Even teachers remain students! As part of our institutional commitment to modeling the life of a disciple (from the Latin discipulus, learner), we teachers prioritize enriching our own minds and hearts with a good book! We are students of Jesus Christ.
One teacher recently asked a rather poignant question: How can we ever instill a culture of reading in the lives of young people in today’s secular and superficial society? It is a hard question. In my experience, hard questions usually do not require complex solutions.
“How do we help our children get to heaven?,” we ask ourselves: we have to be examples of humanity, humility, and holiness. We have to take our own spiritual growth seriously, but not so seriously that we lose our sense of humor.
“How do we teach our children the value in reading?,” we ask ourselves: we have to be good examples just the same. They need to see us reading for pleasure. They also need to know that we read to plumb the depths of understanding so as to see the shining significance of God’s love for us. The end of reading is awe and wonder! Wonder at human experience and the natural order.
Five of our teachers are currently working towards an advanced degree or certification. Ms. Murphy is working towards her certification in elementary education via the Cabrini Institute, Mr. McMenaman is going for his Master’s in Theology, Ms. Dajka is studying for a Master’s in Classical Studies, Mrs. Ouellette is studying for a Master’s in Education in Advanced Studies Math, and I will soon begin working towards a doctorate in Catholic education.
Why do teachers go back to school? Because good teachers are even better students.
Our faculty formation program operates according to the aforementioned maxim. Each year our teachers are led by St. Augustine and his vision of a Catholic education, which is simplified in seven guiding principles. We commit to reading selections from our tradition to form our humanity. And then we assimilate this into our lived experience as practitioners in the classroom.
After this message, I invite you to read the same excerpts teachers read from To Lead a Child: On Reclaiming a Human Pedagogy. This is perhaps the best distillation of why our mission is so vital in our modern world that is becoming overtly and unabashedly nihilistic.
We are also pleased to welcome to campus Mr. Jason Holliston and Mr. Tony Hutchins, both of whom are participating in the Cardinal Newman Teaching Institute. This is an internship program designed to support those discerning a vocation in Catholic education. It has borne much fruit in the past!
I know Mrs. Sweet got her chance to do so in the last newsletter, and I also would like to honor our tremendous staff. It takes a certain kind of humble heart to be a teacher! Mrs. Diebold said so in her reflection, and she is the longest serving teacher on our staff. Please pray for all of us.
The capacity to wonder, St. Thomas Aquinas noted, is among man’s greatest gifts. Aquinas held that man’s first experience of wonder sets his feet on the ladder that leads up to the beatific vision. Even long before the coming of Christ, ancient pagans such as Socrates and his student Plato recognized that wisdom begins in wonder. But today’s dominant educational system, ordered toward the merely pragmatic and utilitarian ends of “college and career readiness,” has no use for wonder or wisdom. We see its consequences in the weary apathy of students who repeatedly ask, “Is this going to be on the test?” When only that which can be quantified or graded is valued, all else falls away. The factory model of teaching and learning is manufacturing the malaise, anxiety, and even despair that burden so many of the young by depriving them of the two elements their innate sense of wonder seeks to find: the meaning and purpose of things.
Pedagogy comes from the ancient Greek paidagogos, a compound comprised of “paidos” (child) and “agogos” (leader). In order to lead a child to his proper end, a teacher must begin with a clear understanding of what a child is and an equally clear understanding of his rightful destination. “The goal of education is the student himself, to form his mind and his character in such a way that he can live his whole life, so far as possible, in a way that is consistent with the truth about himself as a human being created in the image and likeness of God.” Further, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “the dignity of education lies in fostering the true perfection and happiness of those to be educated.”
The focus, then, is not solely on the facts, skills, or even truths to be imparted. Equally, if not more, important is the development of the child’s God-given capacity to observe, to wonder, to discover, to attend, to listen, to remember, to speculate, to calculate, to communicate, to reason, to contemplate, etc., and especially to love. These are the habits of lifelong learning and growth. Properly understood, teaching is not the act of pouring facts into empty vessels. As most students of the past 50 years can attest, this practice results in fleeting knowledge held in short-term memory. It dulls the intellect and dampens the soul. A true Christian anthropology demands more than the dominant industrial model permits.
The transformative power of authentically Catholic education depends not on curriculum, not on technology, not even upon richer content. It depends on the transformation of teachers, who are called to love and lead the young from wonder to wisdom—to the Truth that sets them free. In recent decades, however, all teacher training has been fundamentally secular. It has failed to inspire teachers with an integrated vision of reality and to equip them with the tools to lead children to their destination according to their nature and purpose.
As these educators are renewed in their vocations, they discover that “wonder signifies that the world is profounder, more all-embracing and mysterious than the logic of everyday reason had taught us to believe. The innermost meaning of wonder is fulfilled in a deepened sense of mystery. Out of wonder, comes joy, according to both Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper builds on that insight, adding that wonder and hope have the same structure, the same quality of “not yet knowing.” The renewal of authentic Catholic education can offer this gift of hope, leading children out of the parched landscape of apathy and indifference that arises from the factory model of education. - Elisabeth Sullivan