CASA Continues to Connect Adults and Students to Achieve

Lou Anne Tighe, Director of Campus Ministry
December 11, 2017

Since the initiative began five years ago, Connecting Adults and Students to Achieve (CASA) continues to create connections and build a stronger community.  Through family gatherings, students and adults develop relationships that can support social, emotional, spiritual, and academic needs. CASA families gather and offer acceptance and inclusion. Every student and almost every adult in the building participate in CASA.

For those not familiar with this program, CASA is not only an acronym but also the Spanish word for “house.”  Every student has a CASA family at Cretin-Derham Hall.  Each family consists of two adults and about twenty students.  There are approximately eight families within each house and eight different Houses.  Each House is named after a virtue:  Faith, Courage, Truth, Wisdom, Peace, Hope, Mercy and Joy.

CASA meets two to three times each month and follows a general outline:

• Opening Prayer
• Check-In Question
• Activity Options
• Discussion of a Current Topic
• Closing Prayer
• Check Out

During CASA family gatherings, students have the opportunity to be with students from other grade levels (usually four to five students from each grade is in the CASA family).  They share prayer and prayer for others, participate in an activity that builds community, focus the discussion on current topics, and develop rituals that are meaningful for their family. 

Recent examples from family gatherings have included:  making sandwiches for distribution to those living on the street, tie blankets to be given to shelters for their guests; enjoying a Thanksgiving “mini meal,” and writing holiday cards to veterans and current men and women in military service.  While families are given guidelines for the gathering, families can create their own activities and discussion based on the members’ interests and concerns.

CASA Co-Director, Lou Anne Tighe, considers these family gatherings not unlike the beginning of the early church.  “At the time of Jesus’ resurrection and for centuries after, Christians met in homes for the sharing of the heart, telling the stories of Jesus, the support of widows and orphans in their midst, breaking bread and strengthening one another.  At its basic level, CASA tries to accomplish the same:  gathering, praying, checking in on one another and offering support.”

As this initiative continues to develop, CASA families seek to become more aware of the sociopolitical situations currently affecting people’s lives.  Becoming more educated about the ways others are underserved or mistreated, families can become more attentive and sensitive to others’ physical and emotional needs. That is a Catholic mission.  That is what the students, faculty, and staff of Cretin-Derham Hall and CASA can be for the world today.