“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find: knock and the door will be opened to you.” - Matthew 7:7
Reflection on Catholic Education
As a convert to the Catholic faith, the above quote has carried me through seasons of seeking, knocking and receiving God’s blessings and grace. Since childhood I have known I wanted to be a teacher. God used my wonder and desire as a child playing school and later as a college student, to guide me towards the Catholic faith and Catholic education. After college, when seeking employment, the Lord led me to a Catholic school, where I began as a volunteer and eventually was hired for my first teaching position. It was through my teaching vocation that the Lord inspired me to seek truth, and led me to my conversion to the Catholic faith.
My real teacher training began in Catholic education where I came to learn that education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue and that without virtue, education is empty and holds no meaning. Aristotle said that wisdom begins with wonder. For a child, everything is wonder and as an educator, my job is to open my students’ eyes to wonder, encourage their seeking of truth and lead them to wisdom. This realization has served me as a Catholic educator in both homeschooling and teaching in the classroom and has been a catalyst of seeking and knocking, discovery, truth, and beauty. St. Paul beautifully and simply instructs us in the way of seeking truth in Philippians 4:8 when he says, “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on (wonder about) these things.”
Mrs. Rose-Fish has worked in Catholic education for over 20 years. She is a graduate of Wheelock College in Boston, MA and the University of New England in Biddeford, ME. Mrs. Rose-Fish lives in Newbury, NH with her husband of 32 years and two of their five children. Mrs. Rose-Fish enjoys being outdoors, especially at the beach with her family. She is a parishioner of St. Patrick’s Church in Newport.