Alliance for Catholic Education
My car finally broke down for good on Cinco de Mayo. I made a right turn out of our staff parking lot and the *BOOM* scraaaaaaape told me that he was gone. “He” being Norbert, my 2004 Honda Accord of two years, who brought me lovingly and creakily to school and back each and every day. Well, every day until that most fateful Monday on which he made his exit. Four tow trucks later, Norbert finally made it out of the narrow parking lot and to my mechanic, where this was diagnosed as “the point of no return.”
I bought Norbert from a dear friend after my first ACE summer, drove him from South Bend to Miami solo, and never looked back. He had everything a girl could need— working AC, a single functional window, and a car alarm with a flair for drama. No radio, no problem! He was my noble companion on the Miami roads these past two years. But when he couldn’t bring me home on May 5th, my community did. David sat with me while we waited for the tow truck. Rachel drove me to school the next day. Everyone chipped in, giving me rides without complaint. And just like that, a broken car reminded me why ACE works. In ACE, you’re never working alone, not even when you are stuck in a parking lot with your wheel hanging off the axle.
Teaching was hard at the start—way harder than I expected. Whatever virtues I thought I had—patience, inclusivity, perseverance—were tested daily by middle schoolers and their tween attitudes. I leaned hard on my community that first year. Rachel, Scott, David and I were the founding members of ACE Miami, the first ones to figure out teaching and life in a new city. We had nightly dinners, a plethora of inside jokes, and shared laughs and tears over classroom disasters. When Kelly and Claire, our 31s, arrived, they brought new light and joy to our little convent home.
Living in community is beautiful, but not easy. It requires constant humility and generosity. From simply doing the dishes to negotiating mistakes, granting mercy, and asking for forgiveness, to being the one who shows up when someone’s car doesn’t— community asks for more than friendship but a commitment to people you did not choose. You are committing to put others above yourself. Constantly. You are committing to navigating different communication styles and learning to understand someone’s perspective instead of writing them off. You commit to picking up the slack when someone cannot follow through on their commitment that week. You may even be committing to dressing like Pitbull for ACE summer trivia. Like fixing an old Honda Accord, you get what you put into the community. Your friendships are strengthened by conflicts you’ve resolved instead of ignored, and it all becomes worth it when you find that you are not only friends but emergency contacts, sous chefs, travel buddies and pickup basketball teammates.
Faith has carried me through ACE, not always in the way I imagined it. I didn’t always feel “called” to teach. Some days, I prayed just for the strength to show up. On other days, I would stop and pray for my students by name, through gritted teeth. These prayers for my students became my practice of empathy, as I thought about them and what might be going on in their lives that would impact their actions in my class. I would pray for my community members and fellow teachers, for the will to forgive and be forgiven when it was needed, and for the burdens they carried that I could not physically help with. Slowly, it became less about me surviving the classroom and more about us– my students, coworkers, and community members– navigating life together.
So no, I don’t have a car anymore. But I do have two years of stories, laughter, tears, learning, and grace—shared in a broken-down Honda, in a chaotic classroom, and around a community dinner table. Norbert may be gone, but the ride we’ve been on has certainly been one to remember.