EAST FLATBUSH — Amberleigh Celestin, a seventh grade student at St. Catherine of Genoa-St. Thérèse of Lisieux Catholic Academy, has a Christmas wish. The wish is for everyone in the world to be safe, and it’s a wish she wanted to share with everyone in the country. 

Amberleigh got that wish, with the help of her classmates and their teacher, Sophia DeMartino, who signed them up for a Nationwide Catholic School Ornament Exchange Program. 

On the bottom of their paper ornament was the message: “I wish for the world to be safe and happy again.”

“When I watch the news, all I hear about is shootings, fires, or war. I just wanted to write that because I don’t want the world to be violent,” Amberleigh said. “It makes me sad to see that people have to get hurt because other people want to get what they want.”

As a first-year teacher, DeMartino, 23, wanted to bring something different to her seventh grade students by incorporating craft projects into their lessons. For inspiration, she turned to the internet. Through a blog she follows called “Adventures of a Fourth Grade Classroom,” DeMartino found the ornament exchange program, which her students enthusiastically embraced.

Emmanuela Solitare, a student in DeMartino’s class, points to her favorite ornament, which comes from Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo: Alicia Venter)Through the program, classrooms in schools across the country send paper ornaments to one another. St. Catherine-St. Thérèse is the only New York school involved in the effort, and DeMartino was elated to provide her young students with perspective on the size of the Catholic Church as well as educating them about different states.

“I believe that this will help them [realize] that it is not just about me,” she said. “With our Catholic education, we are looking to get ourselves into heaven, but how are we helping others too?”

In total, there are 14 schools participating in this round of the program. As of publication, St. Catherine-St. Thérèse has received eight ornaments from schools across the U.S., including Kentucky, Iowa, and Wisconsin, states a majority of the students have never visited. 

Information on all those states is displayed on the door of the classroom, educating the students on their populations, capitals, and the state bird, for example. 

The students say their ornament brings them a sense of pride, and while they may not have visited the states they’ve received ornaments from, they have gotten to share a little bit of themselves with strangers.

“It’s nice that a lot of people and different schools believe in God,” said student Anaya Rajpaulsingh, 12. “It’s nice to know that there’s a lot of people who believe.”

It isn’t just the students who have been impressed by the initiatives by DeMartino. Darlene Gonzalez-Morris, the principal at St. Catherine-St. Thérèse Catholic Academy, considers her a “diamond in the rough” whose motivation and ideas makes it seem like she’s been teaching for years. 

“[Her students] have a really special bond with their teacher, and it really is something that’s humbling and makes your heart smile. They really want to do their best,” Gonzalez-Morris said.

As students in the only Catholic school in the area, it’s possible they can  forget that there is a bigger Catholic school system across the United States, the principal noted, adding that the ornament exchange project reminded them of that, as well as of the Catholic values of community and sharing with one another. 

“I feel like it’s very humbling,” said Michael Dorival, a student in DeMartino’s class. “It’s not a contest [to determine] who sends the better [ornament]. It’s all the same.”