Santa Margarita Catholic High: Caring School For Common Good

RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA, CA — Do Rancho Santa Margarita students have what it takes to make a caring school? The students and faculty of Santa Margarita Catholic High School think so. Stepping up to be one of the U.S.'s first schools to join a new national campaign to mobilize middle and high schools, SMCHS hopes to prepare their young students to be constructive community members and citizens who create a better world.

SMCHS is joining Harvard’s Making Caring Common project, in a campaign called Caring Schools #CommonGood. They aim to motivate schools nationwide to take action to advance the following specific goals:

1. Deepen students’ care for others and their communities;

2. Increase equity and access for all students in the college admissions process; and

3. Reduce excessive achievement pressure in communities where it is detrimental to students.

“The era in which we live not only brings incredible advancement and opportunity, but also challenges that are so unprecedented, we have little historical experience to draw from to help us navigate them,” said SMCHS President Andy Sulick. “We are thrilled to participate in Harvard’s Caring Schools #CommonGood campaign because it has helped us focus our efforts to address the myriad of challenges associated with achievement culture and its mental health ramifications.”

To join the Common Good campaign, schools commit to taking substantial, meaningful action to advance one or more of the campaign’s goals and to engage in a self-assessment or evaluation process to measure the impact of their action(s). One of fewer than 140 schools across the country that joined the campaign as “early leaders”, SMCHS has committed specifically to the following actions:

• Leverage the power of student leaders to create a more welcoming, inclusive, and caring school environment
• Support high-quality, sustained community service
• Ensure that school staff reaffirm the importance of balance between academic rigor and care for self and others
• Make a consistent, compelling case to students to consider a wide range of colleges, including colleges that are not typically considered “elite” and support them in pursuing admission to excellent colleges that are not highly selective
• Collaborate with parents to reduce excessive achievement pressure

These goals align with and build on Making Caring Common’s successful Turning the Tide initiative that has engaged more than 175 college admissions offices nationwide. Schools that commit to, implement, and evaluate the impact of their efforts will earn a special designation from Making Caring Common. The work at SMCHS will be led by the school’s counseling, campus ministry and student activities offices.

Santa Margarita’s first action is a student assembly led by The YouSchool that will guide students in understanding their identity is defined by not what they do, what they own, what grades they get, or what others say about them. Students will be challenged to examine the decisions they make and why they make them, in order to discover how stress and feelings of brokenness may be pulling them away from who and what they are meant to be.

The next action is a community screening (free and open the public) of the newly released documentary film “Angst: Raising Awareness about Anxiety” on Monday, March 26, 6:30-8:30PM, which will feature a panel of the region’s foremost mental health experts for a Q&A discussion after the screening.

“Our country is at a crossroads,” said Dr. Richard Weissbourd, senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Making Caring Common project. “We need to mobilize the great strengths of Americans to prepare young people to build strong, inclusive communities and to protect democracy. This work has perhaps never been more important.”

As part of the Caring Schools launch, SMCHS is joining other early leaders on Facebook and Twitter using the #CommonGood hashtag to express support for the campaign, publicly commit to chosen actions, and encourage schools nationwide to join the effort. New schools interested in joining the campaign are encouraged to share a photo and use the text “Count us in! We’re joining the Caring Schools #CommonGood campaign.” on Facebook and Twitter on March 6.

More information about how schools, parents, and students can join the campaign can be found at commongoodcampaign, and makingcaringcommon.org.

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