Diane Aguilar’s Post

This article by Dr. Dan Boone (Trevecca's President) highlights exactly why I answered God's call on my life to serve in higher education administration in the Christian context. A good read! https://lnkd.in/eWcuRsh3

Just before Easter I decided to put put ideas into action: 1. write a weekly reflection on Easter and incorporate the weekly events of the school for parents and faculty. 2. Why not begin using the Substack that I created over a year ago, but had yet to post? Here is my fourth post. #Easter #substack #parents #teachers #headmasters #onlyoca

As a Mom who was fortunate to have both of her children attend a Montessori school AND as an expert in adult executive education, it has been fascinating to see the interplay between both of these worlds. So much of Maria Montessori’s method is exactly what I find missing in traditional corporate adult learning, from the actual CORE COMPETENCIES successful executives are focusing on in today’s global, social, and digital world to the APPROACH best suited to help executives attain these mindsets, skills, and capacity. The gaps we have as adults are often caused by WHAT and HOW we are taught as kids. A Montessori school’s parent briefings on growing and developing our children could be “cut and paste” into a #lifesciencemarketing environment. Yet, unfortunately, so much of executive and marketing corporate education I see out there repeats the shortcomings found in the typical, traditional approach to educating our children. That’s something that inspires me to do things differently at Lime LLC - Let's Grow! #learninganddevelopment #training #marketingexcellence #marketingeffectiveness #innovation #strategy

THE GOOD SCHOOLS GUIDE REVIEW  Following a visit to Farleigh School by a reviewer from The Good Schools Guide in November, the outcome of their review is now live via the link below. The The Good Schools Guide is renowned for its impartial, straight-talking and thoroughly researched school reviews, with the writers delving into every aspect of school life, including talking to current pupils and parents to get the inside track. As the Guide emphasises, “Each school in The Guide is selected on merit alone. Schools cannot pay to be included and have no influence over what we write. We always tell the truth.” https://lnkd.in/efQJFHuE

ICYMI: Check out my opinion piece on the devastating closing of the oldest Catholic school in Las Vegas and how NV should follow Florida when it comes to education: "Nevada should take a page out of Florida’s book. There, leaders in both parties voted for expanding choice to every family in the state. Catholic school enrollment is up 9% in Florida, thanks to strong outreach to families and school choice that opens the chance to families who need it most. Catholic schools there are becoming more diverse, embracing students of color and special-needs students, and they’re implementing innovative academic offerings." https://lnkd.in/ggQXpvvx #SchoolChoice

Building Confidence in our Kids I listened to a classroom debate among college students recently. It was painful how weakly assertive they were: “I was thinking, if you looked at it a certain way, “ one student said, “ well, at least as I see it—I guess others could see it differently—something like this…” Whereas the task of education is to help older students become more broad minded and nuanced, beyond the simple dogmatism of their youth, we are failing in our first task: to build in them the foundational dogma to be later broadened. For many of our youth, the only real dogma they possess is not to be certain of anything. “Truth, what is truth?” Pilate’s question to Jesus echoes down through the ages and reverberates loudly today. Our Catholic schools must answer: He is! He is “The Way, the Truth and the Life” for our students. Our foundational purpose is to nurture our students in a community that believes that, which lives that out in a way that is joyful and attractive, and which invites students to enter into a relationship with him. Yes, the means through which we do that is by providing an excellent academic program, preparing kids for success in high school and college. But our end is much grander: to lead kids to the Lord. If we immerse kids in a community grounded in Scripture, Tradition and Sacrament, if we give them the opportunity to pray, worship, serve others and learn about their faith, if the practice of our faith is “normalized” in our day to day living, then we build in them the confidence of their convictions. Yes, life will challenge those convictions, to be sure. Yes, those convictions will become nuanced, over time, with experience. But we give our kids a great gift—an increasingly rare gift—if those convictions are first deeply rooted.

Elaborating on the stories of Mae Arlene Gadpaille, Roslyn Williams, and Lenore Gertrude Briggs, Black Montessori pioneers who shared Maria Montessori's belief in the power of education for social justice, this article is a great read for anyone interested in education and education philosophy. Article: https://lnkd.in/g-Tf5SMN

The Future of Education is Evolution: 1. The Catholic Church discouraged laymen from reading the Bible on their own. 2. Erasmus, Calvin and Martin Luther encouraged laymen to read the Bible on their own.   Neither my BA in Elementary Education nor my MA in Language, Reading and Culture mentioned this information. Considering this is the Western world’s mass literacy beginnings, it seems that this may be important to note. Surely any good literacy genealogy report would be remiss not to put the Catholic Church as one of the most prolific harbingers of Western written language from the beginnings of their existence in 110 AD. For the next 1400 years the Catholic Church led literacy teaching in Europe by ensuring their clergy were literate. In addition, the State ensured the elite also had access to literacy which, combined, maintained the authoritarian, top-down, Church-State control so prevalent in the Middle Ages. Add 150 years of the Crusades from 1050-1300, sprinkle a doctrine of follow-the-scripture-as-prescribed-or-death and one could argue the genesis of our Western teaching literacy lineage was set.

Our latest at Catholic School Playbook is a call to action to better serve the natural leaders of a cultural renewal: our teachers. "Teachers are the lifeblood of a school. It is through their words and actions that students become inspired to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue. Forfeiting their training to the state normalized the use of utilitarian, secular methods and materials in an environment that maintained the vestiges of Catholicism. Through no fault of teachers who dutifully underwent training, schools inevitably became less focused on helping parents raise saints, even as the crucifixes remained on the walls.   "As a result, Catholic schools became less like the Body of Christ and more like the state factory-model schools down the street. Catholic parents began enrolling their children in tuition-free schools operated by the state, setting in motion a steady trend of declining enrollment that began in 1965 and continues today.   "But that is only part of Catholic education’s story—and not the most interesting or important part." Some exciting news is that the list of key allies who are helping Catholic schools reclaim a Catholic pedagogy, culture, and curriculum is growing and now includes the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, Classic Learning Test, the Augustine Institute (Master of Arts in Catholic Education), Belmont Abbey College (Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education), Franciscan University of Steubenville (Master of Arts in Catholic Studies), St. Paul Seminary (Lay Graduate Programs), the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, Thomas Aquinas College, and The University of Dallas, to name a few! #catholicschoolsweek #csw24 #catholiceducation #catholicschools https://lnkd.in/eq5ASuhC

Forming our future. Educating for life. The K-12 education sector is facing a teacher shortage. This shortage will only become more acute over the next decade. Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis are served by over 2,300 women and men who have generously responded to a call in their lives to teach. A diocese is in a natural position to answer for itself: What are the qualities, characteristics, experiences, and preparation necessary to become a good Catholic school teacher? In the face of adverse recruitment conditions and secular preparation programs that are increasingly insufficient for the needs of Catholic schools, we are pivoting in favor of new ways to help candidates discern and prepare for service in a Catholic school classroom of the Archdiocese. Partnerships between dioceses and Catholic universities are core to the renewal of Catholic education. We are grateful for our partnership with the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of Saint Thomas. Candidates in the Mission and Culture Fellowship Program benefit from two worlds becoming one: mentored practical teaching experience in a Catholic school classroom paired with the opportunity to deepen their own formation through a meaningful course of study rooted in the Church’s 2,000-year-old tradition. We have, after all, been in this business for a very long time. We are going to need more creative opportunities like the Mission and Culture Fellowship Program to address expanding demand for well qualified Catholic school teacher candidates. For more about this opportunity, please see: https://lnkd.in/grCUrQ86