Disciplines & Instructors

The Technology & Career Sciences Department of Cleveland Central Catholic High School provides all students with a high quality education program that integrates theory and practice through a combination of business and computer classes. Our course offerings are designed to develop necessary skills and competencies while promoting quality work ethics and positive attitudes and behaviors.  Real-world, hands-on, problem solving approaches, as well as collaborative activities that foster effective teamwork and individual leadership skills, are utilized throughout our programs. Business, economic and computer literacy skills are pertinent to success in today’s 21st century workplace and are essential in fulfilling the roles of citizen, worker, and consumer; therefore, we strive to prepare our students for their high school academic needs and initial employment as well as their advancement and the demands of the future.

Departmental goals include:

• To provide students with technological skills required for high school and college academic coursework. 
• To prepare students for part-time jobs while attending high school or college.
• To prepare students who wish to enter the business or finance job market upon graduation.
• To help students understand the business aspects of almost all other careers.
• To help students make intelligent business/economic decisions as voters, consumers, and workers.

The English Program at Cleveland Central Catholic High School reflects and reinforces Christian ideals set forth in the school philosophy.  Practical development and usage of the English language finds its base in the skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing.  A comprehensive outline of courses building upon one another and giving expression to all cultural and ethnic backgrounds reflects this cosmopolitan learning environment.  Both teachers and students seek to integrate this communicative and literary knowledge into the social, political, and religious milieu of the time.

The courses offered by the English Department at Cleveland Central Catholic High School are arranged sequentially around a four-year required course of study combining language, literature, and composition.  

The Fine Arts Department of Cleveland Central Catholic High School encourages creative growth of students in the arts. Recognizing each person's unique gifts, the department promotes critical thinking and creative use of human and material resources. Student artists are called to serve, to share, and to recognize and respect historical and contemporary forms of expression.

The visual arts courses incorporate four components vital to the study of art on the secondary level: production, criticism, aesthetics, and historical, cultural, social, and religious contexts. This varied program fills the needs of those learners who are considering careers in the art field. At the same time, it fulfills a universal need for visual literacy and creates an opportunity for discovering one's talent through experience.

The elective curriculum is suitable for short or long term participation, depending on the learner's ability, interest, and career goals. A single course or combination of classes allows students to fulfill the fine arts requirement for high school graduation and some college admissions.

Guidance and counseling is an integral part of the total school program and contributes actively to the mission and goals of the school.  Using a developmental approach, Cleveland Central Catholic’s Guidance Department seeks to assist students in assuming responsibility for their own actions and choices as well as experiencing growth in their educational, career and personal-social environments.  The long range goal is to develop within each student skills which will assist the student in attaining his or her fullest potential.  Inherent to this goal is the total involvement of school personnel, parents and community.

The Mathematics Program at Cleveland Central Catholic is designed to help students acquire knowledge, skills, and attitudes essential to the full development of their potential.  Through the study of mathematics, all students will reach a level of proficiency enabling them to think logically, apply processes, and solve problems.  Students learn to read and write mathematics as a universal symbolic language.  While maintaining and mastering basic computation, estimation, and measurement skills, students learn to interpret and represent information, and to select and apply processing in solving problems.  The scope and sequence of the program provide concept, skill, and process development appropriate for the needs, abilities, and goals of individual students as they prepare for higher education, satisfying employment, and being responsible members of society.

At Cleveland Central Catholic High School, we recognize that mathematics is vital to everyday living. Competency in mathematics is an essential life skill.  The importance and relevance of mathematics is clearly evident in the impact of technology that permeates every aspect of our society:  our home lives, our work, and the world in general.  To promote and facilitate learning, there is a strong emphasis on exploring concepts and solutions, communicating mathematically, and using calculators and other forms of technology.  Intervention strategies are necessary vehicles to mathematical success.  Small group and individual tutoring sessions are available and encouraged.

