Notre Dame students teach and learn in schools

Erik Mendoza, at right, an ACE teacher at St. Anthony School in Robstown, helps sixth grade student, Elisabeth Martinez with a Math equation.

Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic

Most Alliance for Catholic Education teaching fellows will happily tell you why they love teaching in a Catholic school. “The beauty of Catholic schools is that it is a smaller community. You grow up feeling love where you don’t normally,” said Clare Wojda (pronounced “Voida”), one of six University of Notre Dame ACE teaching fellows who are currently working at Catholic schools in the Diocese of Corpus Christi.

Teacher Clare Wojda encourages fourth grader John Alex Pantoja to begin his writing assignment. Wojda teaches at Ss. Cyril & Methodius School. Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic

Wojda, who hails from St. Paul, Minnesota, teaches fourth graders in all subjects at Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic School. She said that the family atmosphere at Catholic schools might be a good choice for a student with special needs.

“Even though public schools have more resources for special needs students, sometimes these students can do better in a smaller community like a Catholic school,” she said.

Johnny Kunst, another ACE teaching fellow, works with Wojda at Ss. Cyril and Methodius. The other four fellows are Kathryn Lumetta and Anna Busse who are at Bishop Garriga Middle Preparatory School and Erik Mendoza and Mitchell Coughlin who teach at St. Anthony School in Robstown.

The ACE program, which was founded in 1994 by Father Tim Scully and Father Sean McGraw at the University of Notre Dame, recruits young college graduates from across the country in any undergraduate discipline. While students earn a master’s degree in education from the University of Notre Dame, they commit to teaching in an under-resourced Catholic school for two years, Wojda said.

They are paid a stipend for living expenses and take their academic classes online during the school year. They go back to the university in the summer to attend graduate classes. The ACE students receive their master’s degrees at no cost to them upon completion of the program.

Kunst, who teaches all subjects for a fifth grade class at Saints Cyril and Methodius lives in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. ACE sends the students all over the U.S. to teach, especially in areas of the country which are very different from the ones in which they were raised, he said.

“A big part of it is going outside of your comfort zone. The teaching locations are chosen for you,” he said.

Kunst said it was Father McGraw, who lived down the hall from him in his dormitory at the University of Notre Dame during his undergraduate years, who inspired him to join the program.

“Father McGraw told me a lot about the program and got me excited about it and it challenged me in a lot of ways. It was the perfect thing for me,” said Kunst, who has a bachelor’s degree in theology. He said he always wanted to teach in a Catholic school.

“I had a lot of great role models and a lot of teachers made a great impact on me. I wanted to change lives in the same way my life was changed,” Kunst said.

Wojda, who graduated from a Jesuit College in Mobile, Alabama, said she began tutoring middle school students at a children’s home while she was in high school. People told her she must be a saint to want to work with children in that age group.

“But I fell in love with the kids,” she said, adding that she had planned to teach in a public school once she received her bachelor’s degree.

“I heard about ACE and it’s rare for education majors to do it. I felt like God was calling me to it. I wanted to make an impact on kids who really needed me,” said Wojda, who will graduate in the summer of 2018.

Bishop Garriga Middle School student gives ACE teacher, Anna Busse the sign of peace during a Mass for Veterans at Immaculate Conception Chapel at St. John Paul II on Nov. 16. Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic

Busse teaches sixth and eighth grade social studies at Bishop Garriga Middle Preparatory School and will graduate in the summer of 2019. She first became drawn to teaching as a middle school student.

“All of my teachers made me feel so great about myself. I look at teaching as an act of love. While teaching, you have to be there for the students on their good and bad days and on your good and bad days,” said Busse, who comes from Iowa.

She also appreciates the ACE community of teachers, both in Corpus Christi and throughout the country. “We are all working together in the Catholic community to be better teachers and to better serve our students,” Busse said.

Lumetta, who teaches sixth and seventh grade science at Bishop Garriga agrees. “The ACE communities offer a lot of support. Through ACE, we really learned how to teach. We make connections between what we learn in class and what we observe in the real world and in everyday life,” she said.

Lumetta said she enjoys helping her students figure out who they are and helping them grow academically.

A native of Bellefontaine, Ohio, Coughlin teaches all subjects for a fifth grade class at St. Anthony in Robstown. Although he is a big home body and misses his family, he said one of the appealing aspects of ACE was the opportunity to go to a part of the country he had never seen.

“I was actually keeping my fingers crossed that I would wind up somewhere pretty far from Ohio. I figured I’m young, it’s the beginning of my career if there is a time to go–now would be the time,” he said.

Although Coughlin was educated in public school,  the calling to teach and impact the lives of students appealed to him, “but to do it through Christ–not through a secular setting, but through a spiritual setting as well.”

Mendoza, who teaches middle school math and science at St. Anthony grew up in Fort Worth, Texas and graduated college from the University of Notre Dame. “In my senior year I was an intern for them and I helped with recruiting and other jobs inside ACE until I actually went in the program,” he said.

Initially, Mendoza thought he wanted to apply for medical school, but said he wanted to go out in the field first. 

Now he loves teaching and changed his career plans to teaching full time. “A lot of these kids just need a good role model in their life. I figure, using my gifts I could do more in teaching than I could in medicine,” Mendoza said. 

“I love the community [St. Anthony]–from our parents and students and being able to look in any classroom and see the spiritual love between all of our students and teachers. This year will be Mendoza’s last year teaching at St. Anthony School. He is currently engaged to be married and will be moving back to Fort Worth to teach full time.

Rosemary Henry, Superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Corpus Christi, said the diocese is blessed to have this important partnership with the ACE program.

“These teachers share the mission of Catholic education and contribute to the development of our students spiritually, intellectually, socially and morally. Students are embraced with loving and motivated role models to guide them in their studies and with caring professionals who wish to make a difference,” Henry said.  
 

Notre Dame interns, from left, Erik Mendoza, Anna Busse, Mitchell Coughlin, Clare Wojda, John Kunst and Katherine Lumetta are currently working at Catholic schools in the Diocese of Corpus Christi. Rosemary Henry for South Texas Catholic