For the first time in almost half a century, students started classes in August at a diocesan school named St. Christopher.
On July 1, the former Trinity Catholic School returned to being known as St. Christopher School, which is located next to the parish in the Grandview Heights area of Columbus.
Trinity Catholic School had been established in 1977 when a merger took place between Columbus Our Lady of Victory and St. Christopher schools. Also clustered with them was Columbus St. Margaret of Cortona Church, which did not have a parish school.
For the two years after the consolidation, St. Christopher housed the elementary students and Our Lady of Victory the middle school students. In 1979, all classes were moved to the St. Christopher building.
Trinity Catholic School had served the three parishes and other students for the next 40 years before, as part of the diocese’s Real Presence Real Future strategic plan, St. Margaret of Cortona was notified in 2023 that the parish would be affiliated with Hilliard St. Brendan the Navigator School rather than Trinity.
That decision set the wheels in motion for Trinity to eventually revert to St. Christopher, the school’s name from the time it was established in 1948 until the 1977 merger. Bishop Earl Fernandes, the Office of Catholic Schools and St. Christopher’s pastor, Father Andrew Kozminski, SAC offered their support for the switch.
Students were notified on April 25 of the forthcoming change and principal Angie Eisenacher said they embraced the renaming. A new logo was created and students were given the opportunity to vote on a new mascot that reflected the school’s patron, St. Christopher.
Additionally, parents and supporters were invited to a town hall to discuss the situation and an online survey was made available for feedback.
A similar situation had occurred in north Columbus before the start of the previous school year when a parish merger between St. Elizabeth and St. Matthias resulted in St. Matthias School becoming St. Josephine Bakhita School.
“So far, the response has been really good” at St. Christopher, Eisenacher said. “We listened to parents’ concerns. A lot of our parents went to what is known as Trinity, but a lot of grandparents were here as St. Christopher.”
There’s hope that the school once again sharing the same name with the parish will attract more recognition in the community.
“Quite honestly, some people had no idea, even in Grandview, that we had a school here,” Eisenacher said. “Even people who have lived here forever, they just didn’t know.”
When the doors opened in August, the school had 156 students (approximately 60 percent Catholic) enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade, drawing from parishes that include St. Christopher, Our Lady of Victory, St. Margaret of Cortona, West Jefferson Ss. Simon and Jude, Plain City St. Joseph, Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral, Columbus Holy Family and Columbus St. Francis of Assisi.
St. Christopher also offers a preschool that attracts more children from young families in the Grandview area, Eisenacher said.
In addition to the name change, the school has adopted a new approach to teaching, defined as authentic learning experiences.
“Rolling out this new approach to teaching and learning, with more authentic learning experiences, we feel like it’s a good opportunity for us to rebrand,” Eisenacher said.
Authentic learning involves applying different teaching techniques to engage students in various content areas.
“We had a couple of middle school teachers that piloted a basic research project they redesigned so that it was very authentic in nature,” Eisenacher said. “They had the same topics that they had done before, but they allowed the kids, instead of just making a slide show and presenting it in the normal fashion that they had always done, they had options of presenting that material in any way, shape or form.”
Some students used coding to make a video game about a topic. Others took a historical figure such as St. Joan of Arc and developed what her social media account might look like today. Another student used 3D printing to make pieces for a game.
“It takes whatever their interest was and made it very applicable to them,” Eisenacher said, “and then they presented it to the rest of the school.”
The authentic learning experiences approach is not confined to academic performance. It has made a positive impact on students’ Catholic identity as well.
Eisenacher recalled that at the end of the previous school year when a middle-school religion teacher announced she was leaving, students came to her with a slide-show presentation they had made about starting a Marian garden to honor the beloved teacher.
“They had researched everything, what plants they wanted and how they relate to Mary, and they went and got a statue,” Eisenacher said. “It’s really empowered their learning.”
Related to: JUBILEE of ANNIVERSARIES