Fundamental concepts are reinforced throughout the curriculum.  Each course within the program incorporates significant emphasis on problem-solving skills.  Students are required to select and organize information, determine relationships and skills to apply in finding solutions, consider alternative approaches, estimate results, and state conclusions.  Collaborative and cooperative learning provide an environment for students to develop socially and mathematically.  As students become confident problem-solvers, they attain the higher levels of learning involved in critical thinking.

Student services at Cleveland Central Catholic High School encompass a wide variety of support personnel, from discipline-based tutoring, media and library support to intervention and adaptive educational instruction.  The general goal of these tasks is to assure all students have access to academic support so that they may succeed.  The staff below figure significantly in these tasks.  

The Science Program is centered on five specific themes: stability, systems, and patterns of change, complexity and scale models.  Woven into all instructional objectives are the four strands of scientific inquiry, scientific knowledge, conditions for learning and applications for learning science.

The Science Department strives to stimulate curiosity and wonder at the beauty and order of the natural world in its students. As science and its accompanying technology play an increasingly significant role in society, we attempt to broaden students' awareness of our ability to discover the laws of nature and to use this knowledge for further development. We wish to integrate science into the whole of their education. Laboratory experiences are used to broaden the students' knowledge of scientific principles.

Problem solving is used in the laboratory and classroom to further develop the student's ability to initiate critical thinking processes. We aim to help students become knowledgeable about the developments of science to prepare them to make judgments based on Christian values.

This Science Program was developed by the science teachers of Cleveland Central Catholic High School. Those involved aimed to design a program that would meet the needs of students, challenge them, help them to appreciate the natural world and grow to assume personal responsibility for the world where they live. 

The members of the Cleveland Central Catholic High School’s Social Studies Department seek to foment a community of culturally literate students who are able to understand, appreciate, and accept the cultural diversity of the world and the history of the United States of America. Next, the department strives to provide the academic skills necessary to promote responsible citizenship, social justice, analytical thinking and scholarship in all fields of history and social science.  Moreover, the members of the department believe that the study of history and social science seeks to promote several specific skills, which include:

• The ability to promote independent, socially conscious thinking;
• The ability to evaluate relevant historical events and their impact on today’s society;
• To better the student’s ability to express themselves in oral and written communication;
• To be prepared for all state and national level standardized testing;
• To become fully functioning adult citizens whose judgments and decisions are grounded in faith and morality.

The Course of Study for the Social Studies courses taught at Cleveland Central Catholic High School reflects the perceived needs of the world for which students are being prepared, the Catholic-Christian philosophy of our school, and the special needs of the students themselves.  The courses are interconnected by certain underlying themes, such as the importance of the individual, the unity of all human beings, and their interdependence. Each course should emphasize the teaching of values, the acquisition of knowledge, facts and concepts, and the development of social studies skills.

The Theology curriculum is designed to provide our students with varied and diverse courses that will help them develop a basis for faith while engaging in opportunities to further develop a maturing faith life.  As Central Catholic has a student population that is diverse as to its cultures, faith traditions, and levels of faith development, a conscious effort is made to give our students the information they need to make well-informed moral and religious decisions.  The richness of the diversity of our students provides unique opportunities for dialogue and growth. 

The department seeks to provide a context in which: doctrine can be systematically presented and effectively reflected upon, religious truths can be explored, foundations of faith can be established, faith can be applied to real-life situations, and personal experience can be explored, interpreted, and judged using the norms of faith and love.  To this end, the faculty of the Theology Department seeks to give evidence through their preparation, teaching, and daily lived-out witness to the Gospel and service to church, school, and community. 

Curricular goals are: 

• To provide factual knowledge, skills, and applications of God’s revelation through scripture.
• To provide knowledge about practices and personal growth in prayers, sacraments, service, and the church. 
• To present an explanation of the practical demands of a moral life, both personal and social. 
• To encourage the development of a mature faith, as modeled in the person of Jesus Christ through increased critical thinking and religious knowledge.