The ACE Post

Photo Credit: Andrew Hamaty

Morning light puddles on the moss-covered stones of the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. My breath, after my run, slows and my knees find the kneeler, recently wet with dew. I imitate Saint Bernadette and gaze up at Our Lady. From her perch among the stones, she seems to look right at me, expectantly.

The Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) is perhaps best known for its Teaching Fellows program, which forms talented, faith-filled college graduates to renew and transform Catholic school classrooms. Each year, ACE selects over 90 of the most talented, faith-filled, community-oriented college graduates in the world to begin its two-year service-through-teaching Masters of Education. After two summers of rigorous academic courses and two school years of full-time teaching in a Catholic school as well as completing online coursework, ACE Teaching Fellows graduate as licensed teachers with a M.Ed. and a lifelong commitment to Catholic education. (Side note: Ian Corbett, Mary Kate Veselik, and Sean Wolohan are all graduated ACE Teaching Fellows who taught at Holy Angels this year!).

Cookies equal community.

The recipe may be simple, but as Fr. Joe Carey, C.S.C. sees it, fellowship in ACE doesn’t need to be complicated. Every Monday, Fr. Joe, ACE chaplain and priest-in-residence at Ryan Hall, opens his kitchen to the ACE community. Around dinner time, a small group of baking enthusiasts crafts dozens of cookies, and then the larger community gathers later that night after Mass to enjoy the treats.

Sometimes, as teachers, we spend too much time talking. Sometimes, we worry so much about transmitting our knowledge to our students, that we forget about the art of listening. We forget that it is not our voices that matter most in our classrooms, but those of our students. We seek so desperately to be heard, when in reality, it is our job to hear, to make our students feel known and acknowledged.

When Emma Fleming was discerning her next steps as a senior at the University of Notre Dame, she listened for God’s direction. She found her answer in song—a Notre Dame Folk Choir song, to be exact.

Four people stand in ready position on South Quad. Their knees are slightly bent, their eyes trained on the yellow ball as it bounces neatly off the circular net in the grass. It’s twilight on Notre Dame’s campus—fireflies have already started to congregate on the lawn—but for these four players, the rest of the world has melted away. For 20 minutes, they are not graduate students or instructors or administrators. All that matters is the net, the ball, and the next move. All that matters is Spikeball.

I stepped out of Dillon Chapel, carefully cradling the paper lantern I held in my arms. I felt the the heavy, humid South Bend summer air descend, and my eyes adjusted to the darkness that had settled on South Quad during Mass. In the warm, electric glow of Praise and Worship, I had forgotten just how late it was–11:30 p.m., to be exact. It was the last night of the summer that the small group, spearheaded by songbirds David Chang and Rocielle Perez, had stayed after daily Mass to sing and pray. For our final meeting, we were writing our prayer requests on luminaries and, together, floating them into the sky at McGlinn Field.

One of the most exciting parts of joining ACE is the opportunity to live in community and to grow alongside fellow teachers and friends. I assumed, though, that I would have to wait until summer for these moments of community to emerge. However, the April retreat provided exactly the type of community I hoped I would encounter in ACE—several months sooner than expected.

One of my seventh-grade boys penned a unique Easter reflection after I asked my class to think about what they would ask or say to Jesus. We had just prayed the Stations of the Cross during Holy Week.

If you had told me after my first year of ACE that I would return to my ACE placement city of Corpus Christi after I had completed my teaching, I wouldn’t have believed you.

As the school years comes to a close, I’ve noticed the dramatic increase in frequency of videos and memes on the internet about the plight and fatigue of teachers: “Summer vacation is our reward for surviving May” – “It’s May, teach yourself” – “Stay strong, it’s almost over!” As a teacher, I regrettably remember reading these and feeling justified in the mutual understanding we all had across the building, including among students, that we are all just ready for this to be over.

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.

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?

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.