5 Reasons You Should Apply to ACE Teaching Fellows

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.

2. You will grow SPIRITUALLY.

ACE Teaching Fellows are both teachers engaged in helping their students deepen their Catholic faith and students learning how to grow spiritually themselves. Through a commitment to Catholic schools, ACE offers you the opportunity to strengthen and enrich your own spiritual understanding—like Kevin Fitzsimmons of ACE 22 expressed in his post “The ACE Morning Offering”—as well as to develop the faith of your students, the youngest members of our faith community. This very commitment to Catholic education was exactly what Alec Torigian found after his ACE experience. His story is told in ‘When We Knock and the Door is Opened: Alec Torigian and the Call to Teach”.

3. You will be embraced by COMMUNITY.

ACE Teaching Fellows creates opportunities to build community on a number of different levels: Teaching Fellows are immersed in their own community of fellow program roommates, in their school community as a teacher, in the community formed by their new city, in their national community of fellow teachers, and with a national community of ACE graduates and advocates for Catholic schools. Many ACE Teachers—like Brett Cavanaugh (ACE 20)—find that they need more than just day-to-day chit chat between their coworkers and acquaintances. His story “Where Two (Or Seven) Are Gathered” looks at just how vital the community aspect is during your two years as an ACE Teacher. Some teachers, like recent graduate April Adalim (ACE 21), are so involved in their placement community that they commit to another year at the location to help the community. Read ”Under Construction: April Adalim and St. Catherine Break New Ground” to see April’s story!

4. You will make a lasting IMPACT. 

If you are looking for an opportunity to instill change and make an impact, then ACE’s Teaching Fellows is a unique opportunity. Each and every day, ACE Teaching Fellows take to the classroom to mold young minds for the betterment of our communities, our country, and our world. In daily interactions with students, ACE Teaching Fellows make students feel loved, provide them with strategies to enrich their learning, and guide them in understanding God’s role in the world. Current ACE Teacher Theresa Steinmeyer offers a glimpse of this in “If I could, I’d Still Choose You”. Brian Hayes (ACE 9) felt this commitment to his students strongly and, even after graduating, continues through his work with the Porticus Foundation, where they strive to improve the educational system through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching. Read the reflection on Brian’s lasting impact, “Building Change at the Heart of the Education System”.

5. You will be TRANSFORMED and ready to accomplish your DREAMS.

So many people dream of a profession that will allow them to truly help others while growing in knowledge themselves. ACE offers opportunities for growth in so many areas of education: our graduates now work to become master teachers, create change at a diocesan level, perform research to impact educational practice, impact policy at a national level and so much more. Read a first hand account of this kind of transformation from current ACE Teacher Maeve Mulholland (ACE 22) in “A Letter to My Pre-ACE Self” or learn about how ACE can help you achieve your dreams by reading Betsy Okello’s (ACE 7) story about her journey from ACE Teaching Fellows to Associate Superintendent for the Archdiocese of New York in ”Insisting on Beauty: The Art of Catholic School Leadership”.

Children get only one chance at a great education. Lead the change. Become an ACE Teacher.