The ACE Blog

Photo Credit: Seamus Ronan

If you want to help Fr. Joe Carey, C.S.C., bake for his weekly “FJ Cookie Socials,” just follow your nose up the Ryan Hall stairs to chocolate chip, peanut-butter, sugar-sprinkle, snickerdoodle, M&M, chocolate sprinkle-crinkle, and FJ’s “Award Winner” from Carroll Hall’s competition nine years ago: chocolate cookies with chocolate chips.

Even the busy first day of summer classes can’t slow down ACE’s newest communities in Philadelphia and Stockton, who still meet for dinner to share their experiences starting new ACE sites last year. While most new ACE teachers are placed into existing communities of first- and second-year teachers, these eight members of ACE 24 established new ACE sites in Philadelphia and Stockton, California, where they forged new relationships with their schools, neighborhoods, and one another.

I just returned from three very full days of professional development with our Blended Learning Advancement and Strategy Teams from the Notre Dame ACE Academies in Indianapolis, and I am feeling so many things: grateful for the amazing group of teachers and leaders and their incessant hard work; proud of how far we have come in just one year; and hopeful for the future of the students in these innovative schools.

“To teach as Jesus did,” as one group of new ACE 25 teachers brainstormed this week on a large sheet of butcher paper hung on an ACE office wall, is “to be adaptable to students’ needs,” “to serve others,” and to “be vulnerable.”

Photo Credit: Dmytro Aksonov

As we approach the beginning of summer, we will attend family barbeques, take road trips, and enjoy the sights and sounds of little ones running through sprinklers and eating popsicles. Some of us will volunteer at day camps or put bandaids on scraped knees following tumbles off bicycles. Others will enjoy America’s pastime and cheer on their prized team while enjoying a hot dog and box of Cracker Jacks. Summer is the time for those carefree days and a trip to the ballpark.

Raising the topic of assessment at a dinner party or an education conference is generally a pretty sure way to end up alone. Assessment is often an emotionally charged topic for students, parents, teachers, leaders, policy makers, and philanthropists alike, as many have strong but differing opinions about the purpose of assessments, how often they should be given, and their impact (or lack thereof) on student learning.

We often say that the greatest benefit of blended learning is that teachers are able to work with students in small groups rather than with the whole class at the same time. There is an assumed benefit when teachers work with small groups of students at different times rather than with the whole class at the same time, but the truth is that teachers must use their small-group time very strategically in order to ensure it actually has a positive impact on their students.

A weekend full of prayer, learning, and relationship building came to an abrupt close for the off-campus members of ACE 25. As April Retreat ended on a Sunday afternoon, we waited for the bus to take us from Notre Dame to the Chicago airport. Someone announced that the bus had been cancelled. Before we could panic, the ACE Pastoral Team concocted a plan: we would pile into their cars, race to the South Bend station, and catch the train scheduled to leave in 10 minutes. “When you get to the train, just get on!” they told us. “You can buy your tickets later, but you have to get on board!”

Beyond the social justice and civil rights perspectives that guide us to serve the marginalized in our classrooms, we have an additional reason to reinforce the need to pay attention to this population. Jim Wright, a school psychologist and the creator of Interventioncentral.org, says, “The quality of a school as a learning community can be measured by how effectively it addresses the needs of struggling students.”

Would you believe me if I told you that the director of instructional technology for the nation’s largest archdiocese presented at our Blended Learning in Catholic Schools Symposium and hardly ever mentioned technology?

That’s right, folks. Even directors of instructional technology are looking beyond technology itself to identify the student and teacher practices that allow technology to have a transformative impact on learning.

To build on our last post about personalizing learning without technology, today we are sharing three foundational principles for personalized learning that Dr. John Reyes, the director of educational technology for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, shared at the Symposium in March.

If you have followed our work for a while, you have probably noticed a recurring theme: outstanding blended-learning programs are about so much more than just technology.

Driven by this belief, we encourage teachers new to blended learning to spend a few months transforming their classroom without introducing a fully blended model. Teachers can harness the power of student data and personalize their instruction in a multitude of ways without using adaptive online learning programs, and we prefer that teachers master those practices first to avoid becoming overly reliant on technology.

Twenty miles down, three hours into the race, and my left quad starts cramping. This is really hard. This hurts. Why did I sign up for this? How am I going to finish? With these thoughts racing through my mind, a runner passes by me uttering words of encouragement: “This is what we trained for! We can do it! Just keep going!” Spectators on the sidewalk enthusiastically cheer, urging us onward. The negative thoughts start to pass away. Here we go. For the kids. I have to finish. Upon crossing the finish line of the Georgia Marathon little over an hour later, several ACE friends immediately swarm around me, congratulating me on finishing. Limping over to the ACE tent, I began to celebrate with the 40 other teachers who had all come to Atlanta from across the country to run, cheer, and fundraise for St. Peter Claver Regional Catholic School. Time passed, and the pain subsided amid good food and great fellowship. Over these next few hours, I began to reflect on all that had just happened. I began to see that this marathon experience really is a great metaphor for my first year in ACE.

The United States’ education system has been fraught with issues of inequity for longer than any of us can remember. Many of these issues were created in our previously segregated school system and have persisted even long after schools integrated, resulting in unequal educational opportunities, and ultimately attainment, for students from minority populations or impoverished backgrounds.

The Program for Inclusive Education (PIE) believes that all students should be welcomed, served, and celebrated in Catholic schools. It is critical that we break down those walls, open our doors, and live out our Catholic calling to inclusively educate the children of God. Dr. Vincent de Paul Schmidt, the Senior Director of Catholic Education for the Diocese of Toledo and a friend of PIE, provides insight into this practice and the crucial role of the principal in leading this change. Many thanks for his guest authorship!

                     ~Christie Bonfiglio, Ph.D.; Director of the Program for Inclusive Education

Saying “yes” to ACE was the most hesitant “yes” I have ever said. For the first time, I jumped blindly into something with no way of knowing how I might come out on the other side.