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Fr. Scully Reflects on the Meaning of the Pope's Visit to a Harlem School

on Friday, 25 September 2015.

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In an op-ed piece for the New York Post, Rev. Timothy R. Scully, C.S.C., ACE's founder and the Hackett Family Director for Notre Dame's Institute for Educational Initiatives, offers a reflection on Pope Francis' visit to Our Lady Queen of Angels in East Harlem.

"So when Pope Francis arrives in East Harlem to visit Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic School today, many people might view this moment as a sort of “pilgrimage,” a nod to the “relic” that is Catholic schooling in the United States. But that would misunderstand Pope Francis and his pontificate.

If there’s one theme the Holy Father has made the animating feature of his ministry, it has been the abiding need to reach out to those on the margins of society — and to do so boldly. By visiting Our Lady Queen of Angels, a small K-8 school that serves 290 kids — Francis is drawing attention to a community that has been serving marginalized children for more than a century.

Francis’ visit is no empty gesture. It’s an invitation to each of us — calling us to go out to the world, to the periphery, and bring life and hope to the people who need it most. Nothing in American Catholicism offers a more vivid testament to this mindset than our Catholic schools, which have served — and will continue to serve — as indispensable instruments of human formation and social transformation."

 Read Fr. Scully's entire reflection here

Fr. Joe Corpora to Provide Commentary for Pope's Visit

on Friday, 25 September 2015.

Pope Francis' visit to an East Harlem Catholic school will be livecast on USCC website

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Fr. Joe Corpora, C.S.C., ACE’s Director of the Catholic School Advantage Campaign, will provide live commentary during Pope Francis's Friday visit to Our Lady Queen of Angels School (OLQA), an urban Catholic school in East Harlem. Francis’ time with the elementary students and the school community will be livecast on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) beginning at 4pm.

Our Lady Queen of Angels has welcomed children from immigrant and disadvantaged families for more than 120 years.  In 2013, the school joined the Partnership for Inner-city Education, which works “exclusively to strengthen and preserve Catholic education in New York City.” During the visit, the students of OLQA will sing for Pope Francis, pray with him, and hold a discussion on service and the environment.

Fr. Joe will add his unique perspective as a former pastor of a parish school as well as director of ACE’s Latino Enrollment Institute and the School Pastors Institute initiatives.

To follow the livecast, go to: http://www.usccb.org/about/leadership/holy-see/francis/papal-visit-2015/papal-visit-2015-live-stream.cfm

For Students with Learning Differences, Catholic Schools Provide Hope

Written by Bill Schmitt on Thursday, 20 August 2015.

hilary murphyHilary Murphy, a graduate of the SJCHS Benilde Program, recently earned a Master of Education degree in school counseling.

Hilary Murphy would beg to differ with the assumption that, until very recently, Catholic K-12 schools struggled to offer students with learning differences the resources they need to succeed. Challenges tied to attention issues, reading comprehension, or academic-related health concerns were passed along to public schools, according to conventional wisdom. But Murphy recalls her student days at St. John’s College High School in Washington, D.C., from 2001 to 2005, as a life-changing time of respect and responsiveness for her and unique obstacles she faced.

“I was diagnosed with a learning disability” as an adolescent, Murphy said, but St. John’s, a Lasallian Christian Brothers school for motivated teens with college goals, placed her in an innovative grouping called the Benilde Program. Established a few years earlier by a laywoman and named after a 19th century Lasallian educator, St. Benilde (Ben-ild) Romancon, the program taught her how to manage tasks successfully given her learning style. Specialists raised awareness of needs and solutions, and all teachers understood how they could offer Benilde students accommodations without changing the rigorous curriculum and culture of the St. John’s community.

Responsibilities for identifying problems and solutions resided largely with the Benilde students. But they learned “valuable life skills,” such as how to study for a test, take notes, stay organized, and manage time and stress, Murphy said. “All of those skills were especially useful when I went to college and graduate schools.” Benilde-specific classes offering special academic support did not pull students out of the mainstream college-prep courses. Murphy recalled the bonus of friendships in “a community of students whom you connected with easily because you shared similar experiences, struggles and successes." 

