bit in terms of how we view belonging to a parish, belonging to a school, whereas that might be formerly adhered to geographically. Now there may be a bit of a smaller world or a broadening of horizons there,” Fr. Gibson said.
“But I think at the end of the day, our striving to be the best school we can be is hopefully helping the archdiocese as a whole and (the) Catholic Church as a whole, and that we’re all on the same page there, the same team.”
