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Milestones
W hen I was a junior in high school, I was asked to be the first secretary
of the newly formed CCD program, which we started at the Chicago
south suburb. At that time I was honored to be considered, but after the
year started I realized what a privilege it was to be asked to serve. At the time
we had about 22 teachers and a little less than 60 students attending CCD. Today
the program has grown and we have over 200 students with 50 teachers and vol-
unteers. The teachers along with the DRE (Director of Religious Education)
Tonny Pullapally and Fr. Abraham Mutholath became another family for each
other and to the students.
Each week the teachers would develop creative lesson plans to teach kids
about God while having fun. We’d have staff meetings to discuss different ini-
tiatives for the year and worked really hard towards putting together the first
CCD Festival, which continues today. Throughout the year we ran into different
Tesa Plathottathil obstacles that we over-came together. Each moment was great as we watched
our students grow and develop a relationship with God and the Church. It is
really rewarding to see the fruition of hard work and dedication come to life and
continue even after we all left for college.
When I think back, the main drive for each of us teachers, was being able to
Tesa Plathottathil work together. Like many young kids, my parents took me to church and dance
class every weekend. I honestly didn’t appreciate either till I was in middle
recalls her cherishing school, but every weekend I looked forward to these two events to see my
memories on putting friends. This routine agenda is what allowed me to grow in my faith as a
Catholic and develop lifelong friendships. It also created a sense of belonging
together a CCD to our church community that compelled me to serve.
There were many bumps putting together a CCD curriculum for the first
curriculum for the first time with no formal teaching backgrounds, but together we were able to build a
time with the help of all solid foundation, that has evolved into a comprehensive program today. It
couldn’t have been done by one person, only by a group of people willing to put
teachers and how they aside their individual differences and personal agendas to work towards a com-
build a solid foundation mon goal, which was to serve the church. I hope that the same value of team-
work continues to take precedence as future generations decide to give back and
and then how that has serve the church. Often times we see people rejoice in others failures. It makes
me wonder if we hadn’t all worked together, what that year would have turned
evolved into a out to be! It is the teamwork that drove us to continue to try every week and with
comprehensive God’s grace we had a successful year.
program today.
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