Rooted & Rising: Stories From Across Our Schools
Campfire conversations celebrating the people, practices, and purpose that make our schools thrive.
Rooted & Rising: Stories From Across Our Schools
12 - Mission & Catholic Identity
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of Rooted & Rising, Andrew McDonald shares portions of the final meeting of the year for the Mission & Catholic Identity Committee, offering a reflective look into the heart of how mission guides the life of our schools.
Through conversation and shared reflection, committee members look back on the year, naming meaningful moments, celebrating progress, and considering the ongoing work of strengthening Catholic identity across the system. Their discussion highlights the importance of intentional governance structures that keep mission at the center of decision‑making, ensuring that faith remains not just a value, but a lived reality in classrooms, relationships, and leadership.
This episode provides a rare and thoughtful window into how Catholic schools remain grounded, accountable, and forward‑focused, rooted in tradition while continually discerning how to grow and respond to the needs of students and families.
It’s a quiet but powerful reminder that strong schools are not shaped by programs alone, but by shared purpose, engaged people, and a deep commitment to mission.
Welcome to Rooted in Rising, a short podcast where we highlight the people, programs, and moments that make Billings Catholic schools special. Each episode, we'll spend just a few minutes sharing one story from across our system. Something worth noticing, worth celebrating, and worth building on. I'm Andrew McDonald, and I'm glad you're here. All right, this is a little bit of a different episode today. I decided that it would be a lot of fun to record the final Mission and Catholic Identity Committee, subcommittee of the school board, their meeting at the end of the year because it's a time for us to reflect on the year, think back on positives, the successes that we had. A challenge is that I had four microphones set up and we had a lot of people in the room. So apologies for the quality of sound in this episode, but I did think that it was a worthwhile glimpse into some of the work that the school board does. So without further ado, uh I'm gonna turn it over to our Mission and Catholic Identity final meeting of 2025-26. Really excited for today and the Mission and Catholic Identity Committee meeting at the end of the year. This is really where we just reflect on our year as a whole and get to talk about the highlights from the year. So I'm gonna start right here and have the Mission and Catholic Identity Committee introduce themselves. So please share your name and your role.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So I'm Krista Wall and I teach 9th and 10th theology at Billing Central.
SPEAKER_04I'm Linda Gray, and I teach seventh and eighth grade religion at St. Francis.
SPEAKER_00Mary Leo, I teach fifth grade religion at St. Francis.
SPEAKER_07I'm Amy Maggio, and I'm a parent of a third grader and an eighth grader, and I run the Parent Care Griver and Family Prayer Group on Thursday mornings.
SPEAKER_01I'm Rachel McLean and I teach sixth and seventh grade religion at St. Francis.
SPEAKER_08I'm Sean Kahn, and I teach juniors and sophomores at Central for Religion.
SPEAKER_06I'm Mary Pancratz. I am on the school board.
SPEAKER_05Ernie Dutton. I'm father of three previous students at Buildings Catholic Schools, and currently three grandkids going through it. So pretty excited.
SPEAKER_02And Nolan Trafton, principal of Buildings Central.
SPEAKER_10Perfect. So when we think about this group, in your mind, what is the Mission and Catholic Identity Committee? What do we do?
SPEAKER_09We make Central Catholic and all the Catholic schools Catholic.
SPEAKER_08How do we do that? By following the teachings of the church and understanding exactly what they teach and how we can spread the gospel message to our kids. What's the group do?
SPEAKER_03So we provide opportunities for our students to get involved in their faith, whether at you know, the K-8 level or the high school level, we come up with things that are going to bring, you know, as a student body or bring us as a community closer to Christ.
SPEAKER_04I think the community offers support and opportunity for collaboration as well.
SPEAKER_05One area that I think we uh started focusing on and then uh maybe haven't quite followed through on is besides seeking opportunities for kids, but how do we project and interact with greater community, not only with parents and grandparents, alumni, but also even those that in the past maybe have not had a uh an association with the school.