A growing number of Catholic K-12 schools are implementing programs that welcome a wider range of students with learning differences. These educators continue to combine innovations with traditional values from the heart of a school’s Catholic identity, including hospitality, kindness, and accountability.

The Benilde Program, which has been implemented formally in more than a dozen high schools and takes different forms and names in additional schools around the country, incorporates a number of De La Salle Christian Brothers and Catholic school values, said Brother Michael Andrejko, F.S.C., principal of St. John’s College High School.

He highlighted the dignity of every individual, the importance of meeting and serving every unique person where he or she is in life, the impact of caring relationships between teachers and students, and a religious community’s respectful collaboration with lay leaders.

St. John’s reflected the latter value 17 years ago when it turned to a laywoman, Doreen Engel, to be the founding director of the foresighted Benilde Program that changed Hilary Murphy’s school experience.

“I had a major interest in seeing what Catholic schools could do to be more welcoming and inclusive,” Engel said in a recent interview. She has been a champion for inclusive education in several leadership settings since she established and directed the St. John’s program. Engel currently leads the new Benilde initiative at St. Raphael Academy, a Christian Brothers school in Pawtucket, RI.  Various Lasallian Christian Brothers schools and others have adopted elements of the initiative under different names. A range of additional programs exist, marked by still sharper differences, for serving children with learning exceptionalities.

Engel said the spread of the Benilde initiative provides further proof that Catholic schools are more eager and better equipped than ever to serve young people with challenges ranging from ADHD to test-taking skills and the organization of tasks.

Seventeen years ago, administrators at St. John’s instinctively shared Engel’s desire for greater outreach. Recognizing her expertise in special-needs education, they supported her ambition to design the new program named for St. Benilde, whom a pope once praised for a perseverance that “enabled him to do common things in an uncommon way.”

The program appropriately reflects a lot of the common sense and uncommon insights embraced in Catholic schools, Engel said. She rejects some schools’ current inclination simply to add on services customized for students who fit pre-defined categories of need. Benilde’s “new paradigm” broadly assesses how a school’s operating procedures might be tailored to meet the needs of all students.

Eileen O’Toole, the most recent Benilde director at St. John’s, said students in the program have special timeslots in their schedules to tap Benilde resources, but otherwise they attend the same classes, have the same instructional goals, and use the same materials, including iPads. Many of them gain insights and skills allowing their Benilde support system to end before their senior year, Brother Andrejko noted.

plannersmallerMurphy's organizer notebook, which she says represents her continuing use of a valuable learning aid she adopted with the help of the Benilde initiative.Accommodations to students’ basic similarities and to unique personal traits—such as extended time or other arrangements for some test-takers—can bring the student and teacher communities closer together, according to Engel. Modifications for individuals, always based on psychological evaluations and recommendations, might involve class schedules, teaching styles, and assistance with note-taking. Ongoing dialogues among Benilde staff and students’ regular-course teachers monitor the modifications.

The collaborations, structures, and shared commitments of such a program may also encourage continuous innovations in a school, through technology and other means, an exceptional-learning teacher noted.

Catholic schools’ emphasis on personal dignity leads the Benilde program to help students and their parents “de-mystify” their learning experiences, added Engel. Students and the community benefit when they understand how their challenges can evoke cooperation, not detachment.

Furthermore, Brother Andrejko explained, Benilde emphasizes each person’s accountability for becoming fully themselves. A Catholic school should be accessible to everyone, especially the poor and the marginalized, he said, but expectations are high, too: “You’re responsible for your education. You accept ownership of it and your responsibility to become men and women for others, taking your God-given gifts and using them in service to others.”

A focus on others means giving students the knowledge and self-confidence to approach teachers and other authority figures, explaining the special circumstances and suggesting cooperation and modifications to create a win-win situation, Brother Andrejko said.   

