ACE Advocates News

Matt DeBoer, a graduate of the 12th cohort of the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, begins each morning by shouting, “God is good!” to his 140 students at St. Therese Catholic Academy. He receives a raucous reply of “All the time!” “And all the time,” he continues. “God is good!” they finish emphatically. This call and response officially begins the school day, and it also illustrates a schoolwide commitment to Christian values. The remainder of their morning assembly fosters a sense of unity and purpose, and it constructs a clear spirit through prayer and reflection. No visitor could deny the sense of Christocentric culture that is on display here, but it is something that was missing from the school as recently as 2014.

Ask Evan Phillips how he is doing—I dare you.

Without hesitation and with a smile brighter than sunshine, he will say, “I’m blessed!”

To be an effective science teacher, the teacher must be a true scientist herself. This much is clear to Kelly McCarthy, a teacher and researcher who is one of 12 people recently named to the 2017-2018 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program. McCarthy, a physics, environmental science, and mathematics teacher at Our Lady of Lourdes Regional School in Coal Township, Pennsylvania, plans to use this experience working with federal STEM education policy as a way to inspire her students to become problem solvers in science.

In Evan Rhinesmith’s ACE classroom at Sacred Heart School in Washington, DC, his third-graders were already asking about college. They were worried that college might not be for them, that perhaps they wouldn’t be ready, and that the opportunity to continue their education at a higher level might be beyond them, both financially and academically. Evan realized that while many schools focused simply on getting students into college, large numbers of their students still found themselves in need of help and guidance once they reached a higher level of education. Having just earned his doctorate in education policy from the University of Arkansas, Evan studied the connections and disconnections between the K-12 and higher education systems with a focus on post-secondary remediation policies. 

It’s a weekday afternoon when my colleague Matt Rhodes and I dial Laura Andrews in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to talk with her about her experiences with Catholic education. We detect traces of a child’s voice in the background. “One second, Margaret,” we hear Laura say to her daughter, who is just over a year old. Laura has just returned home from the School of Saint Mary, which is part of the parish where she and her husband belong, and where she teaches sixth-grade language arts part-time. As Matt and I reflect on the content of the Catholic education-related conversation we are having with Laura, we can’t help but marvel at the way her seemingly seamless shifts between her direct service to Catholic schools and her attention to Margaret animate the overarching theme of our conversation: that life happens in and through Catholic schools.