SPEAKER_10So if we think about this year then and we look back on our year, what what are some things that we've accomplished this year? And and what are what are some things that you personally are most proud of?
SPEAKER_02Krista, I think you should touch on the service fair because it was the first year that that we implemented the service fair, and I think it went off without a hitch.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So one of the goals of this committee was to increase service and to make the idea of service something that we can teach and implement. And you know, having the goal of, you know, it's a required, it's a required thing for for class. And so they they do requirements for service, but kind of implementing something that they want to they want to do it. And so we came up with the idea, we tossed it around a few months, yeah. And years maybe maybe years. I feel like it's been a long time in the making, yeah. And so we at one of our meetings, I think it was in December maybe, January, I can't even remember which one it was. We just kind of brainstormed, said, We're gonna do it, we're gonna make it happen, came up with ideas, kind of collaborated with each other, got a hold of. I think we had 13 different community members who came, set up booths in our gym. Our kids went around and got signed up for service. We had people that we didn't necessarily think to invite that have actually contacted us and said, Can we please be a part of this next year? So I I think it was great. I thought it was great. The community was really happy. They were, you know, our kids were were great. They they raved about our kids and and how interested they were in the different service organizations. So I hope it's something that we can continue and and grow on, you know, and make it even bigger and better.
SPEAKER_01So I believe what we did well this year is the existing things that we implemented, like our retreats and our saints programs. I think we definitely worked a lot more efficiently this year, not just as religion teachers, but as a whole collective staff. We worked on our communication, and I think that helps bring that message and mission of Christ to our students. Some of the responses that I have received from our survey that we sent out to staff on how our Saints program went, right now it says 44% good, 33% excellent. You know, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for everything, you know, that you do to provide this opportunity in our school for our students. And I think what I've seen is our staff with that buy-in, you know, and that's part of our mission is not just teaching it to our students, but to our peers, you know, our our coworkers. And when we allow opportunities like Saints or retreats to step away from the classroom, I think it's really impactful. So I would say that we just kind of did that really well this year.
SPEAKER_10So talk a little bit more about Saints, if you would, because I don't I don't know if everybody knows exactly what that that is.
SPEAKER_04Well, Saints was organized when we created the when we unified or came together as Saint Francis Catholic, and we knew we had to have some kind of program or plan to connect the two levels, and so we created saints groups, and so there's a members from every class in each saint group, and there's 24 saints that are represented, and they gather this year. We've gathered four five times, and we do various activities.
SPEAKER_10What you can't see is we're giving hand signals because we don't want to speak on the microphone.
SPEAKER_04And so those five times they've done things like today. We had May Crowning, and so they gathered together for that, and we crowned Mary and had a prayer service, and we've done St. Francis activities, Advent activities that we gather with the other kids to promote our faith and promote community among the school, the kids. So and teachers and staff.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, it's a pretty awesome thing when you get to witness eighth graders working with kindergartners and the way that they form those relationships. I mean, it's like it's a an a really great way to get students to mentor each other, right? And build those bridges across the classes. Amy, you've championed a parent prayer group for us. So how's that gone this year? How are things going with that?
SPEAKER_07I think it's growing and getting better and better each time. I think there's a broader awareness of amongst the students with the prayer boxes that we've placed around the school. Uh kind of exempt to exemplify the virtue of humility that you can come to school and you're and we know life is not perfect, and we all have things that we need help with that are outside of our control. So the parents, grandparents, caregivers, we gather in the St. Francis Chapel, we review all of the prayers that some of the teachers have written, some of the students have written, and they're genuine. And we've had some big prayers this year. And some of them are private, and some of them are tear-jerking, and some of them are silly, like more donuts. And uh the parents and caregivers and grandparents that are there, uh we are committed to our faith, and we believe that when two or three are gathered, that Christ is present and he hears our prayers. So we we lift up those prayers to Christ and we say a rosary, and then we say a devotion with protection and ask for the intercession of St. Michael for the protection of all of our staff, teachers, principals, presidents, you know, any anybody that's here and uh part of the Billings Catholic Schools community. And it's very powerful. We do that on Thursdays right before Mass.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask. You meet Thursdays prior to Mass at St. Francis, right? In the chapel?
