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When Ricky Austin read the 2005 Notre Dame Task Force on Catholic Education report during his second year as an ACE Teaching Fellow, he was startled and inspired. Catholic schools were at an inflection point. They were closing at an alarming rate, and without intervention, they could disappear entirely from inner cities. Austin, now the director of programs and communications at the Aim Higher Foundation in Minnesota, felt a stirring in his heart as he read the conclusion of the report: “Will it be said of our generation that we abandoned [Catholic schools,] these powerful instruments of justice that provide educational opportunity and hope for families otherwise trapped in poverty?”

ACE Teaching Fellows graduate Brent Modak (ACE 18 - Denver) is the first to remind someone that, while teachers teach subjects, they first and foremost teach students. While teaching social studies and religion both in and beyond his time in ACE, Brent discovered he often had answers to students’ content-specific questions. A question about the text? No problem. He would help the student engage in a reading strategy he had learned in his social studies methods courses. A question about a student’s literacy acquisition? He’d revisit his notes and come to a reasonable explanation. But when a student confronted him with a social or emotional concern like stress or anxiety, he would find himself at a total loss for answers.

The Latino Enrollment Institute (LEI), part of the Alliance for Catholic Education’s Catholic School Advantage, is a collaborative initiative in which Catholic schools seek to engage and serve Latino communities.

Mary Forr (ACE 18) knows first-hand the difference that having a strong community can make in moving to a new city. After the challenges of being a first-year teacher in ACE, Forr describes that “by the end of your second year of ACE, you realize what a treasure your time in ACE was. You are by far the coolest teacher in your school. Your housemates have become a second family. And the city where you lived has become home. And then, it’s over! And once again you leave the comfort of the familiar. You’re thrown out of your familiar school, your community, and your city and once again you’re left trying to figure out your life. Trying to figure out how to keep the three pillars of ACE standing strong in what may be, once again, a new job, a new city, and a new group of people.” Fortunately, Forr and many others in the greater Washington, D.C. area have found strength in the D.C. ACE Advocates community.

“My placement was in South Central L.A.” says the Diocese of San Jose’s Superintendent Jenn Beltramo of her ACE placement. “Not too far from the border of Watts.”