Boston location for NCEA meeting highlights challenges educators face

Published: 2004-04-21

BOSTON (CNS) -- This year's record attendance of 17,000 participants at the National Catholic Educational Association's 101st annual convention indicates, if nothing else, that there are a lot of Catholic educators in the Boston area. And a quick look at the workshops offered during the convention reveals to some extent what these schoolteachers and religious educators have been up against in recent years and what they continue to face, from dealing with financial pressures to recruiting quality teachers to making sure students have access to technology. Although the clergy abuse crisis is no longer plastered on the front pages of The Boston Globe, remnants of continued charges still made headlines in the paper during the April 13-16 gathering. And although teachers might not have to deal with the subject on a daily basis, it's still there. In the Boston Archdiocese, in particular, it is the reason teachers and religious educators of kindergarten through eighth-grade students devote 30 minutes each week for six to eight weeks to discussions on safety issues -- from car, gun and fire safety to learning about how to protect themselves from bullies and the differences between appropriate and inappropriate touching.

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