SPEAKER_07Yes, and then we wrap up in time to attend Mass with our children.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, it's been that was definitely an idea that you had last year that I think we kind of began last year, that it's awesome to see you continue with it and and see that continue to grow. And I think we're excited for that next year, as long as you're still willing to do it.
SPEAKER_07I enjoy it. And I will have a s freshman at Central next year, so I look forward to participating in that area on a high school level as well, as well as continuing on here at St. Francis.
SPEAKER_05And that's every Thursday?
SPEAKER_07Uh it it was it's once a month. Once a month Thursday mornings. And as the need and desire grows, I'm willing to make it weekly.
SPEAKER_05And which Thursdays?
SPEAKER_07The first Thursday of every month at 8 a.m. Wrapping up in time to attend Mass at 9 a.m.
SPEAKER_10And then Ernie, you kind of spearheaded an art project at St. Francis.
SPEAKER_05Will you talk a little bit about that? Well, it was a collaboration. This committee helped a lot. We have hung pictures throughout the building that were chosen by this committee that were appropriate to the area of the school that they are hung in. And they the artist that we chose is a fairly well-known contemporary Catholic artist. But uh anyway, we had a we commissioned a special painting, and it is of Saint Francis.
SPEAKER_06Jen Norton.
SPEAKER_05Norton, thank you. I knew it was an N. Norton. Jen Norton. And her work, I think, especially speaks to young children because it is very visual. But we commissioned a uh St. Francis painting specifically for the school, and so it has some students with our green and white colors on their shirts, and it we weren't sure where to hang it, but it's if it hasn't been hung already, decided that it'll hang in the uh chapel right above the candles. And uh, and so since it is the St. Francis Chapel, you know, we thought that in fact teachers could even take it down, put it on the altar, use it as meditation simply because uh it does include Boeing's Catholic students in it.
SPEAKER_07It is beautiful and it is in the chapel. It's just not hung.
SPEAKER_05Oh, it's not hung.
SPEAKER_07It's not hung.
SPEAKER_05Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_07I think it's in the chapel.
SPEAKER_05Okay, yeah, we just made that decision last week, and uh and so I I I guess this committee certainly can put their two cents in, but it just seemed like it fit perfectly on that wall. And uh, we were talking about matting it and putting a frame around it. She did paint around the edges of the painting so it can go up on the wall without anything else. And again, it just seems like it fits perfectly in that spot.
SPEAKER_10Well, I guess another question that I have for the group then is is why is a group like this important in the context of Catholic school governance, right? Like this is a subcommittee of the school board. So why is a group like this important in the context of a Catholic school?
SPEAKER_08Well, I've been talking to my kids recently about themes of community. And in talking about that, I realized that, yeah, no man is an island, no man can live on their own. And the Catholic Church rejects the identity of the idea of individualism. Like we can't do this on our own. We need a community with us. And it's important to understand that we're all a community together. And I think this committee is doing so much good with just gathering and able to share, like enabling us to share our opinions with each other and being able to talk about our experiences and what do we see as happening in order to better share our Catholic identity with this entire school system.
SPEAKER_06So I think if you look at the priorities of the school, right? So faith, family, and academic excellence, faith is first for a reason. And if we're a Catholic school and we're gonna actually be Catholic, a group like this that traditionally in most weeks has a priest representing us, right? A group like this is necessary for us to really make sure that we are on par with what the Catholic teaching is and what's going on in the faith, so that we're putting our money where our mouth is and we're telling the kids we're Catholic, but also like we really are. And here's the group that leads it and helps spearhead those initiatives.
SPEAKER_03Another thing too is like to be able to celebrate the positives, you know, to be able to celebrate where we see the spirit moving. I mean, there have been multiple times this year at Central and multiple times, you know, within our Catholic school system that we have seen and felt the spirit moving. And so to just meet and to be able to say, okay, these are the good things we're doing, this is what we see, here's what we can maybe improve, right? But to be able to show and to say we are doing really good things in our school.