“We teach the students to advocate for themselves, to speak up to get the extra help they need,” he said. St. John’s works hard to make sure every one of the 100 Benilde students—and every one in the entire 1,100-student population—receive individual attention: “We take the student as a whole person.”

This commitment demands investments of time, effort, and money by multiple parties. Different schools facing different demographics must decide for themselves how much to invest and how to adapt aspects of the Benilde program, according to those who know the program.

At St. John’s, a tuition add-on for those who make it through the rigorous screening process into the program provides an experienced Benilde staff leader. Educators and counselors with special-needs training, along with supplemental course time and extensive coordination within the school’s whole team, help students every day.

O’Toole, said elements of the program are useful for—and are being adapted by—more and more Catholic schools. Elementary and secondary schools—in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, often located in underserved communities—adjust according to their own abilities. They share a commitment to welcome as many students as possible, from all backgrounds.

“Benilde is distinctively Catholic, but it’s up to every school to decide implementation for themselves,” said O’Toole, who studied educational psychology at Catholic University of America. She has seen under-resourced K-12 schools “do all sorts of ingenious things” to maximize the resources for students with special learning challenges, thanks to the commitment of school communities’ leaders and educators.

O’Toole played a crucial role in advancing the inclusionary vision by compiling a “Philosophy of Education” document. It outlines the Benilde program in light of previous guidelines for Catholic schools from the U.S. bishops.  

The goal is to develop students as “self-reflective, independent problems solvers,” the benchmark document states. “Lasallian education gives the student a basic education and understanding of Christ so the student can go out and share his gifts,” O’Toole wrote.

For more information: Bill Schmitt, Alliance for Catholic Education, / 574-631-3893

ACE Sends Forth 272 Catholic School Teachers and Leaders

Written by Bill Schmitt on Wednesday, 22 July 2015.

The University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) sent forth 272 Catholic school teachers and leaders to nearly 200 Catholic schools across the country in the annual Missioning Mass, capping two months of professional formation and spiritual renewal. The ceremony, held Friday, July 24, 2015, in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, celebrated and blessed the next steps on the educators’ journeys to their respective schools and classrooms.

The Most Rev. Daniel R. Jenky, C.S.C., Bishop of the Diocese of Peoria, presided at the Mass, joining ACE’s co-founders, Rev. Timothy R. Scully, C.S.C., and Rev. Sean McGraw, C.S.C., in sending forth 187 participants in ACE Teaching Fellows; 57 participants in the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program; and 28 participants in the teacher licensure program for English as a New Language.

In his homily, Bishop Jenky said the Eucharist, as God’s “gift of endless love,” is key to the mission of Catholic schools to children from all backgrounds.

“In different ways, this supreme truth must always be proclaimed in every class, in every subject, in every Catholic school where you may happen to teach,” he said. “So ACErs, harvest-gatherers, teachers in the school of Christ, get out there and be fearless, creative, generous, and, in the power of Jesus Christ, teach your hearts out!”

ACE Teaching Fellows, an initiative founded in 1993, forms outstanding college graduates to teach in elementary and secondary schools in 30 dioceses, including Peoria. ACE Teachers earn a Master of Education after two summers of coursework and two academic years teaching in under-resourced Catholic schools. Most are also members of ACE’s partner organization, AmeriCorps.

The Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program is a 25-month graduate program (conducted over three summers and two academic years) for educators seeking to develop skills to become transformational leaders in their Catholic school community. Upon completion of the program, participants earn a Master of Arts in Educational Leadership from the University of Notre Dame and can be eligible for K-12 administrative licensure.

English as a New Language, a one-year licensure program that responds to teachers’ growing need to assist English language learners in their classrooms, advances those skills through ongoing coursework and mentoring while those educators remain in service in the schools that employ them.

The Mass which sent forth these groups was preceded by missioning ceremonies Thursday evening (July 23) at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes.

