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Every calendar year, the Church moves promptly in its liturgical schedule to celebrate saints who inspire and support teachers and educational leaders. ACE traditionally calls our community’s attention to the feast days on January 4, 5, and 6—honoring St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. John Neumann, and St. André Bessette, respectively, who all served Catholic education and people at the periphery of life, but in different ways.

Jan. 4: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

The feast of Mother Seton on January 4 invites us to ponder this saint’s life (1774-1821) of dual commitments to education and caring for society’s at-risk children. In a podcast conversation produced last year, ACE’s Sarah Perkins talked with Coordinator of Policy and co-author of Lost Classroom, Lost Community, Nicole Stelle Garnett, about the winding road Mother Seton followed in discerning and exercising her complex vocation. It wasn’t easy, but she remained open to Providence and founded America’s first parish school. This launch of Catholic schools in the United States has blessed countless families from all backgrounds.

Jan. 5: St. John Neumann

St. John Neumann, C.Ss.R., was a native of the present-day Czech Republic. He traveled to America, was ordained a priest, and became Bishop of Philadelphia in 1852. He oversaw the construction of numerous parishes and schools for immigrants, founding the first Catholic diocesan school system in the United States. ACE senior director John Schoenig discussed Neumann’s life as shepherd and school-builder in this podcast conversation with ACE’s Bill Schmitt, pointing out the mission to form saints among ACE Teachers, as well as among the children we serve. The Church’s January 5 feast is an opportunity to reflect upon the teaching vocation as a journey shared with others.

Jan. 6: St. André  Bessette

On January 6, St. André Bessette (1845-1937), a religious brother in the Congregation of Holy Cross, is celebrated for his unique ministry to the sick and marginalized, which grew miraculously even as he humbly served a Catholic school in Montreal—as a porter, not a teacher. In a third podcast conversation prepared for the 2015 feasts, ACE’s Emily Lazor talked with director of spiritual life Rev. Lou DelFra, C.S.C., about Brother André’s ability to transcend apparent dead ends for himself and others, plus a humility that allowed many lights to shine.

The message of overcoming life’s obstacles and pursuing big dreams through the blessings of Catholic schools echoes from all three saints and applies to both educators and students. The lives of numerous other education-related saints honored throughout the liturgical year (here’s one source’s listing) keep the message resounding.

Pope Francis affirmed the message recently at the Vatican’s international congress on Catholic schooling, “Education Today and Tomorrow: A Passion that is Renewed,” convened in Rome in November. He championed educators’ sustained passion to encourage at-risk students by rising above the merely material and immediate.

“We are closed to transcendence,” the Pope said of many classrooms, cautioning that this is the greatest crisis in Christian education. “It is necessary to prepare hearts for the Lord to manifest Himself--but totally, namely, in the totality of humanity, which also has this dimension of transcendence.” He urged teachers “to educate humanly but with open horizons.”

Our three early-January saints start off the year with a big “amen” to Pope Francis; they transcended the commonplace for the sake of their students, exhibiting a passion today’s teachers can renew year-round—with ongoing human and heavenly intercession.    

To meet the needs of parents today, Rev. John Belmonte, S.J., has established a new evangelization non-profit named APP-OSTOLIC, and developed a mobile app called We Parent More. The tool aims to help the Church stay connected to parents between the time they bring their infant to be baptized and the time, a few years later, when they might introduce their three-year-old to pre-K connected to their parish school.

“We’re losing this generation,” warned Fr. Belmonte, superintendent of schools in the Diocese of Joliet. And part of the solution, he said, is the app’s array of customizable, updatable information resources.

“Our app attempts to meet young Catholic parents where they are most often found today—in the digital marketplace,” Fr. Belmonte said in an online interview. “Meeting them there, we hope to build a bridge to invite them into their parish and school. The We Parent More app is that bridge from the baptism of their children into the parish and Catholic school. It is the voice of the Church on their cell phones: 'Guess who’s calling?'”

With or without new technologies, best practices for Catholic school recruiting efforts rely on building relationships with families from the moment they enter the parish or express interest. A sense of community helps to create the trust and confidence that can lead parents to enroll their children in the parish school, said Cristina Espino, advancement coordinator for Notre Dame ACE Academies.

