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Did you know that the phrase “Be not afraid” is used in the Bible 365 times? Talk about a daily message from God! Fear is a great divider. It causes distance between people. It blocks grace from flowing freely and prevents ingenuity. Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”

It is unrealistic during these times to never feel afraid, but I urge you to allow your faith to be bigger than your fear and to look for the things that are more important than fear.

Here are three truths that God has affirmed for me during these past few weeks. These truths inspire me to work for “something more important than fear.”

The Program for Inclusive Education (PIE) would like to take this opportunity to applaud and thank Catholic school educators for their innovation and persistence in meeting the needs of all students. We are in an unprecedented time-both personally and professionally, and your dedication to your students is commended. Please know of our thoughts and prayers as you continue your good work on behalf of ALL students.

Xavier University has a prayer index on their website that I stumbled upon while I was searching for religion class resources at the beginning of the school year. Throughout this year, my fifth graders and I have used this index to find prayers of peace in times of global conflict, prayers for the environment in response to natural disasters, and prayers from other religions in efforts to increase our understanding of other faith traditions.

Thanks to advancements in technology and all the online resources available, social distancing does not have to mean breaks in learning. Although learning may look different for a short period of time, eLearning provides wonderful opportunities for innovation outside the traditional classroom setting. Read on to learn more!

The Program for Inclusive Education is grateful for the many dedicated educators that support and advocate for inclusion in Catholic schools. It is my privilege to welcome Michael Fisher and Ginny McMillan from John Carroll Catholic High School in Birmingham, Alabama, as guest authors. Michael and Ginny were members of the PIE 2 cohort, and here they share their experience and the value of participating together. Thank you, Michael and Ginny, for your tireless efforts towards inclusive education!

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

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I am taking some time to think about the reasons why I love blended learning. Of course, blended learning yields an extensive list of academic benefits, but what excites me even more is the social-emotional learning blended learning supports.

When properly executed, blended learning creates a classroom environment where personalized instruction happens for each student. I could write a book sharing stories and reasons why I love blended learning. But our teachers can do a much better job! Today I am honored to share the spotlight with two wonderful teachers in our Higher-Powered Learning Program (HPLP) who will help me share the love!

One of my favorite hymns to sing in prayer or at Mass is set to the Irish folk tune Slane. I grew up knowing this hymn as “Lord of All Hopefulness”:

Lord of all hopefulness,
Lord of all joy,
Whose trust, ever childlike, no cares can destroy;
Be there at our waking, and give us, we pray,
Your bliss in our hearts, Lord, at the break of the day…

Recently, I discovered another set of words to this tune, which were new to me but (apparently!) have been widely in use for decades:

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that thou art
Thou my best thought, by day or by night
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light...

Though this version employs a structure and a vocabulary that wouldn’t come naturally to me in spoken prayer, I am finding it easy to sing, particularly to my three-month-old son, Joseph. I am especially drawn to the core petition of this hymn: Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.

What would it look like to live each day with the Lord as my “vision”?

I think my 3-month old son Joseph is my best model of this way of seeing. From their earliest days, babies love to fix their gaze on faces. Joseph’s gaze is steady and true. He delights in having his siblings, John and Mary, get close to his face so he can make direct eye contact with them, prompting them to exclaim excitedly, “Mom! He’s looking right at me – and smiling!” I’m convinced that this is how God looks at us: lovingly, joyfully, and directly. I hope to learn to look at God – and the people in my life – in the same way. 

In a world in which so much can distract me and pull at my attention, I’m comforted to remember that all of us, as infants, very quickly developed the skill of gazing right at those we love the most. Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Joseph’s example, and this hymn, remind me to keep my eyes “fixed on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2) as I go about my daily tasks.

Today, as we serve our students, communities, and families, may we be blessed with the eyes of faith to see the Lord at work in our lives and in our vocations. In times of joy and of trouble, may we lift our eyes and our hearts to God.

“Being part of PIE has been one of the most rewarding and life-changing experiences I have encountered, both personally and professionally.”

Colleen Wanner is a first-grade teacher at The Frances Xavier Warde School in Chicago and recently completed the Program for Inclusive Education (PIE)’s 18-credit hour program. As a member of the second PIE cohort, Colleen speaks for many when she touts the benefits of furthering  professional development in order to become truly inclusive. 

Mountain bikers must consider many factors to maximize their workouts, but the most important factor is fun maximization.

Similarly, when instituting a change like blended learning in an entire school, plenty of factors should be considered to maximize teacher and student learning. But the most important factor is altering the learning culture at a school. I have found quite a few parallels between mountain biking and instituting school change.

“Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pay, give without pay.” – Matthew 10:6-8

One of my favorite Catholic hymns is “We Are Called.” (Maybe you have heard it at an ACE Mass or two?)

A staple in the Gather Hymnal, this is one that I would belt out even when I was a self-absorbed middle school boy, concerned with what all my peers thought about me. Over time, and as my faith matured, I grew more attentive to the lyrics of the hymns, and in “We Are Called” there’s a clear theme. It’s about others and how we should act toward them.

Act with justice.

Love tenderly.

Serve one another.

This post is authored by John T. McCarthy IV, an ACE Teaching Fellows Intern and member of ACE 27. A Science Pre-professional and Theology major at the University of Notre Dame, John will graduate in May of 2020. 

ACE first appeared on my radar the summer after my freshman year, when the well-known Father Joe Corpora found out that I was going to be on campus during the summer and asked me to work for him. 

During that summer, I took classes and helped Fr. Joe with all the miscellaneous things that have to be done to smoothly run conferences for ACE like the Latino Enrollment Institute and the School Pastors’ Institute. 

The research on professional development (PD) is clear: change is tough! Research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on PD states that “far too many teachers have reported that current professional development offerings are neither relevant nor effective.”

Another research point made by CoSN links the hurdle to the sustainability of innovative programs with the lack of agility, strategies, and mindsets necessary to move from a few classrooms to an entire school. In order to overcome these barriers, we grounded our coaching framework in the research and adapted it for our schools’ use.

“I hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and my cardigan” …

Well not exactly, but that didn't stop me from humming this tune when I first arrived in Los Angeles for my internship with the Specialty Family Foundation this past summer.

I had a lot of thoughts about what the Frassati Internship would entail, but, to be honest, I didn’t know what exactly to expect.  

“Umm... sure.”

A hesitation, and a jump. This was my response to my principal on the way home from school one warm Wednesday evening when he asked if I could cover an extra class for CCD—8^th grade girls. I wanted to make a good impression on my principal, and since it was a slower week, I figured an extra hour wouldn’t kill me. After I hesitated, I said yes.

I distinctly remember the first time I walked into Rebecca Buller’s middle school math classroom at Saint Alphonsus Catholic School in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

The energy was electric and students were buzzing with excitement while talking about...MATH!

Rebecca uses the station rotation model. She divides her students into three groups – a technology station, a collaborative work station where students apply math learning, and her small-group instruction station. She combines this model with her version of the flipped classroom model to make math concepts attainable for all students.