SPEAKER_10So so, like, what are those things? What are those things that are happening? Where do we see the spirit moving?
SPEAKER_04And I think this year at St. Francis the upstairs, we had a rough year. We had a faculty member pass away, we had a lot of other big issues that took place that happened, and morality or morally or morale Edit all that out. Morale was morale was not super great for quite some time. But the fact that our downstairs coworkers and friends surprised us for an entire week with little gifts and little planned surprises for us was really touching and very special. And I think that's like the spirit moving, you know, to feel that love and that camaraderie and support was really helped a lot of us get through the month, you know, that we had had. So it's a special place, and I don't know how often you see that in every school, but we definitely felt the love and the prayers and the spirit moving everybody.
SPEAKER_07So it's really beautiful for for me on Thursday mornings when I'm in the school early to host the prayer group when I'm walking around the school and locking the prayer boxes. And I go upstairs and all the middle schoolers, a lot of them know me and call me Mommy Maggio. And they'll say, Mommy Maggio's here, she's praying for us. And then when they see me outside of the school, if it's at mass or sporting events or whatnot, a a couple of these students have pulled me aside and asked for me to pray for them for private reasons. And it's it's they see that we're witnessing to that, that this is our mission statement, faith number one. And when they see the parents that are leading by example, and they know a parent that they can reach out to if they're not comfortable reaching out to their own parent. Um, I think it's very powerful. And I'm very I feel very blessed and honored to be that person for those students uh that see me on Thursday mornings.
SPEAKER_05You know, just to kind of reiterate, you know the need and the opportunity both are just, I think, tremendous these days. Starting with the need, my daughter, Carly, she's got a fourth grader here, but she teaches the uh first communion classes at St. Thomas has for probably about four years. And it's pretty sad, and I guess I have some issues with the fact that then we confirm them at the same time. Because she just says, you know, so often we just never see them again. They don't show up to C C D after they've received their first communion and been confirmed. And so, you know, that's sad, and so that's an opportunity, as you've said, you know, uh these kids in many cases need it, they want it. You know, a another just example of how important what you do is. There's a gentleman that taught 44 years at the public schools here in Billings, and just a wonderful gentleman, strong faith, uh, retired two years ago, and he said, you know, the public schools have really changed. He said, when I left, he said, I dared not even say the word God. And and and here you're talking about kids coming up to you and asking for prayers. I mean, that's just the night and day. And then along those lines, you know, I think we've all heard of how the younger generation, the Generation Z as opposed to Generation X, that so many of them are coming to the church, whether it be the Catholic Church, but uh, you know, they are really looking at Christianity in a way that uh several generations before them didn't. And so I I again I think the opportunity is tremendous, and again, thank you for all you do, because I can tell you from the grandkids that I've got in the system, you know, just like uh just a little kindergartner for Mother's Day. We had, you know, grandmas and mothers, and so there were actually five mothers there. And so we let the kindergartner say the prayer for the mothers, and I was like, she could do it. Okay. She wasn't overwhelmed by it, so that just tells me uh that uh you guys are doing a great job.
SPEAKER_08I think I've also definitely seen a shift with our kids within the uh the light of the mass, too. Just noticing the fact that they care more about the mass and understanding like what it truly means to be there, but also their participation. I think that's one of my favorite things about like going to Central and being a part of the Mass is like I love to sing the songs at the Mass. And that's one of the things I miss the most about graduating and leaving Central was the fact that I didn't get to be a part of that mass. And being a part of it now, seeing the zeal that they have for the mass and showing up and everything, I can tell like from the start of the year even until now, like there's been a shift in how much they participate and how much they want to be there. And it's been so cool for me to see, and so fruitful for me to see too.
SPEAKER_10Thanks for listening to Rooted in Rising. We'll be back next week with another story worth celebrating.