Especially in Latino communities, families want to feel welcomed into a meaningful relationship, to know that close friends and relatives have had a good experience, and to see that a parish community offers companionship in life’s daily journey, she said. It’s unclear if smartphone apps fill that need for schools with limited resources.

“It depends on who your target audience is,” Espino said, explaining that every parish must decide what demographic groups are most relevant to its service and outreach and how important different tools for outreach—such as apps or hard-copy bulletins—are to those groups. "Technology to keep people informed can be a very valuable tool, and families who stay informed, online or in hard copy, are already more likely to enroll their children."

Besides We Parent More, for example, the Our Sunday Visitor publishing company offers free set-up of “Faith in Action” websites and parish apps. An ecumenical company called Bluebridge provides various products, including what it calls “a digital bulletin.”

Technology will, no doubt, continue to evolve, but Espino said that people need to remain the focal point of recruiting efforts. The personal encounters that build and sustain communities need not be high-tech and can’t lose the human dimension.

“Apps can inform, but they won’t necessarily welcome.”

Update: Because of technical difficulties, the event described below was postponed by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. Notre Dame ACE Academies will issue information and plan to participate when the rescheduled discussion of early-learning expertise is announced.

The White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics will feature the Notre Dame ACE Academies in a live “Google+ Hangout” discussion on Dec. 16 as part of the Academies’ honor as one of the White House’s “Bright Spots in Hispanic Education.”

The Alliance for Catholic Education’s (ACE) widely respected ACE Academies model for strengthening and sustaining existing inner-city Catholic schools is listed in the White House’s just-published “Bright Spots in Hispanic Education National Online Catalog.” The catalog identifies enterprises “helping ensure the educational attainment for the country’s Hispanic community, from cradle to career.”

“We are deeply honored by the White House’s recognition of the great work being done at our Notre Dame ACE Academies to increase access to academic excellence for Latino families,” said Rodney Pierre-Antoine, the Gary and Barbara Pasquinelli Family Director of the Notre Dame ACE Academies. “I hope that this discussion can be a valuable resource for early childhood teachers and leaders across the nation who are working tirelessly to improve education for our children.”

The two Notre Dame ACE Academies located in Tucson, Ariz.—St. John the Evangelist and Santa Cruz—are helping their largely Latino student populations boost their educational attainment through the innovative model developed by ACE. Since the partnership began in 2010, St. John and Santa Cruz have closed the achievement gap for students in the 6 ^th poorest metro-area in the country.

Representatives from the schools will be among experts from several sites sharing ideas to increase gains for students nationwide. The online discussion of innovative programs will address early-learning challenges among elementary school students, especially those from Hispanic backgrounds.

The U.S. Department of Education is hosting the one-hour conversation on Google+ Hangouts, broadcast live from Washington. Join the discussion by registering on the Initiative’s RSVP page and participating online at 12 noon MT or 2 pm ET on Wednesday. Participants may also ask questions via Facebook.

For more information:

Bill Schmitt, ACE, University of Notre Dame: / 574.631.3893

Current ACE Teacher Peter Prindiville was recently selected as one of only twelve recipients of this year’s George J. Mitchell Scholarship from the US-Ireland Alliance, an annual fellowship given to up to twelve candidates interested in spending a year pursuing graduate studies in Ireland.

“I would not have been at a place intellectually to be able to apply for a fellowship like this without ACE,” Prindiville said. “My research interests are very related to what I’ve seen in the classroom, what I’ve studied in the M.Ed. I’m taking my undergraduate training in history, but I’m approaching it very much through the lens of education. That wouldn’t have been something I would have been capable of doing without ACE.”

After graduating in 2014 from Georgetown University with a B.S. in Foreign Serivce and International History, Prindiville was accepted into the ACE Teaching Fellows program and was placed as a high school teacher at St. Patrick’s High School in Biloxi, Mississippi.

“From his outstanding work as a classroom teacher to his singular contributions as a graduate student, Peter has made an extraordinary impact on the ACE community,” said John Schoenig, Senior Director of Teacher Formation and Education Policy for ACE. “This is a well-deserved honor for a young man who has no doubt just begun to forge systemic solutions to many of the challenges faced by schoolchildren on the margins of society.”

