Catholic New World staff writer Michelle Martin talks with Carol A. Kolberg.

Carol A. Kolberg: “They’re questioning. ... It’s that whole formative stage. If you wait too long, you’re almost late.” Catholic New World photos/Sandy Bertog

Carol A. Kolberg knows Chicago. And she knows Catholic education.

Kolberg, one of 12 elementary school principals across the country recognized by the National Catholic Education Association this year, has spent 41 years teaching and leading Catholic schools, all on Chicago’s Northwest Side or in the Northwest suburbs. She started her career teaching for nine years at St. Pascal School, her home parish, before becoming principal there. She then served as principal at Mary Seat of Wisdom School in Park Ridge before taking her current position as principal of St. Bartholomew School in 1990.

The Catholic New World: How did you end up working in Catholic schools?

Carol A. Kolberg: I knew I always wanted to teach. I can remember, or at least I was told, that I would gather all the children from the neighborhood, and we had a big front porch and we had a slate house, which was perfect to use with a twig for a pointer. … I was always teaching, it seems. Because of the whole Catholic milieu it never dawned on me that I would even consider teaching anywhere but in a Catholic school. Before I was graduated from Alverno (College in Milwaukee), the School Sisters of St. Francis had set up some interviews for me, but I made the decision to come back to my own parish, St. Pascal’s.

There’s quite a bit of connectivity there. My mother’s family was one of the original families in that parish when it was founded, and she and her sisters attended that school, and I attended that school, so it was kind of like coming home. As I realized what an excellent education I received at all levels—from elementary school through post-graduate work—I wanted to give some of that back to that particular system.

I’ve been in school on one side of the desk or the other since 5 years of age.

TCNW: Looking back on your career so far, what do you most enjoy and appreciate?

CAK: I think it’s the children. There’s a teacher that will always remain within me, and that part I really do enjoy. Even though I cannot teach full-time, I talk an awful lot with children, and sometimes I substitute-teach, so I keep connectivity that way.

Another thing that’s very interesting about this particular job is its diversity. On the one hand it was so enjoyable when I taught … I knew exactly that at this period of time I would be working with this course, and so on. In this job, there are no two days alike. You never quite know what you’re going to be called to do, so it’s forever challenging.

The role is changing so very very much. We used to say 20 years ago that you wore a dozen or a baker’s dozen hats. It’s becoming even more complicated now.

TCNW: How has the role changed?

CAK: You’re so much involved in the marketing of the school now. Years ago, it was a given that people were going to come to the Catholic school in their neighborhood. Now people have so many choices, and they’re not confined to their neighborhoods, so you’re forever out talking with people, designing materials, creating the Web site, going to different conferences. You’re involved a lot in trying to attract people and trying to retain them. There’s a whole different dimension.

TCNW: Has it become more difficult to attract families?

CAK: Most of us in the Catholic schools, even in a stable neighborhood like this whole Northwest corridor, are concerned about the future, because the competition is out there. With the variety of the schools, whether it’s the public school, whether it’s magnet schools, whether it’s private schools, whether it’s home school, with the influx of people who don’t understand what Catholic education can be for them and their families, it’s a whole new ballgame.

It was a different kind of life when I first started in the1960s compared to now.

TCNW: How have the needs of the children changed over the years?

CAK: Everything that’s happening in society, the different configurations of the family, the demands of an economy-stricken society. You’ve got people who are holding down multiple jobs or losing jobs and having to face that dilemma. The children are being serviced from a very, very early age by people other than their own parents for a major portion of the day, and then there are the “values” society offers to the students and their families. All of that is changing rapidly, and it poses quite a challenge if you are in what we refer to as a Gospel-value school setting.

TCNW: How does a Catholic school challenge those values?

CAK: What we try to do is have some very good dialogues with the children. I was just talking to some of our middle school teachers about an excellent dialogue they had, about ... the theology of is there heaven and hell and what does all that mean, what kind of a God … will he understand, will he forgive? Oftentimes in other courses, whether it’s social studies or music, we analyze choices that were made.

I firmly believe we’re educating the leaders of the near future. What we’re trying to instill within them is a kind of a value system so that we don’t have to live through an Enron or Andersen scandal as often as we do, so we don’t have to live constantly in violence. But it’s hard for them, because they’re growing up in a world that is violent and cruel and mean and cutthroat.

Yet they’re questioning, and we deal with them at an age when they’re intelligent enough, old enough, wise enough to say wait a minute, this what you’re saying, this what we’re seeing. It’s that whole formative stage. If you wait too long, you’re almost late.

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