Alliance for Catholic Education
As a Spanish major at Saint Mary’s College, this Michigan native always knew she wanted to be an educator. She just didn’t know all the opportunities this path would open up for her, nor all she would achieve. She didn’t know she would wind up working for Chilean government programs, eventually have her own Spanish-speaking household, earn her doctorate, and break ground with her research in multilingual childhood development. But she did know joining ACE Teaching Fellows was her next step, and she took it.
“I did Teaching Fellows before it was called that.” Dr. Alissa Blair (ACE 9, Birmingham) laughs, “It was just ACE! I remember it was very competitive to get in. I felt really special while I was being interviewed. There was so much love. It wasn’t just ‘you’re here to impress us.’” Alissa recalls, “I was amazed when I got in.”
In recognition of her outstanding work as an educator and academic, the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) recently awarded Alissa the Michael Pressley Award for a Promising Scholar in the Education Field. Each year ACE seeks out an alumnus who impacts the field of education scholarship. This year, ACE honors Alissa Blair for her unique contribution to her field.
Alissa’s journey began in 2002 with a move from her home state of Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama for her first teaching assignment with ACE 9. “That was in itself enough of a culture and language difference for me,” Alissa remembers. On top of the cultural difference, there was the notoriously difficult first year of teaching. “I like to compare how I felt during that time to being like a swan.” Alissa says, “I may have looked graceful on the outside, but underneath you’re paddling like hell.” But Alissa did not experience this alone. Besides the summer’s academic preparation, “Knowing you’ve got this whole organization behind you that has built these relationships with school communities is really important.” Her cohort also became a strong support system: “I had an amazing cohort. There were community dinners; getting to go to Mass together. We still have a group chat to this day where we celebrate birthdays and shoutouts.”
“Teaching,” Alissa says, “is incredibly difficult. A teacher makes a thousand decisions a day.” She reinforces energetically, “Teaching is the toughest job I ever loved. I will say that. It’s the toughest job I ever loved.”
Teaching became more than a job to Alissa. It became a mission and practice in living out a faithful life. “Maybe 30% of the students were Catholic,” Alissa estimates, “another 30% were Baptist, and the rest were not Christian. It was a good chance to really live the call to be a disciple and a teacher.”
Alissa couldn’t get enough. After graduating, she returned to ACE in 2004 for the ChACE program, where teachers receive posts to teach in Chile for two years. Alissa puts it lightly, “I wanted to work on my Spanish.”
Alissa’s five years in Chile became a whirlwind of activity and making connections that would alter her life path. She began her time there by teaching fifth and sixth grade at St. George’s College. There she also met her future husband, and pursued a connection with Mariana Aylwin, with whom she became acquainted during an ACE commencement event. Aylwin was the Chilean Secretary of Education at the time and the daughter of the president of Chile during the Transition to Democracy after the coup in the late 1980s. Her connection with the influential Aylwin became a part time job for Alissa after her teaching term at St. George’s College ended. “I wasn’t ready to leave Chile,” Alissa says, “So I reached out to Mariana.” Under Aylwin’s ministry, Alissa organized a Canada-Chile short-term volunteer teaching program, similar to ChACE, through McGill University in Montreal.
After setting up the McGill University Chile teaching program, Alissa was hired full-time by the Chilean Ministry of Education. As a teacher trainer, Alissa traveled “North, south, east, west; I went all over Chile providing training.”
Alissa married in Chile, and then returned to the States for more graduate school in 2009. This time, Alissa earned her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in English as a Second Language. She stayed four more years as a research assistant with the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research. She then became a visiting professor of Bilingual Education at the University of Miami.
Alissa arrived at her current position in 2020 as Assistant Professor of TESOL at the University of Arkansas, where she currently is pursuing research in K-12 multilingual learner education and family engagement.
Alissa is “so excited that this award might put a spotlight on multilingual learner education.” Her area of research tends to seem “quite niche,” to most people, but it is fundamental to so many students’ real life experiences, and integral to Catholic education. Providing quality, research-based education to children of multilingual backgrounds is “an important way to ensure that Catholic schools continue to serve certain populations that otherwise might never consider private school an option.”
Language is central to human learning, and Alissa’s work explores this “sociocultural approach to education.” Culture and family play significant roles in how children develop and learn both in the classroom and at home in bilingual environments. Today, Alissa’s own family is multilingual. Her husband and children speak both Spanish and English in their home.
Alissa’s “yes” to ACE catapulted her onto an exciting journey. “Getting my master’s through ACE opened so many doors.” Along that journey, Alissa’s dedication to equitable education continues to flourish. She says, “As a teacher, my goals are for educators to ensure equitable participation of multilingual learners in their classrooms. A large part of that is to ‘cooperate with these children and families as partners in education.’”