NEW ORLEANS—Notre Dame Sister Mary Bonita Sniegowski remembers seeing the requests for construction workers and medical professionals in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and thinking, “All I can do is teach.”

Two years later, when New Orleans Archbishop Clifton C. Hughes made an appeal for teachers, “I figured it was a call from God saying, ‘You know, you said you could teach, so I need you down there to teach,’ ” she relates.

Sr. Sniegowski, formerly the GED specialist at Women Blessing Women in Toledo, and two other Notre Dame Sisters of the Toledo Province, Sister Margaret Mary Faist and Sister Linda Marie White, responded to the archbishop’s invitation and moved to New Orleans in July to join the faculty of St. Leo the Great Catholic Central School.

The building opened its doors Aug. 16 for the first time since Katrina devastated its surrounding neighborhood two years ago. As the only Catholic school operating in the Seventh Ward, St. Leo the Great draws 160 preschool through sixth-grade students from an area where about 15 other Catholic schools remain shuttered.

Because its entire faculty is new, the sisters are finding there are few established procedures in place.

“There’s no recent history for the school — there’s nothing to fall back on,” says Sr. Sniegowski, who teaches sixth grade.

“This doesn’t compare with anything I’ve had in 30 years of teaching, because everything is new,” adds Sr. White, who previously taught fourth grade at Leipsic St. Mary School and now teaches fourth grade at St. Leo the Great. “Everybody is carving their way, one day at a time.”

The prolonged upheaval since Katrina has taken a toll on the children of New Orleans, and teachers have found some to be almost two years behind in school because of disruptions in their education.

“Many of the students told us they were in three different schools last year,” says Sr. Sniegowski. “So they’re unsettled.”

The sisters have encountered numerous challenges both in and out of the classroom. Workers were still installing ceilings and painting in the school the day before classes began. Much cleanup remains, and Sr. White jokes that the air conditioning technician is practically a member of the faculty due to the frequency of his visits.

By mid-September, some textbooks had yet to arrive and the building was still being wired for Internet access.

“Katrina has formed it’s own culture. You wait for everything,” says Sr. White. “It’s not like we’re separated from that; we’re now part of it.”

Sometimes the waiting can feel slow and painful, she admits.

St. Leo the Great School mostly suffered wind damage from Katrina, but the surrounding Gentilly neighborhood of the Seventh Ward was destroyed. Many houses still await repairs or demolition, and businesses remain boarded up.  FEMA trailers and debris dot the yards.

Resources are limited, as the sisters discovered when they sought a library. They found one in a trailer. The other one they visited was in a building where three-fourths of the shelves were empty.

Even the post office is in a trailer, operating on a cash-only basis, says Sr. Faist who  formerly served as assistant principal and taught at Charleston Catholic School in South Carolina, and now teaches second grade at St. Leo the Great.

“People here talk of time in terms of pre-Katrina and post-Katrina, because it’s such a defining moment in terms of everything New Orleans — where stores are, where services can be gotten, the educational system,” says Sr. White.

“The Catholic Church was kind of a frontrunner in terms of academic comeback,” she adds. Though public schools were going to stay closed all year after Katrina, some Catholic schools managed to reopen sooner and “pushed the public schools to open.”

The first time the sisters entered St. Leo the Great School, they found lingering reminders of its pre-Katrina existence. Bulletin boards remained untouched, and Sr. Sniegowski found an attendance book marked up through the first eight days of the 2005-2006 school year.

“You could still see the homework assignments written on the board from two years ago,” she says.

Hope-filled presence
Though they spend most of their time at St. Leo the Great, the sisters say their ministry in New Orleans goes beyond teaching.

“I think we see ourselves as bearers of hope to a situation that at times can look pretty bleak and hopeless,” says Sr. White. “We continue to work within the parameters of our situation, and help people to see beyond the damage, beyond the destruction, that there is life beyond all that.”

Many volunteers have come for a week or even stayed a few months, but Sr. Sniegowski feels “the fact that we’re staying and trying to actually live in the neighborhood and work with the people” is reassuring to residents.

The sisters live less than a mile away from the school at St. Raymond Convent. St. Raymond Church remains closed due to damage from eight feet of water, and its school was also destroyed, but Catholic Charities has a station on the property and volunteers live in the parish rectory.

“It’s a privilege to be here serving the people here — it’s also a great challenge,” says Sr. Faist. “We couldn’t do it without each other, and without the grace of God.”

All three sisters say they have been amazed at the level of hope they see in New Orleans residents.

“They have such faith and they are so determined to rebuild this city,” says Sr. Sniegowski. “It’s happening slowly, but it’s happening. And you have to give the people a lot of credit for that.”