Dan Adams
1. What was your ACE Site/ school/ grade level/ subject taught?
I taught in Birmingham, Alabama at Holy Family Elementary School. In my first year, I taught MS Science and in my second year I taught in a 5th Grade self-contained classroom.
2. In general, how would you describe your ACE experience?
ACE was a turning point in so many areas of my life. I learned so much about myself and about how I interact with others. I also became passionate about sustaining Catholic Education and since graduating have made an effort to incorporate this passion into decisions I have made about my career/vocation.
3. What have you been doing since you graduated from ACE?
In the year immediately after graduating from ACE, I joined Kelly Holohan, Lynette Grypp, and Andrew Nelson in Dublin, Ireland with ACE’s work there. My time in Ireland was also formative for me and helped give me perspective into the work of Catholic schools abroad and by extension at home. I was blessed by those around me in so many ways. To Kelly, Lynette, and Andrew, “Well done!”
On returning from Ireland, I took a job with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps: Northwest as an Area Director. While in this position, I had the great benefit of becoming more familiar with Ignatian spirituality as well as the work of many social service agencies in Oregon, Alaska, Washington, and Montana.
In 2005, I took a position with the Pacific Alliance for Catholic Education as the PACE Coordinator. In this role, I now have the opportunity to work directly in support of Catholic schools and individuals who feel called to serve in them. I am blessed to visit schools in areas as diverse as Yakima, WA; Portland, OR; and Salt Lake City, UT and to hear from principals how important PACE and its teachers are to the work they do. I am also blessed to visit Catholic colleges and universities across the country and to speak with young people who feel a yearning, a vocation, to take their enthusiasm and knowledge to under-resourced Catholic schools. In my more philosophical moments, I see my role as Coordinator as connecting the great need of Catholic schools with the myriad talents of young people across the country. What a blessing to be involved with this work!
4. How have you stayed connected to ACE?
I have frequent contact with ACE grads in the Northwest and around the country. I have been able to attend a number of SCAN events in the Seattle area and love connecting with good friends there. I also stay in contact with ACE employees through my work here at PACE and the University Consortium for Catholic Education (UCCE).
5. What are the ways in which you continue to serve Catholic education?
Beyond my work through PACE, I was the Head Coach for St. Andrew Nativity School’s 6th Grade boys basketball team. I affectionately refer to this time as my volunteer work with “under-talented” youths. This was a great opportunity for me to connect directly with the work of these schools and to put what Doc Doyle referred to as my “I mean it” voice to productive use.
Karen Panek
1. What was your ACE Site/ school/ grade level/ subject taught?
Charlotte NC, Holy Trinity Catholic Middle School, 8th grade science and religion, 8th grade assistant soccer coach
2. In general, how would you describe your ACE experience?
As with so many things in life, the realization of the value of an experience increases with time, and sometimes, years later, we realize we learned a lot more than we could have imagined at the time. And five years after graduating from ACE, I find myself reviving "Chalk Talk" and flipping through our favorite Harry Wong book to freshen up on classroom management ideas.
Although my ACE experience had its challenges, when I look back on it now, it is the people I spent my days with that stand out in my mind...my community, fellow teachers and coaches, but primarily my students. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to catch a glimpse of the fruits of my labors. One of my former 8th graders is now in her second semester at the University of Georgia, and she mailed me a letter complete with a mix-CD all the way to Bolivia to share with me how her life is going. Two years and over 200 students that I will never know where they go in life, but one letter from one girl makes it all worthwhile.
3. What have you been doing since you graduated from ACE?
The ecologist in me can never be buried too deeply, but the passion and desire to share my enthusiasm for knowledge and understanding is the force that drives me, so outdoor/environmental education was a natural route for me. Even while I was in ACE, I volunteered for UNC Charlotte grad students radio tracking owls and I completed the requisites for NC environmental education certificates. Immediately after ACE I spent the summer as an educator in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in TN/NC, and then headed off to Idaho to pursue a M.S. in Biology from Boise State. Three years chasing ground squirrels through the desert mountains was wonderful, and I loved being a student again, but I found myself wanting to be on the other side of the desk again. Having always wanted to live abroad, I found a job with the Field Studies Council in the UK. It is an ngo that teaches field ecology research techniques to British school children. A year living on the Welsh coast (and the good fortune to meet up with Emer in Derry) was wonderful, and an experience that I am still processing and learning from, but I felt called to something else.
So in August of last year, I came to Tiraque, Bolivia as a part of Jesuit Volunteers International. Tiraque is a small pueblo of about 2000 people. But it has four schools each of which has about 1000 students. The overflow of students come from the surrounding rural communities. Indigenous, Quechua-speaking, and highly impoverished, the need here is obvious. I assist in a sort of boarding home for students from the rural areas that live too far away to walk in every day. I also teach applied ecology classes at an alternative education institute for students that have not or cannot attend the traditional schools. Already one-quarter of my two years here has passed and each day I get to know this culture a little more deeply, and I discover even more questions. And, as it always is with teaching, I will never know what impact I have on my students...I can only have faith that if I am doing the work that God has called me to do, that he will work through me so that his will be done.
4. How have you stayed connected to ACE?
Unfortunately, the places I have lived since ACE do not have ACE alumni communities, so I keep in touch via email and the occasional visit with a handful of classmates. But, in the true spirit of ACE, it is to the pillars that I keep finding myself returning. Jesuit Volunteers shares Spirituality and Community as two of its core values (along with Social Justice and Simple Living), and it is with the base of these values that were established and growing during ACE, that I was able to confidently enter into another service program that has the added uncertainty of another culture and language. I am certain that I would not be here volunteering in Bolivia today if it were not for the foundation of values and education skills that I received through ACE.
5. What are the ways in which you continue to serve Catholic education?
The majority of the schools in Bolivia (and indeed in much of South America) are Fe y Alegria schools. These are schools set up by local Jesuits, but funded and supported by the government. The education and political situation here is very different from the US in many ways, but one is that there is no division between Church and State, and therefore, Catholic education can take place almost anywhere. But, because of the influence of the government, and the outlandish ratio of priests to school children, the reality is that the presence of faith in the schools is almost non-existent. A mass once or twice a year, and days off for religios holidays is as far as it goes. But the culture here is almost purely Catholic (with a strong indigenous influence that identifies the earth goddess Pachamama with the Virgin Mary), and so Catholicism in one of its many forms is a part of the everyday lives of the people here. In many ways, my very presence here as a "missionary" living God´s call and Jesus´s command to serve the poor is the best example of Catholic education that I can provide.