Sustaining Catholic Education in and for the Black Community
By Lois J. Carson, Sr. Roberta Fulton, S.S.M.N., Dorothy Gupton, Veronica Morgan-Lee, Freida D. McCray, Mary Crowley McDonald, Kathleen A. Merritt, Sr. Jamie T. Phelps, O.P., Ph.D., Brother Gary Sawyer, ECSA, Deacon Marvin Threatt, PhD.
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Sustaining Catholic Education in and for the Black Community Resource List for Youth Ministers In the African American Catholic Community

Therefore, the bishops committed themselves and the whole Catholic community to the following set of goals:

• Catholic schools will continue to provide a Gospel-based education of the highest quality.
• Catholic schools will be available, accessible, and affordable.
• The bishops will launch initiatives in both the private and public sectors to secure financial assistance for parents, the primary educators of their children, so that they can better exercise their right to choose the best schools for their children.
• Catholic schools will be staffed by highly qualified teachers and administrators who will receive just wages and benefits, as directed in the pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All.

The NBCC commissioners on Catholic Education followed the directions of the bishops and organized their work with the vision of Black education at the heart of the Church, evangelizing a socially just Church. This plan of action is designed to guide Catholic dioceses across the nation in addressing issues pertaining to Catholic Education
in the Black Community.

Appreciative Inquiry

To assist in the development of a new plan of action for Catholic Education, the NBCC provided the commission with resources and training in the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) process. AI is described as the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them (Cooperrider, 2000). Its purpose is to discover what gives life to a system when it is most effective and most constructively capable.

AI involves the practice of asking questions in order to understand, anticipate, and maximize a system's positive potential. When inquiry utilizes the “unconditional positive question,” the often-negative task of intervention gives way to imagination and innovation. AI seeks to build a union between past and present capacities: achievements, assets, unexplored potentials, strengths, opportunities, benchmarks, high points, lived values, traditions, strategic competencies, expressions of wisdom, and visions of a bright future. Utilizing all of these elements, AI works from this “positive change core” and assumes that every system has many untapped positive accounts. When this energy is applied, changes never thought possible are mobilized.

By engaging in the AI process when developing the new plan, the Catholic Education Commissioners were able to focus on the subject of Catholic Education while always maintaining positive verbal and nonverbal communication. Each member was asked to answer the question, “When is Catholic Education at its best?” The responses revealed several
common elements, including the presence of religious sisters as teachers, the ability of a school to engage the whole family, and the emphasis on community service.

The AI process helped the commissioners to understand how a focus on negative experiences can interfere with problem solving and successful outcomes. By focusing on positive experiences, the commissioners were able to identify the best in their vision of Catholic Education.

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