The ACE Blog

St. Cletus School in New Orleans

Minneapolis/St. Paul and New Orleans share some obvious similarities: both are cities on the Mississippi River, both are home to musical legends (Louis Armstrong from “the Big Easy” and Prince from the “Twin Cities”), and the food is… okay, yeah, the food is just way better in New Orleans. Never mind. 

“We are better together…Everyone has ideas to bring to the table!  To be inclusive reminds us of what it means to walk like Christ did.”

– Monica Choquette 
PIE 2 Educator and Resource Teacher at the Basilica School of St. Mary in Alexandria, Virginia

Like many students at the University of Notre Dame, acronyms have been a big part of my educational experience. 

As for many newly-minted ACErs on placement night when they find out where they will be teaching for the next two years, our pictures on the cardboard trifolds next to the label “ACE Biloxi” elicited a flood of surprise and giddiness and questions.  

Biloxi? 
Are they sure?? 
Am I even saying it correctly?!

As a former secondary English teacher, I battled the homework question many times throughout my ten years of teaching. On the one hand, homework, particularly reading homework, was necessary for students to build their literacy skills and stay on top of classwork. When studying a novel, assigning 20 pages of daily reading during class was not an effective use of class time. However, if I gave too much homework (more than 20 minutes or so of reading, unnecessary worksheets for extra practice, etc.) then students would not complete it.

Procedures, procedures, procedures! As new teachers, we hear this word repeated over and over. 

“Make sure you have procedures ready to go for day 1!” 

“What are your procedures for recess, lunch, Mass, lining up, transitioning to the carpet, transitioning to the desks, rotating between centers, turning assignments in, walking through the hallway, packing up at the end of the day, cleaning up at the end of the week?”

I’m not sure how it happened...but it is fall in South Bend, and the University of Notre Dame has renewed energy. People are walking to and from class and events, instruction and research are underway, the reverence of spiritual formation is powerful, and Irish football posted a “W” against Louisville in the season opener. Campus is alive and well after a short-lived summer break.

When I think of Triple D, I am reminded of my favorite show nicknamed Triple D (aka Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.) This culinary show is hosted by the immeasurably enthusiastic Guy Fieri. Everyone has something that they are “immeasurably enthusiastic” about, and for me, it is data. I used to go nuts about analyzing the progress my students had made. Now, I go nuts about measuring the progress our partner schools are making in Minneapolis.

In this post, I will spill the beans on three quick tips for practical data analysis – otherwise known as the Triple D Protocol. Please, take all my food idioms along the way with a pinch of salt.

“Ms. Eby, you’ve never had Tajín?” 

     “You just HAVE to try Wingstop!”     

          “Do you have Starbucks in New Hampshire?”

During my first year with ACE at Our Lady of Guadalupe in East Los Angeles, my middle school students were continually shocked, and rather amused, by my ignorance of the places, foods, and traditions they found commonplace in LA.

I grew up in New Hampshire, where I shoveled snow, celebrated maple syrup season, and ice skated on frozen lakes in February. New Hampshire was as unfamiliar to my students as LA was to me.

I was initially unsure about how we were going to relate given our different cultural upbringings, but I ultimately decided to lean into these differences so that my students could teach me about their experiences, and I could share my own.

A growing body of thought emphasizes the importance of blended learning as a complement to social-emotional learning. The Christensen Institute recently wrote about how blended learning can build relationships between teachers and students. Today, we discuss three ways we’ve seen blended learning improve the social-emotional landscape in classrooms. 

One of the most incredible journeys of my short but wild teaching career began on a day when only half of my class showed up.

It is hard to believe that the lazy days of summer are coming to an end. School supplies and backpacks have replaced summer toys, and teachers are planning schedules, procedures, and classrooms for the upcoming year. If you are implementing blended learning in your school this year, here are some quick tips to start your year off as a PRO!

For the last several years, we have been invited to teach a summer course for our second-year ACE Teaching Fellows. These are teachers who already have a year of teaching and now want to improve their teaching practice. They take our class as an elective, so they’re making the choice to take an elective instead of having a couple hours of free time in the afternoon. It’s not surprising, therefore, that these students were incredibly motivated to learn how to use technology for meaningful differentiation. Over the course of the class, we introduced them to blended learning, created learner profiles, discussed classroom management and procedures in a blended-learning classroom, explored software, dove deep into data-informed instruction, and talked about planning for success. Whew! It was a lot, packed into a short amount of time, and this group of students was particularly energetic, creative, hard-working, and hungry to be better teachers for their kids.

It seems like just yesterday we were beginning our journey with five schools in the Twin Cities. On the last day of professional development, we asked our teams to reflect on what they learned about implementing blended learning. We asked, “What is one thing you know now that you would offer to someone who is just getting started?” We received many thoughtful responses that centered around five major themes. 

Hi there Higher-Powered Learning blog readers! Today, I have the pleasure of introducing the newest member of our Higher-Powered Learning team: Kourtney Bradshaw. 

Kourtney is a native of North Carolina and attended the University of North Carolina for her undergrad. She then moved to Baltimore to teach and attain her M.Ed. Most recently, Kourtney taught Kindergarten-2nd grade at KIPP One in Chicago. She came to understand and utilize blended learning in the best way possible: organically, thoughtfully, and because she wanted to provide her students with a better education that met the needs of ALL students.

Kourtney joined our Higher-Powered Learning team last month and by day three, she was traveling with us to our spring professional development in Minnesota. Her relentless curiosity, real-world experience, and caring approach quickly endeared her to our BLAST members in Minnesota. I’m thrilled to introduce Kourtney to you all and for you to read her great blog post below. We’re eager to help teachers meaningfully utilize technology in the context of Catholic education to help them engage in Higher-Powered Learning!

-Fr. Nate Wills, CSC
Director, Higher-Powered Learning Program