April Retreat a Good Start for Members of ACE 19
Newcomers to ACE Teaching Fellows See a Future of Formation
Plenty of fans came to Notre Dame on the weekend of April 20-22 for a preview of next fall's Fighting Irish football season, but the annual Blue-Gold Game was hardly the only campus event introducing a mix of friends to a future of opportunity and teamwork.
This was the weekend of the traditional April Retreat hosted by ACE Teaching Fellows, the signature teacher-formation initiative of Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE). Some 87 members of the recently selected ACE 19 cohort came to taste what it will be like to be an ACE teacher for the next two years.
"It's really the start of the whole ACE experience," says Chuck Lamphier, director of ACE Advocates, who remembers his own attendance at an April Retreat when he was a new member of ACE 10. The schedule of events is traditionally a dynamic mix of the three pillars of ACE formation—professional service, spiritual growth, and community life.
A highlight of the retreat focused on the ACE community that each new teacher will join in the diocese where he or she has been assigned to serve in a local Catholic school. Fellow members of ACE 19 who have been assigned to the same community, soon to be sharing a house and offering each other moral support in their formation, are introduced to each other.
The bonds of fellowship established at the retreat will extend through the two years of the ACE Teaching Fellows experience—and often for the rest of the community members' lives.
Additional important relationships were initiated over the weekend because participants also included superintendents and other leaders from the dioceses where the new ACE teachers will serve. No fewer than 46 diocesan and school administrators came to campus from all around the country to meet the ACE teachers they will be hosting and overseeing.
Tom Doyle, senior director of the ACE Teaching Fellows M.Ed. degree program, gave the ACE 19 newcomers an overview of the academic rigors set to start this summer.
Many of these ACErs are poised to receive their undergraduate degrees from the University of Notre Dame or Saint Mary's College this spring, just before they start their first ACE summer. But the cohort consists of graduates from over 40 different colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, Duke, Fordham, Gonzaga, Harvard, Marquette, and the Congregation of Holy Cross institutions St. Edward's University and King's College.
"Some ACE 19 members are entering their two-year commitment to ACE Teaching Fellows after a year or more of post-graduate international service," adds Sarah Greene, associate director in the ACE Teaching Fellows pastoral team. "Two came to the April retreat shortly after returning from post-graduate service-teaching in Japan and Korea, respectively. One is finishing a year of service in a medical clinic in Costa Rica, and one served with the Peace Corps in Benin. We also welcome two new ACE 19s from Ireland."
The April Retreat, which also offered opportunities for Mass and other prayer, ended on Sunday in time for many of the participants to head back to their usual Monday workload in various dioceses and schools. Whether they resided far away or elsewhere on campus, they closed their weekends better connected to ACE's past, present, and future.
This was the weekend of the traditional April Retreat hosted by ACE Teaching Fellows, the signature teacher-formation initiative of Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE). Some 87 members of the recently selected ACE 19 cohort came to taste what it will be like to be an ACE teacher for the next two years.
"It's really the start of the whole ACE experience," says Chuck Lamphier, director of ACE Advocates, who remembers his own attendance at an April Retreat when he was a new member of ACE 10. The schedule of events is traditionally a dynamic mix of the three pillars of ACE formation—professional service, spiritual growth, and community life.
A highlight of the retreat focused on the ACE community that each new teacher will join in the diocese where he or she has been assigned to serve in a local Catholic school. Fellow members of ACE 19 who have been assigned to the same community, soon to be sharing a house and offering each other moral support in their formation, are introduced to each other.
The bonds of fellowship established at the retreat will extend through the two years of the ACE Teaching Fellows experience—and often for the rest of the community members' lives.
Additional important relationships were initiated over the weekend because participants also included superintendents and other leaders from the dioceses where the new ACE teachers will serve. No fewer than 46 diocesan and school administrators came to campus from all around the country to meet the ACE teachers they will be hosting and overseeing.
Tom Doyle, senior director of the ACE Teaching Fellows M.Ed. degree program, gave the ACE 19 newcomers an overview of the academic rigors set to start this summer.
Many of these ACErs are poised to receive their undergraduate degrees from the University of Notre Dame or Saint Mary's College this spring, just before they start their first ACE summer. But the cohort consists of graduates from over 40 different colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, Duke, Fordham, Gonzaga, Harvard, Marquette, and the Congregation of Holy Cross institutions St. Edward's University and King's College.
"Some ACE 19 members are entering their two-year commitment to ACE Teaching Fellows after a year or more of post-graduate international service," adds Sarah Greene, associate director in the ACE Teaching Fellows pastoral team. "Two came to the April retreat shortly after returning from post-graduate service-teaching in Japan and Korea, respectively. One is finishing a year of service in a medical clinic in Costa Rica, and one served with the Peace Corps in Benin. We also welcome two new ACE 19s from Ireland."
The April Retreat, which also offered opportunities for Mass and other prayer, ended on Sunday in time for many of the participants to head back to their usual Monday workload in various dioceses and schools. Whether they resided far away or elsewhere on campus, they closed their weekends better connected to ACE's past, present, and future.