Chaplaincy Team and Mini Chaplains
St. Augustine's are incredibly proud of their Chaplaincy Team, superbly supported by the Mini Chaplains, who represent our school in this special and privileged role. The Chaplaincy Team wear their distinctive Chaplaincy Team badges, as well as their Saint Francis of Assisi Academy Trust Chaplaincy badges, so that everyone can recognise them and the important part they play in our school’s faith life.
To become a Chaplaincy Team member, they each completed an application and were then interviewed by Father Julian, our parish priest and our Religious Education subject leader. The Chaplaincy Team is a very popular leadership role and is oversubscribed each year, making it an even more special responsibility for those pupils chosen. They meet regularly with the Religious Education subject leader to support the Catholic Life of the school, to plan events and to share their ideas about how they can help others grow in faith.
St. Augustine's Catholic Primary School Values
In the summer term of last academic year, our Chaplaincy Team were given the task of choosing four values that they felt best embodied our own school's charism, ethos, aims and mission statement. With the Religious Education subject leader, they researched other school websites and created a bank of words that described a value. As a team, they discussed each word, making a shortlist of values, before finally choosing them: trust, perseverance, friendship and respect. Each value has a significance to our mission statement as well.
'We come to school to live and learn (perseverance) happily together (friendship) by loving ourselves and each other (respect) as Jesus teaches us (trust).'
They then organised a competition for children to design a logo that they considered best represented each value. The Chaplaincy Team reviewed each design, before finally choosing the four designs they thought epitomised each value. This was then created into our whole school poster and an end-of-half-term certificate awarded to one pupil who has demonstrated a value as nominated by other children themselves.
We are very proud that our school this year has further developed the Chaplaincy roles, by introducing Mini Chaplains. Supported by the Chaplaincy Team, they help these younger children to learn about prayer and deepen their understanding of our faith. By instilling this sense of responsibility and being a role model to them, the Chaplaincy Team motivate and encourage the Mini Chaplains to be the school Chaplaincy Team of the future.
Both the Chaplaincy Team and the Mini Chaplains take an active part in Collective Worship throughout the year, leading prayers and reflections during key times in the Liturgical Year, both in school and in church.
They are full of ideas about how to live out our faith and love in action. Throughout the year, they support local, national and global charities through fundraising and community projects. In all that they do, they aim to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, of St. Augustine and of St. Francis of Assisi, living as servant leaders who bring trust, perseverance, friendship and respect to our school and wider community.
The Chaplaincy Team Aims
St. Augustine’s Chaplaincy Team
Aim to:
- Promote the Catholic character of our school.
- Encourage pupils to show their Catholic values in daily living.
- Develop good relationships within and beyond the school community.
- Support the liturgy, prayer and spiritual life of the school.
- Involve pupils to act positively and fundraise for charities.
- Maintain class prayer corners.
- Promote Saints’ days.
- Provide a link with the parish and Chaplaincy Teams in other schools.
- Support our school with our Mission Statement and our new School Values: Trust, Perseverance, Friendship and Respect.
- Organise children’s prayer and reflection sessions.
St. Francis of Assisi Key Values
As part of the St. Francis of Assisi Academy Trust, each school was invited to create their own set of Key Franciscan values, explaining what each of the four values look like in their school and how they achieve these. The Chaplaincy Team worked together to create this document before being shared with the teaching staff for their own input. This can be viewed below:
Chaplaincy Team and Mini Chaplains in the Community
The Chaplaincy Team and Mini Chaplains are 'Called To Action', in which they serve our local, national and global community and neighbours in order to promote the Common Good for all. This includes promoting their faith and spreading the Word of God, such as by organising a cake sale to raise money for CAFOD and their water work in Zimbabwe and organising our Harvest Festival to collect items to donate to our local Broxbourne foodbank.
St. Francis of Assisi Chaplaincy Team prayer
Our school Chaplaincy Team, along with other schools in our Academy Trust, wrote a chaplaincy prayer that was shared as part of our work towards Catholic Life and Chaplaincy. A part of each school's prayer was used to make the new Academy Chaplaincy prayer.
The whole prayer can be viewed in the document below. This has highlights to show the exact parts that were chosen from St. Augustine's Chaplaincy Team's version and similar wording.
Chaplaincy Prayer final version.pdf
St. Francis of Assisi Academy Trust Chaplaincy Celebration Liturgy.
On Wednesday 27th September, our Chaplaincy Team joined our other Catholic primary schools' Chaplaincy Teams in a special celebration liturgy. During the liturgy, one child from each school read a bidding prayer and the children also shared their ideas of how we as schools create a caring community, share compassion for others, have reverence for creation and make peace. These were then written onto leaves and place as a whole Trust of schools on a values tree. In addition, the children received Academy Trust Chaplaincy Team Badges which were blessed by our Trust CEO Mr Celano. Finally, they were reminded of our Franciscan Values Award and how to promote and lead this throughout the school which was launched by all schools.
