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Each day during Catholic Schools Week, we will post a reflection on the focus of the day centered around this year’s theme: "Catholic Schools: Communities of Faith, Knowledge and Service". You can find a complete list of the reflections here. The following reflection is from Sarah Greene:

In my first year teaching at a Catholic school, I kept a folder of each student’s work, for organization and accountability. I would basically collect, grade, pass back, and then re-file student work so I had it documented. I spent many hours in front of my trusty file cabinet that first year!

So I remember so vividly the day I cleaned out my file cabinet at the end of my first year of teaching.

I loaded up my station wagon with bins of student work and extra copies of the worksheets I’d made all year, drove home to the ACE convent where I lived and right up to the Paper Recycling dumpster behind the school, and just emptied out my car. Graphic organizers, tests and quizzes, homework questions—I recycled it all.

I was struck by the number of paper resources I’d created and the work I’d graded—all of the things that, before I started teaching in a Catholic school, I’d consider the hallmarks of success and the measures of achievement.

To my surprise, I was content to dispose of it!

Because somewhere in that first year of teaching in a Catholic school, God granted me the grace to see teaching as ministry, as service, as a communication between souls, not as work to be done, papers to grade, and to-do lists.

As I recycled the papers, I was left with the name of the student on each file, the relationship we’d fostered, and God’s work in each of us— and it was more than enough.

As we conclude Catholic Schools Week, we give thanks to God for God's abundant graces, revealed to us in our students, teachers, parents, and administrators. May we always view our work on behalf of Catholic schools as a ministry, a service, a blessing, a gift.

Sarah Greene is the Director of Ace Advocates for Catholic Schools. Prior to her current appointment in 2013, she was a memeber of the ACE Teaching Fellows team. Sarah served with the ACE 13 cohort in Mobile, Alabama, where she taught freshman and senior English at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School.

Pope Francis, speaking in Rome on Jan. 30, 2014, to a delegation from the University of Notre Dame, expressed gratitude for the University’s support of Catholic K-12 schools.

“From its founding, the University of Notre Dame has made an outstanding contribution to the Church in your country through its commitment to the religious education of the young and to serious scholarship inspired by confidence in the harmony of faith and reason in the pursuit of truth and virtue,” said the Pope, according to an English text provided by Vatican Radio.

“Conscious of the critical importance of this apostolate for the new evangelization, I express my gratitude for the commitment which the University of Notre Dame has shown over the years to supporting and strengthening Catholic elementary and secondary school education throughout the United States.”

The Pope made his remarks in Italian during an audience he granted to the Notre Dame delegation, as detailed by The National Catholic Reporter.  Pope Francis greeted Rev. John Jenkins, CSC, president of the University of Notre Dame, along with ACE founder Rev. Timothy Scully, CSC and other members of the University Board of Trustees.  In addition to creating the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE), Fr. Scully is also the Hackett Family Director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives. Since the inception of ACE and the Institute, Notre Dame has reached out to ensure educational excellence and provide resources to strengthen Catholic identity and student achievements in schools, especially in service to under-resourced and the children they serve.

This meeting of the Board of Trustees in Rome coincided with the opening of the University’s new Rome Center and the granting of honorary degrees to ecumenical leaders.  Prominent among the participants in the papal audience was His Eminence Donald Cardinal Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, DC.

To view video of Pope Francis' meeting with the Notre Dame delegation, please click here.

Each day during Catholic Schools Week, we will post a reflection on the focus of the day centered around this year’s theme: "Catholic Schools: Communities of Faith, Knowledge and Service". You can find a complete list of the reflections here. The following reflection is from Fr. Joe Carey, CSC:

The feast of the Baptism of the Lord ends the Christmas Season and is the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. The first thing Jesus does is invite others to follow him. Peter and Andrew and Zebedee’s sons, James and John, are called to leave their jobs and what is familiar as fishermen and follow Jesus.  They are to leave everything to become disciples of Jesus and build the Kingdom of God. These followers discover they will be sent to proclaim the Good News and invite others to be part of Jesus’s mission.  We are also called and sent to continue this ministry.

Teachers in Catholic Schools also called to live a life of service by sharing knowledge and faith with students.  It is a ministry of love.  Blessed Basil Moreau encouraged the members of the Congregation of Holy Cross and their collaborators to make Christ know, loved and served.  This important work can be seen in Catholic Schools.

I saw it recently when I visited Bishop Dunne School in Dallas, Texas.  I shadowed a recent ACE grad.  Keaton teaches French, English and Art.  It was in a small Art class that I saw how this passionate teacher lives this mission. The students were doing water coloring of some objects and when they were finished, she asked them to critique each other’s work.  Some would see this as a negative process.  Keaton, however,  is teaching them how to do this in a nonjudgmental and negative way.  Each student did it from love and as a result they became aware of what was good and what could make the painting even better.

What I saw in Keaton’s classroom is repeated in Catholic Schools every day.  It is not about only sharing information and seeking results.  The teachers are following the call of Christ and helping students know they are loved and cared for.

Catholic Schools Week celebrates the dedication of educators who respond to the call of Christ to follow him by sharing faith and knowledge with their students and calling them to serve the needs of others. It is about receiving God’s love and giving it away.  Let us pray in thanksgiving this week for Catholic Schools.

