Clubs & Electives

The National Junior Honor Society (NJHS) elevates our school's commitment to the values of scholarship, service, leadership, character, and citizenship. Notre Dame's chapter not only recognizes students for their academic accomplishments, but challenges them to develop further through active involvement in school activities and community service. Our NJHS members and their peers volunteer in our community and make connecting with and serving within the Hill Country a priority.

THE 4 PILLARS OF CAAC

Catholic Identity, Arts & Humanities, Academic Achievement, Competition Community

The CAAC is an elective team-based competition that teaches students to proclaim their Catholic faith, to demonstrate Catholic attitudes and principles, to gain knowledge of Roman Catholic Church teachings and to make Christian choices. It is designed for students to become engaged in exploring social justice issues, delve into biblical and religious studies, research faith-based literature, and discover their God-given talents. CAAC supports and celebrates student academic achievement through various assessment and performance-based categories while encouraging students to honor God as they express their uniqueness as Catholic students and foster community among Archdiocesan Catholic schools.

The Destination Imagination (DI) program is a fun, hands-on system of learning that fosters students’ creativity, courage and curiosity through open-ended academic challenges in the fields of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), fine arts and service learning.

Notre Dame's winning DI teams are tested to think on their feet, work together, and devise original solutions that satisfy the requirements of the challenges. Our participants learn patience, flexibility, persistence, ethics, respect for others and their ideas, and the collaborative problem-solving process. Teams may showcase their solutions at regional, national and global tournaments while competing against other schools.

On Friday mornings we celebrate Mass together as a school community each week with a student-led liturgy.  Classrooms rotate leadership of the all-school masses, with students participating fully in all aspects of the liturgy, from music leadership to reading and altar serving. Notre Dame students become very comfortable with planning and participating actively in liturgy.  Mass is also celebrated as a school community on various holy days throughout the church year.  Additionally, reconciliation services are an important part of the seasons of Advent and Lent for grades two through eight. Highlights of the liturgical experience include All Saint’s Day Mass, the Nativity during Christmas Eve Mass and our May Crowning Mass and ceremony.

Alter Service

All students are welcome to become Altar Servers beginning in the 5th grade.  This ministry is very important to our parish community as they provide assistance during weekend and Friday masses in addition to funerals, weddings and other special occasions.  Direct participation in the functions of the Mass, along with developing a relationship with priests, sacristans, and others who participate in the Mass, helps students to develop an appreciation for the benefits of worshiping as a community.

Food, Fun & Fiction!

Our students have the option of joining an informal literary circle several times a year. Eager readers, and those who are just learning to enjoy books, are encouraged to participate in our Lunch Book Club. In this informal setting, the children can read with their peers without the pressure of being graded. They engage in lively discussions and are encouraged to share experiences that help them to create connections with others. Collaborative reading opportunities like this program help students to improve their literacy comprehension skills while also building self-esteem.

The Notre Dame Robotics Club is open to students in grades 5th through 8th.  Using VEX IQ system kits, students construct and code their own robotic designs and learn what makes a robot tick, from the actual nuts-and-bolts of robotics to the math, science and culture behind them. Our school competes in the VEX IQ Challenge, a competition where teams of students are tasked with designing and building a robot to play with other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. Classroom STEM concepts are put to the test as students learn lifelong skills in teamwork, leadership, communications, and problem solving. Our club competes at the regional, state and national tournaments. If we have a winning team, it’s off to the VEX Robotics World Championship!  GO IRISH!!!

Yearbook is a challenging course in which students have the unique opportunity to write a book, prepare a publication for printing, run a business, and record history. The students work with advanced technology, strengthen their analytical and problem-solving skills, improve their communication skills, and manage tremendous responsibility. They are required to plan and apply proper journalistic skills to publish a yearbook for Notre Dame's elementary and middle schools combined. Students must be committed, dependable, self-motivated, ethical and discreet. They must be able to cooperate with each other in an unbiased and unprejudiced manner and view the administration, faculty, staff, and student body in an unbiased and unprejudiced manner. A great deal of information must be covered in a short period of time. All students in this course must be willing to work hard and use time wisely.