Featured Blog Post

As we mentioned in this post, one of the most powerful ways our teachers increase student engagement and learning is to help students set individual goals for their learning. Of course, setting goals for student learning is not something that only happens in blended classrooms, but we have found that it is especially crucial to the success of blended classrooms because learning is so much more individualized. Therefore, we generated four of our own criteria for successful student learning goals, and we want to share those with you today.

The Program for Inclusive Education’s (PIE) first cohort completed programming in July and embarked on their mission of inclusive education following an energizing two-week capstone experience on the campus of Notre Dame. It was a time of spiritual retreat, community unification, and comprehensive instruction after a year of online programming. The experience was filled with joyous convergence, passionate advocacy, and humble gratitude. Nacia Hatch lived this inaugural experience and was introduced in the August Blog. It is my privilege to share her thoughts following her journey with PIE. Many thanks for Nacia’s guest authorship and all she is doing to welcome, serve, and celebrate all students!

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

The Higher-Powered Learning team is growing, and we are excited to introduce you to our newest member, Francesca Varga! Francesca was a teacher and instructional leader for nine years before joining us at ACE this summer. She has extensive experience with blended and personalized learning at the middle and high school levels. Below is Francesca’s first contribution to our blog–but certainly not her last!

We often preface the concept of blended learning by citing the need to fill students’ learning gaps through data-informed instruction. However, in my nine years of teaching, I have found that culture and building community and strong relationships with students is essential to the success of blended learning, and of learning more broadly. Here is a quick glimpse into my inspiration for implementing blended learning in my classroom and the students who made it possible...

Many proponents of blended learning lament standardized, one-size-fits-all approaches to education, and with good reason. But you don’t have to be a blended-learning fangirl like me to believe that classrooms should be flexible and adapted to meet the individual needs of each student. Customizing assessments, teaching methods, and materials to match students’ learning preferences, prerequisite skills, goals, and more are not strategies specific to blended learning – it is simply good teaching.

In Hawaiian culture, ‘ohana’ means family. To Nacia Hatch, ohana also described the first summer for the Program for Inclusive Education (PIE).

I’d like to start this post with a direct quote from a teacher at a professional development session I led recently: “Elizabeth LOVES data.” To be honest, she’s not wrong! I’ve written before about the importance of data in blended-learning classrooms and how data from adaptive software programs can enable teachers to deliver targeted instruction when and where students need it most. It’s safe to say that I am a HUGE fan of student performance data, but I also recognize its shortcomings.

I’ve never taught before, and I don’t even know where I’ll be sent to teach. How do I tell other college students what it’s like to be an ACE Teaching Fellow?

June 18 marked a momentous occasion for our team – the official launch of the Higher-Powered Learning Program (HPLP) in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis! After months of anticipation and careful preparation, our cohort of 30 leaders and teacher-leaders from five schools joined forces to begin our three-year journey together.

Many ACErs appear on campus for their first week of ACE Summer fresh off of a college graduation or the completion of a fellowship or job. Few are coming straight from back to back NCAA lacrosse titles only a few days before. On Memorial Day weekend in Roanoke, Virginia, Gettysburg College defeated Middlebury College 11-9, with senior captain Katie Willis contributing two goals to her team’s victory. Three days later, she began her M.Ed classes at the University of Notre Dame.

Photo Credit: Seamus Ronan

“This apparatus is one of a kind,” Jackie Salas tells her middle school students, holding up the mysterious bundle wrapped in a white plastic bag. “So, for those of you who were able to create this apparatus, you are part of Marian High School history. We’ll call it… the Zoggendoodleheimer!”

The Program for Inclusive Education (PIE) is humbled to share the following story from Meghann Kirzeder, a mother and former Catholic school teacher. Meghann (ACE 10, Nashville) is a friend of PIE, and here she provides her perceptions from the other side of the desk as she advocates for her own child to be served inclusively in Catholic schools. Many thanks for her guest authorship!

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

Do you remember the post we wrote about protecting purpose in the blended classroom? We explained that one of the most common mistakes teachers make in blended classrooms is planning activities without having a learning goal in mind for them. Teachers should resist the urge to plan activities simply so that they can increase the number of “stations” or “centers” in their classroom and focus instead on planning activities that will help students reach the learning goal for that lesson.

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.