Fr. Joe Carey, CSC is the Chaplain for the Alliance for Catholic Edcuation. Prior to joining the ACE family, Fr. Joe served in Campus Ministry for both the University of Notred Dame and St. Mary's College. He was also the Director of Vocations for the CSC order and taught at Notre Dame High School for six years.

Each day during Catholic Schools Week, we will post a reflection on the focus of the day centered around this year’s theme: "Catholic Schools: Communities of Faith, Knowledge and Service". You can find a complete list of the reflections here. The following reflection is from John Schoenig:

Perhaps the most sacred promise we make as a republic is the one that every generation is invited to renew for the next: that we will do whatever it takes to ensure that every child, regardless of color, creed, or socioeconomic status, has equal access to an outstanding education. This promise is in many ways as confounding as it is inspiring – and it serves as the bedrock of our foundational aspiration to form a more perfect Union.

As we prepare to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, we would be well served to reflect on just how far we have come (and how much farther we have yet to go) making good on the promise of equal education opportunity. For those of us in the Catholic school community, I truly believe we now stand at a historic moment, one in which we are being called to renew our zeal for Catholic education, and to celebrate the unique role that Catholic schools continue to play as agents of human formation and social transformation. In so doing, I am convinced we will help author an exciting new chapter in American education.

Indeed, our schools matter a great deal to this country, regardless of one’s position towards general questions of faith. In a time of deep skepticism about the quality of K-12 education broadly, it is clear that Catholic schools are sacred places serving an essential civic purpose. As missionary disciples invited to help the world hear and respond to the joy of the Gospel, we should take every opportunity to make clear just how instrumental our schools are in putting generations of children firmly on the path to college and heaven.

[T]he results of our pastoral work do not depend on a wealth of resources, but on the creativity of love. To be sure, perseverance, effort, hard work, planning and organization all have their place, but first and foremost we need to realize that the Church’s power does not reside in herself; it is hidden in the deep waters of God, into which she is called to cast her nets.

- Pope Francis

John Schoenig, J.D., M.Ed. is the Director of Teacher Formation and Education Policy for ACE. He received his bachelor's in the Program of Liberal Studies from the University of Notre Dame before enrolling as a member of the ACE Teaching Fellows program, in which he taught at Holy Rosary School in Shreveport, Louisiana. Schoenig then went on to join the ACE team and later served on the Alliance for School Choice before attending Notre Dame Law School and graduating with honors.

Each day during Catholic Schools Week, we will post a reflection on the focus of the day centered around this year’s theme: "Catholic Schools: Communities of Faith, Knowledge and Service". You can find a complete list of the reflections here. The following reflection is from Andrea Cisneros:

Middle school teachers have the incomparable privilege of overseeing the production of a cornucopia of projects. The wonder of these is their comprehensive range of styles, quality, and adherence to directions. Give one million middle schoolers the same assignment, and you’ll get one million distinct efforts in return.

Once, I tasked my personality-rich eighth graders with a multi-part research, writing, and presentation project: identify a human rights issue, gather and present the relevant facts, and persuade us we ought to care about this issue. Trusting such a topic to a group of people who have only recently discovered their frontal cortexes and who, moreover, find that area of reason and rationality very much in development is a gamble. I was vividly aware of this when presentation day came.

One girl shared a thoughtful talk about human trafficking, an issue almost none of her classmates were aware of. In the midst of a rock discovery phase, she titled her poster after a moderately inappropriate 80’s anthem, explaining that by “sugar”, she meant kindness and Christian love. I remain skeptical that she was as innocent of the song’s connotation as she claimed, but her conviction about her chosen issue was genuine.

The boy who managed to be both the most gregarious and the most pugnacious in the class spoke about the prolife movement. Considering the tendency of adolescent conversations to devolve into rhetoric and finger pointing and the tragically similar nature of discussion on this particular issue, I was nervous. Instead of a rant, however, he lead with the need for compassion and care for those who believe abortion is their best option, and described a slew of services for women in crisis pregnancies, including a number in our area for which his peers could donate or volunteer.

Every class has one student who, if writing and intensity of stare are reliable indicators, takes in everything but never speaks. That girl stood before her peers the most fired up I had ever seen her and talked about girls’ lack of access to education worldwide.  It was a battle to get more than five words at a time from her, but on this matter, she had plenty to say.

Two things struck me. First, when I trusted my students to do something important, they did it brilliantly. Second, that every single one of them focused on their faith and the call of our Church to care for the least of these. While they didn’t say it in so many words, they talked about their shared humanity and the God-given dignity of these people they had never met, people they wanted to help, in the tiniest measure, through their essays and hastily assembled poster boards. In the meeting of these discoveries –the needs of their brothers and sisters, and their own ability to do something constructive – they lit up. They became more fully themselves, the persons God created them to be, compassionate towards and empowered by their global community.

Giving eighth graders a meaty project is a gamble. It almost always pays off.

Andrea Cisneros is the Assistant Director of the Notre Dame ACE Academies. She graduated from the University of Delaware before enrolling in ACE's ACE Teaching Fellows program and teaching in Brownsville, TX. In her current role, Andrea focuses on developing and strengthening Catholic school culture, seeking out successful schools and learning from their practices to enrich the environment at Notre Dame ACE Academies.