As a product of a Catholic grade school and high school, and as a teacher for 34 years at La Reina High School in Thousand Oaks, I know about the importance of Catholic schools. But the best way for me to address their importance is to look at our graduates, because it is their lives and their leadership that convince me that Catholic schools enrich our nation.

From Jan. 27 through Feb. 2, La Reina and every Catholic school in the country will celebrate National Catholic Schools Week, whose 2008 theme is "Catholic Schools light the way."

It's not the academics at Catholic schools like La Reina - which are excellent - that set them apart, but the religion classes, the Christian service program, and Campus Ministry.

A La Reina example: Every year we present a Distinguished Alumna Award. This year's recipient is Rebecca Kendig, Class of 1988. Rebecca is a social worker in New Orleans; she helped found the Youth Empowerment Program, a non-profit organization that works with incarcerated African American youth to help them transition into a productive life when they leave jail.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, Rebecca fled to her parents' home in Thousand Oaks, but returned to New Orleans just weeks later. "I have to find the kids I was working with," she said. "I need to make sure they are okay."

Rebecca is still active with YEP, but now works in a law firm as a mitigation investigator, researching the lives of those on death row, trying to find circumstances - like mental retardation or mental illness - that would enable their death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment.

When I called her last month to tell her she would be receiving our alumna award, I asked her why she became a social worker and why she decided to work with the disadvantaged and the incarcerated.

"Sister Claire's religion class," she replied without hesitation. "You couldn't be in that class and not develop a social conscience. It was ingrained in us."

Rebecca took that class 20 years ago. Though she came to La Reina because of its academic reputation, she left it changed --- committed "to lighting the way to a brighter future for all humankind."

Last summer, four of our 2007 graduates went to Kenya and worked at an orphanage in Makobe, tutoring students and helping to build a school. How did their La Reina education influence their decision to go? In the words of Rosie Spinks, now a freshman at UC Santa Cruz, "If I hadn't gone to a school that stressed the value of compassion and philanthropy, I don't think I would feel the urgent need that I do now to make a difference."

That "urgent need" to serve, I believe, is a result of Catholic schools' Christian Service program. La Reina's program requires students to volunteer a minimum of 20 hours a year to the community. The hope is that the requirement infuses in students a desire to donate more hours than the required ones and to make a lifelong commitment to help others.

Last year the Class of 2007, 98 students strong, volunteered more than 12,000 hours. The lifelong commitment to service can be seen in graduates like Emily Robbins ('04), a senior at St. Mary's College in Moraga, who is on her fourth trip to New Orleans; like 2001 alumnae Stephanie Howe and Erin Brooks, who just finished two-year stints with Teach for America; like Dr. Francine Bradley ('72), professor at UC Davis, and a volunteer organizer of pilot 4-H Projects in village schools in Antalya, Turkey.

Catholic schools know, too, the importance of providing students with a spiritual foundation beyond their religion classes. Campus Ministry programs do that; they are the spiritual heart and soul of Catholic high schools. Campus Ministry members lead retreats and prayer services, plan liturgies, and respond to community needs. In October, for example, La Reina's Campus Ministry sponsored a drive that collected over $10,000 for victims of the wildfires. In 2005, it sent $25,000 to New Orleans.

So, yes, Catholic schools help light the way. Reading, writing and arithmetic are taught well at many schools. But Catholic schools, like La Reina, teach to the heart and to the soul, too. And that makes all the difference.

Betsy Potts is an English teacher and former department chair at La Reina High School, a Catholic girls' school in Thousand Oaks.