The ACE Blog

When I think of Cindy Hayden, a veteran teacher at St. Philip Neri Catholic School with 36 years of experience, I think of sunshine. Cindy exudes positivity, enthusiasm, and love in everything she does, especially when she interacts with her first-grade students. When I entered her classroom for the first time last year, I saw smiling students working hard on meaningful assignments–a sure sign of leadership by an outstanding teacher.

My daughters Elizabeth (age 6) and Catherine (age 4), constantly create. Whether coloring blackline pictures, drawing freehand, cutting things out, glueing, taping, dancing, or singing, they create incessantly.

My colleague/mentor/fellow salad-eater Frankie Jones calls herself a CIP fangirl, and she has brainwashed me to be the same. Allow me to explain.

Returning to my school after my second ACE summer felt like how I imagined Lucy felt when she returned to Narnia through the wardrobe after trying to relay her experiences to her siblings to no avail in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. Ascension Catholic High School was a place where I experienced exciting and difficult things, where I forged relationships with people most of my friends and family were likely never going to meet, and where my worldview changed profoundly.

In the wake of the horrific events in Charlottesville, Virginia, knowing that racism and violence still have a prominent place in our nation is frustrating and embarrassing. I am acutely aware of my own white privilege as I write this, knowing that it is my place of privilege that allows me to just be frustrated and ashamed of this situation rather than imminently threatened and afraid. My heart goes out to those facing discrimination and violence and I pray for greater tolerance and love in our communities.

In a previous post about Lessons Learned for Expansion, I mentioned that the implementation plan for blended learning at our next two Notre Dame ACE Academies – Central Catholic and St. Philip Neri –  looks different than it did at Holy Angels last year. From our pilot, we learned that we need to focus on school leadership, slow down the implementation timeline, and make a more deliberate effort to develop institutional capacity and expertise. Our new plan for implementation is centered on Blended Learning Leadership Teams.

ACE Teaching Fellows graduate Luke Janicki (ACE 22 - Peoria) offers a two-part reflection on his experiences in the classroom and how he used his Spanish speaking skills to create connections in the broader school community. Part two is below and part one is titled, "Teachers as Translators: Doing the Unexpected".

ACE Teaching Fellows graduate Luke Janicki (ACE 22 - Peoria) offers a two-part reflection on his experiences in the classroom and how he used his Spanish speaking skills to create connections in the broader school community. Part one is below.

Photo Credit: Andrew Hamaty

Morning light puddles on the moss-covered stones of the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. My breath, after my run, slows and my knees find the kneeler, recently wet with dew. I imitate Saint Bernadette and gaze up at Our Lady. From her perch among the stones, she seems to look right at me, expectantly.

The Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) is perhaps best known for its Teaching Fellows program, which forms talented, faith-filled college graduates to renew and transform Catholic school classrooms. Each year, ACE selects over 90 of the most talented, faith-filled, community-oriented college graduates in the world to begin its two-year service-through-teaching Masters of Education. After two summers of rigorous academic courses and two school years of full-time teaching in a Catholic school as well as completing online coursework, ACE Teaching Fellows graduate as licensed teachers with a M.Ed. and a lifelong commitment to Catholic education. (Side note: Ian Corbett, Mary Kate Veselik, and Sean Wolohan are all graduated ACE Teaching Fellows who taught at Holy Angels this year!).

Cookies equal community.

The recipe may be simple, but as Fr. Joe Carey, C.S.C. sees it, fellowship in ACE doesn’t need to be complicated. Every Monday, Fr. Joe, ACE chaplain and priest-in-residence at Ryan Hall, opens his kitchen to the ACE community. Around dinner time, a small group of baking enthusiasts crafts dozens of cookies, and then the larger community gathers later that night after Mass to enjoy the treats.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned that we are expanding blended learning to two additional Notre Dame ACE Academies in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis this year: Central Catholic School and St. Philip Neri Catholic School. And this should be no big deal since we’ll just repeat what we did at Holy Angels this year, right?

Sometimes, as teachers, we spend too much time talking. Sometimes, we worry so much about transmitting our knowledge to our students, that we forget about the art of listening. We forget that it is not our voices that matter most in our classrooms, but those of our students. We seek so desperately to be heard, when in reality, it is our job to hear, to make our students feel known and acknowledged.

When Emma Fleming was discerning her next steps as a senior at the University of Notre Dame, she listened for God’s direction. She found her answer in song—a Notre Dame Folk Choir song, to be exact.

Four people stand in ready position on South Quad. Their knees are slightly bent, their eyes trained on the yellow ball as it bounces neatly off the circular net in the grass. It’s twilight on Notre Dame’s campus—fireflies have already started to congregate on the lawn—but for these four players, the rest of the world has melted away. For 20 minutes, they are not graduate students or instructors or administrators. All that matters is the net, the ball, and the next move. All that matters is Spikeball.