Catholic Schools Week 2014 - For Our Teachers

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.