The Catholic school community to the west of Toronto launched a Twitter-wide campaign April 25 to promote what Catholic education means. Students, staff, parents and alumni are using the hashtag #MyCatholicEducation to share snapshots of the best of their education experience.

“Twitter has proven to be a great tool for large communities like ours,” said Marianne Mazzorato, director of education. “To be able to come together and share the good news and our successes.”

Mazzorato said this social media campaign is an opportunity for the school board to highlight the activities within the community. But the spirit of the campaign must be carried beyond Catholic Education Week’s events over May 1-6.

“It’s a great opportunity to open up our classrooms and to give people a window into our classrooms,” said Mazzorato. “Many of our kindergarten teachers and classrooms have their own Twitter accounts and they use it because many of the parents follow it.”

Mazzorato said many parents appreciate having regular updates of different events in the schools, but they are not the only ones benefiting from the board’s Twitter network. For educators, it becomes a tool to interact with their students, parents and with each other. Students and parents can tweet questions to teachers, but also share links to more information. Teachers within and outside the board can share ideas and resources with each other.

“When I think about it from the perspective as educators and all the work that we do to create those conditions for children to flourish in our schools, you want to know about the impact of your work,” said Mazzorato.

Social media has also been a great tool for the school board to reach out to the pastoral needs of the community. As Christians, Mazzorato said we cannot keep quiet about the Gospel and must announce Jesus in our life.

Every month, a priest from one of the parishes in Peel Region and Dufferin County uploads a “Pastor’s Remarks” video on the school board’s YouTube channel that reflects on the liturgical year.

“The responses that we’ve gotten back (from the videos) have been amazing,” said Mazzorato. “That would have just been a story to a congregation... yet we were able to use social media to cast that net wide.”

The Dufferin-Peel board is running the #MyCatholicEducation campaign on its Twitter account at twitter.com/DPCDSBschools.