As part of the array of missioning events, the Alliance for Catholic Education also presented the 2015 Scott C. Malpass Founders’ Prize to two graduates who have gone on to careers of special distinction. Jennifer Ehren, Ph.D., taught science at St. John High School in Biloxi, Mississippi, and later earned a Ph.D. Amid her own successful fight with cancer, she has contributed to important therapeutic advances at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies.  

Greg Gomez, who taught science and religion at St. Malachy School in Los Angeles, later continued graduate studies at Columbia University and served as special liaison to the inner-city schools of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston before accepting a principal’s post at St. Francis of Assisi School in inner-city Houston.

The Alliance for Catholic Education impacts the lives of several hundred thousand children nationwide by preparing highly talented teachers and school leaders, while offering research and an array of resources for Catholic schools in the United States—the world’s largest private school system.

Bishop Jenky of Peoria is a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross, which founded the University of Notre Dame and in which ACE founders Fr. Scully and Fr. McGraw are priests and scholars. Fr. Scully is the Hackett Family Director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives. Holy Cross is known internationally for its mission of education to help make God known, loved, and served.

Contact: Bill Schmitt at 574-631-3893 and

ACE Teaching Fellows Receives National AmeriCorps Grant

Written by Eric Prister on Wednesday, 15 July 2015.

The Alliance for Catholic Education's ACE Teaching Fellows program has received a $135,000 AmeriCorps grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) to support 154 AmeriCorps members who will serve as teachers of record in rural and urban schools throughout the United States.americorpsphoto

AmeriCorps members supported by these grants will serve in 108 schools in 31 communities across the country. This grant will allow ACE to expand its impact and to ensure the placement of carefully formed teachers in the most high-need schools. This partnership with AmeriCorps enables ACE to recruit highly talented candidates; supports ACE’s cohesive, research-based high quality academic teacher training; and enables ACE to place these members as teachers.

“AmeriCorps is an indispensable resource to help meet critical challenges facing our communities,” said John Staud, senior administrative director of ACE. “We’re thrilled that the Corporation for National and Community Service has recognized the value that AmeriCorps members serving with ACE offer to communities across the United States. These AmeriCorps members will meet pressing local needs as they develop civic and leadership skills that can last a lifetime.”

“AmeriCorps members are an indispensable resource for nonprofits, communities, and the individuals they serve,” said Corporation for National and Community Service CEO Wendy Spencer. “Through AmeriCorps, individuals come together across the nation with the common goal to make a lasting impact on the toughest challenges facing our nation. We salute these AmeriCorps members and their commitment in serving our country.” 

The 2015 AmeriCorps grant cycle was highly competitive, due to the strong and growing demand by organizations seeking AmeriCorps resources. The 2015 competition prioritized investments in economic opportunity, education, veterans and military families and disaster services and continued a new initiative for governors and mayors.

In addition to the grant funding, CNCS will make available $175 million in education scholarships for the AmeriCorps members funded by these grants. After completing a full term of service, AmeriCorps members receive an award of $5,730 that they can use to pay for college or to pay back student loans.

AmeriCorps engages more than 75,000 members in intensive service annually to serve through nonprofit, faith-based and community organizations at 25,000 locations across the country. These members help communities tackle pressing problems while mobilizing millions of volunteers for the organizations they serve.

Since 1994, more than 900,000 Americans have provided more than 1 billion hours of service addressing critical challenges from poverty and hunger to disasters and the dropout crisis through AmeriCorps.

ACE is a leading program of the University of Notre Dame that recruits, educates and supports talented college graduates who serve as teachers in under-resourced schools across the United States. ACE teachers simultaneously participate in an innovative two-year Master of Education degree that prepares them for the rigors of the classroom and to become the next generation of educational leaders for America’s elementary and secondary schools. For more information, visit ace.nd.edu/teach.

AmeriCorps is administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency that engages more than 5 million Americans in service through AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, the Social Innovation Fund and the Volunteer Generation Fund. CNCS also leads the president’s national call to service initiative, United We Serve. For more information, visit www.NationalService.gov.

Contact: Kathleen Fulcher, 574-631-7052, 

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