After a year of serving the La Salle community as Director of Service, Ms. Olivya Conner will be moving on to another opportunity in Kintbury, England at St. Cassian’s Centre.
St. Cassian’s Centre is a Lasallian retreat center, so their mission is similar to La Salle’s. Along with 11 other people, Ms. Conner will lead retreats that serve elementary to high school students in one-, two-, or four-day retreats. This new job coincides with her belief that high schoolers should learn new and different ideas and engage with their communities.
Before she came to La Salle, Ms. Conner worked in outdoor education and had attended the Lasallian Youth Conference as both a student and volunteer. “My life was changed by doing service and through retreat when I was in high school,” she said.
Helping lead the Lasallian Youth Conference in 2023 was what introduced her to Director of Faith Programs & Campus Ministry and Religious Studies Teacher Ms. Sarah Maher and World Language Department Chair and Spanish Teacher Ms. Lisa Moran, who approached her about an upcoming job opening at La Salle. This is what led to her eventually applying for the position she now holds, and will be leaving at the the end of the year.
As of right now, she hopes to return to La Salle once her year-long job period is over, but her decision is still very much up in the air. “And I say right now mostly because a lot can happen in a year,” Ms. Conner said.
Should she return, she wants to take what she learns from her next job to make service at La Salle better. However, Ms. Conner is not sure what the future will hold. While her experiences with Lasallian institutions will always remain a part of her, she may no longer want to work in a school setting.
“This feels like either a beginning or an end, and I’m not really sure which yet,” she said.
One major difference she does recognize between her current job at La Salle and her future job at St. Cassian’s Centre is that she will no longer be working with the same students week after week. This means she won’t be able to watch students grow over a long period of time like she does now, which has been a major takeaway from her time at La Salle.
Ms. Conner’s passion is to help students “find the path they want to be on, and how to do that by also being a good person,” she said. Overall, she hopes this next step will provide something she can use to give back to the Lasallian community.