Prindiville said that his research in Ireland will focus on how students in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the United Kingdom learn about the Troubles.

“I want to study how societies talk and think about the past—not necessarily studying the past itself, but studying how people remember it,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of value in studying how schools mediate and assimilate traumatic memories from the past, as a component of national identity or regional identity. And this is very much coming out of my time teaching in Mississippi, teaching traumatic history, and coming to terms with how there is a remembrance of traumatic history that exists.

“Even outside of the four walls of the classroom, students learn about cultural memory from plaques, from their grandmother, from the name of streets, and a whole host of ways we memorialize the past. It’s a broad project, but it finds its home inside the classroom.”

Prindiville said that his time in ACE prepared him well to pursue further graduate studies, keeping his mind working intellectually throughout his two years teaching at St. Patrick’s.

“I feel so blessed to be a part of ACE because the academic part is so intrinsically linked to the practical component of teaching that the entire two years is intellectual exercise, even in the midst of teaching,” he said. “That thought of constantly approaching my teaching from an academic standpoint sparked me to think about this research question.”

Though not completely certain of his plans after his time in Ireland, Prindiville said he believes that working in education will be a life-long pursuit.

 “I’ve lost the ability to not care, because once you’ve seen schools, and you’ve been inside them, it’s hard to just walk away,” he said. “I can’t imagine doing something that didn’t involve education.” 

“Striving to be a good Catholic school leader is an all-consuming endeavor—it’s on my mind when I wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night,” said Stephanie Becker, who recently graduated from ACE’s Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program as part of its 12th cohort.

Becker is the academic dean at Mt. Carmel-Holy Rosary Catholic school in New York. One of six Catholic elementary schools in the innovative Partnership for Inner-City Education, MCHR’s mission is to provide a “beacon of hope” for children from the under-resourced neighborhoods of East Harlem.

To keep her own beacon of hope shining, Becker relies on her faith. She was originally formed and inspired by her own experiences in a Catholic high school.

“I always felt a sense of encouragement and support from my teachers that was clearly inspired and fostered through their personal relationship with Christ,” Becker said. “Their belief that my unique personhood was something to be cherished inspired me to be my best self each and every day.

“It was perfectly fitting to find my home as a ‘new teacher’ post-graduation in a Catholic school. For me, it was never ‘if’ I would work in a Catholic school, it was always a matter of ‘where.’”

After six years teaching in Manhattan, Becker was invited to her current position at MCHR. While Becker was no doubt a positive influence on her community, she desired to be more effective.

“Deep down,” she said, “I felt there was more I could be doing for my school and the students I serve; I had the willingness, drive and potential to be the driver of change in my school and diocese, I just needed the right program to help me get there.”

Becker was already a leader when she entered the Remick Leadership Program. What she sought was the opportunity to learn and grow from more experienced, transformational leaders—leaders whose zeal could turn around struggling schools and inspire hundreds of people to “own their talents and do the best work of their lives.”

Suzanne Kaszynski, the principal of MCHR, was the beacon of hope that drew Becker toward comprehensive, faith-based leadership, like a moth to a flame. Kaszynski, Becker explained, “with her infectious positivity and unbreakable spirit, galvanized supporters from near and far to save this East Harlem gem that was providing a first-class Catholic education for an underserved population, in a neglected corner of the city.”

What Becker wanted was not only to attain that character of leadership exemplified by Kaszynki’s successful results, but also her humility and joy.

“She so perfectly articulates what a comprehensive education, rooted both in faith and the arts, can do for children,” Becker said. "Such a powerful impact is the fruit of love, not ambition or pride."

In order to improve the academic environment at MCHR, Becker said, it was necessary to “intensify our sense of faith and celebrate our Catholic identity.” Consequently, she was unsatisfied with many of the leadership programs available in New York City. Becker needed to find a group of peers and mentors who “kept spiritual formation and growth a priority.”

The Remick Leadership Program provided a structure within which Becker could broaden her vision and imagine a greater future for her school, but it also taught her new practical skills. It armed her with a strong network of dozens of leader-peers who “became something more than colleagues or friends, they became a second family.” It held up examples of schools “where Gospel values are lived, community is celebrated, and excellence – not perfection – is paramount.” Most importantly, it reaffirmed Becker’s hope in Catholic education.