The ACE Blog

With Catholic schools around the country looking for the tools to create the culture, foundation, and resources to educate all students inclusively while celebrating every student’s diverse and exceptional characteristics, Notre Dame’s Program for Inclusive Education (PIE) prepares to welcome its first cohort this summer. In this month’s blog post, Maggie Byrne, a parent of a child with Down syndrome and friend of PIE, shares her son Thomas’s journey through Catholic schools that utilized inclusive practices. Many thanks to Maggie for her contributions and willingness to share how Thomas has been welcomed, served, and celebrated in Catholic schools.

When we say we believe all children can and will learn, we embed an imperative to do whatever it takes as adults to help all of our students excel. As lead learners in our schools, we have a moral responsibility to ensure that all students receive rigorous, high-quality instruction every lesson, every day. But for students stuck on the wrong side of the persistent achievement gap, we must tackle not only cumulative deficits in knowledge and skill, but also the doubts students have about their abilities, hardened by years of educational neglect.

This is the third post in our series highlighting teachers in blended-learning classrooms, and our first post about a teacher outside of a Notre Dame ACE Academy. Today’s post features Rose Oldenburg, an outstanding teacher at a Seton Education Partners blended-learning school, Nativity Jesuit in Milwaukee. Read on to learn about how Rose faced her technology fears, focused on classroom management, and got creative to make the school’s blended-learning program a success in her own classroom.

Walking into Accepted Applicants Night for ACE 24, I am not sure what I expected. I did feel one thing for certain–a slight sense of trepidation. I received an email a week earlier from my principal at Holy Names High School in Oakland, California, so I knew where I would be living, but a huge piece was still missing. Who exactly would be living with me? Who are my community members? Will they be down for random Hamilton jam sessions at odd hours of the day? Will they be willing to look at countless pictures of my baby niece and still feign interest every time? Are they nervous like I am? Did they have to look up where exactly in California Oakland is like I did? Do they love board games? Are they coffee or tea people?

“Cheers!” Ian called to me in his thick Irish accent with a huge smile on his face as his classroom of third graders burst into giggles. Most of Ian’s students had never heard of Ireland before he began teaching at Holy Angels this fall, but it’s safe to say that they are fans of the Emerald Isle now simply because it is the home of their beloved Mr. Corbett.

Something was different as we walked into Dr. Collier’s Social Studies Content class during that first ACE summer. 

Last week, as ACE teammates from across America gathered together for our annual spring retreat, we were both embraced and pushed by the words of Father Timothy Radcliffe, O.P. Throughout the day, he shared stories and reminders from the Bible, challenging us to think about ways in which we bring hope to the children and families we serve. A week later, we are still doing further reflection on his call to bring hope through praying, singing, and staying.

Though this blog is primarily focused on the work we do, we also want to highlight some of the most exciting blended-learning implementations in other Catholic schools across the country.

First, a disclaimer: it is exciting to be part of an effort that is gaining momentum virtually every day, but this constant growth makes it impossible to stay up-to-speed on all of the implementations of blended learning in Catholic schools across the nation. Having said that, we hope to highlight some of the most significant advances of blended learning in Catholic schools and to paint a picture of what this space looks like today.

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.