Featured Blog Post

This is the first in a series of posts that will highlight some of our remarkable teachers and share their perspectives on blended learning. Mary Kate serves as the second-grade teacher at Holy Angels Catholic School. You can contact Mary Kate at .

Feeling hungry is the worst. Like most of us, when I’m hungry, I’m cranky, single-minded, and I usually start talking in caveman/Cookie-Monster-speak: “me want food.” There’s actually some science behind the power of this feeling (happy reading!), and all of us know how all-consuming hunger can be. When you’re hungry, you can think of little else than simply getting food.

The return from Christmas break brought feelings of nervous excitement for the teachers at Holy Angels and our staff here at ACE. January is a big month for our Notre Dame ACE Academies–and for many other schools across the nation–because students take the NWEA Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) mid-year assessment. MAP is a widely-respected online assessment that students take three times per year to measure their growth. The test is particularly accurate because it is adaptive, meaning the questions get easier or harder depending on the student’s answers to previous question. At the end, NWEA provides teachers with really specific information about student progress and skills that teachers can use to inform their instruction.

“What did you do over the long weekend, Miss M?” asks Sarah, one of my fourth-graders, as she hurries into our classroom on Tuesday, February 21. I smile and pause, struggling to find the words to answer her question. Maybe it’s the lack of coffee in my system, but I find myself truly speechless in this moment. My mind begins to wander, reflecting on the beautiful gift of the weekend and the transformative power of the ACE journey.

This post is the first in a series about teaching in a blended classroom written by Sean Wolohan, the fifth- and sixth-grade math and science teacher and Blended Learning Coordinator at Holy Angels Catholic School in Indianapolis. If you would like to hear more from Sean, please comment below or email him at . You can also find him on Twitter @sean_wolohan.

Each year ChACE teachers get the privilege of chaperoning one of the summer service trips organized for Saint George's high school students, Trabajos de Verano and Misiones. Trabajos de Verano is centered on sharing visions of life and faith through community work, while Misiones focuses on serving the local Church through evangelization. I had the privilege of participating in Trabajos de Verano, in which we traveled to the remote city of Molina, where the economy is sustained by agriculture and livestock. During our two-hour journey, the immense steel skyscrapers of Santiago quickly faded and dusty rural roads, single story homes of the Chilean countryside replaced them.

I didn’t plan on being a teacher. I didn’t plan on being responsible for sixty-four little lives every day. I didn’t plan on working twelve hours or more each day and weekend.

Are you looking for the skills to inclusively serve ALL students in your classroom?

Have you thought about whether to apply to the Program for Inclusive Education (PIE), but are concerned about managing your time?

Consider this encouragement from Beth Dunlap, M.Ed., a colleague who juggled with grace the many constraints of teaching, life, and graduate work in order to have a profound impact on the lives of her students.

Many thanks to Beth for this contribution, and for her commitment to celebrate the God-given potential of all students. 

Holy Angels Catholic School is the first whole-school blended learning pilot in a Notre Dame ACE Academy. It is an amazing school with wonderful students, loving families, a rich tradition of Catholic education, and committed teachers. But one question we receive over and over again is “Why Holy Angels?” Why now? Why this Notre Dame ACE Academy? And why blended learning?

In the field of educational psychology, experts have many different theories of motivation. One of my favorites is ‘Achievement Goal Theory’. This theory deals with the reasons that people choose to pursue certain tasks, or the types of goals behind their behaviors. Achievement Goal Theory specifies two distinct types of goal orientations: mastery goal orientation and performance goal orientation.

1. You will be CHALLENGED.

ACE calls our Teaching Fellows to embrace challenge: we are challenged to find ways to reach our students and to help them grow academically while also creating a sense of family in our classrooms and schools. This dual focus on heart and mind might just be the challenge you are looking for! Our ACE Teaching Fellows welcome the challenges of their classrooms and communities, creating opportunities for change with individual students and schools. Read “The Middle School Roller Coaster”, the story of Darby Evans (ACE 22) and her time in an English Language Arts classroom in Fort Worth, Texas. Many of our graduates have also leaned on their ACE experiences to tackle larger issues beyond the individual classroom. Jenny O’Donnell (ACE 16) has helped find new ways for St. Adalbert Catholic School to improve instruction and earn an A grade from the Indiana Department of Education. Read her story ”Seeking Challenge: Using Knowledge to Create Change” to see how the challenge of ACE Teaching Fellows can prepare you for future successes.

During the spring of my second year as an ACE teacher, I interviewed at a school that did not yet exist. I taught my demo lesson to the principal and president instead of students. I toured an elementary school and struggled to picture what it would look like with high school students walking the halls. Although it was difficult to predict what the first year may hold, I was drawn to Cristo Rey Dallas immediately.

Warning: I was a Philosophy major, and old habits die hard. Please indulge my philosophical musings before we jump into more actionable information.

At the heart of Christianity lies the belief that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God. This central tenet of our faith should influence all of our actions, but we all know there are some instances in which this principle is easier to uphold than others. 

The end of the year 2016 marks the end of my experience of the ACE in Chile teaching program. I have learned so much! Moving to the southern hemisphere turned most of my preconceptions about the country upside down. I knew that I was signing up for an adventure when I said yes to ChACE, but I had absolutely no idea what unexpected experiences and extraordinary people were ahead of me. I want to highlight some of the “teachable” moments that have helped me to grow as an educator and as a person. 

Three months before my 22nd birthday, I did something that I always aspired to do: I earned a degree from my dream school, the University of Notre Dame. I was full of energy, full of life, and full of myself. It is an accomplishment that I will cherish until my very last breath. In those four years, I spent a great deal of time focusing on myself as I worked to become a polished young professional ready to enter the stratosphere of millennial society.