In Praise of Magnificent Women

I was 23 years old, right out of graduate school at Notre Dame, when I was hired to teach Theology and English at Montgomery Catholic High in 1985.

By then, "Sister Martha" Belke had been teaching Chemistry and Introductory Physical Science there for almost twenty five years. 

She had been assigned to be my mentor, but I confess I was too cocky to seek out her help early in the process. No matter. Teaching has a way of humbling people, especially in their first year, and Sister knew to be patient. I can’t remember the details, but somewhere around early October there had been an incident between two freshman boys involving toothpaste in my class. “They won’t listen to me, “ I confided to her, exasperated, “and it seems like every day is a battle. “

She looked at me, choosing her words carefully. “Teachers talk too much,“ was all she said.

At first I was a little taken back. “Of course they talk a lot, “ I thought to myself. “It’s called TEACHING.” But as I considered it, I realized she had nailed my problem in those four words: I had come out of graduate school, where lecture was the only mode of teaching, and so I naturally adopted that model for my classes. But it will come as no surprise to any veteran teacher that students cannot sustain their attention for 60 straight minutes, and this was leading to a lot of mischief and disruption. I began varying things up—lecture, group work, 5-minute video clips, research, mini-competitions, visits to the library, different types of assessments—seeking Sister Martha’s help each step of the way. In short, I was learning the CRAFT of high school teaching, and now, thirty years later as a high school teacher and principal, I credit her for helping me learn this craft in what has become my life’s work.

It was with real sadness, then, that I heard she had passed away at the Sisters of Loretto motherhouse in Nerinx, KY this last weekend.

She was the last of the Loretto sisters to teach at Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School, retiring in 1997. One hundred and twenty five years earlier, in 1873, four hearty women from that order were invited by Bishop Quinlan of Mobile to start a Catholic school for girls in Montgomery, Al--the capital city of the Confederacy, a city still ravaged by the after-effects of a disastrous war. There was strong anti-Catholic prejudice in the south at this time, and certainly these strangely dressed "outsiders" raised suspicions, but that didn’t matter to the sisters—they were doing God’s work. The opening of the school was delayed by a yellow fever epidemic, and the nuns offered their school building as an auxiliary hospital, caring for the sick in such an admirable way that they earned the trust and respect of the city fathers, many of whom placed their daughters in the school when it opened. Though it became a co-ed school in 1929 and a diocesan school in the 1950's, the school remains as the oldest continuous school in the state of Alabama, private or public. 

Sister Martha came from that same stock of tough women. Once, after listening to a faculty member complain about being asked to give up her free period to cover a class for a sick colleague, she told her: “It’ll be OK. I was only 19, two years short of getting my degree, when I got my first teaching assignment. I had fifty kids that year… “ (pausing for effect). “Twenty five were in the first grade,” she continued, “and twenty five were in the second grade. There was an aisle down the middle, and if they looked out across the aisle, they had their recess taken away.”  

Along with Miz O's “twelve paragraphs,” Coach Arban’s “reading quizzes,” Mr. Frye’s challenging Algebra tests, Mr. Tokarz's Freshman theology class, and Dr. Doyle's Physics and Calculus classes, Sister Martha’s freshman year “blackbox” experiment for I.P.S. and “sludge test” for juniors in Chemistry were the anchors of Montgomery Catholic High’s academic program for nearly a quarter of a century. Sister believed that students should DO SCIENCE in high school classrooms rather than LEARN ABOUT science in textbooks—she was a “hands-on” teacher long before “hands-on” became a catch phrase—and she spent countless hours setting up labs for her kids in class for the next day so that they could learn as scientists learn. As is true of every excellent, iconic high school teacher I’ve ever met,  it was a labor of love for Sister Martha; she cared about her students and the kind of people they became, and worked hard to challenge and stretch them in her classes.  

One of the great highlights of my professional life was inviting Sister Martha back to Catholic High for the dedication of the Sister Martha Belke Science building in 1998. She commented then that despite the 150+ years the Loretto sisters had founded, staffed and led Catholic schools across the country, this was the first time, to her knowledge, that a building had been named after one of them. I'm pretty sure they deserve more than just one, but we were happy to be the first. 

Her picture, shown here, hangs in the Belke Building today. May she and the magnificent Loretto sisters always be an inspiration to Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School, to its students and to its teachers. We owe her, and them, a great debt. 

The End of the Story

Student assembly, Easter Monday

"We are Easter people”, St. John Paul once said, “and alleluia is our song!”

TV producers would love my wife. Every emotional turn the movie makes, my wife makes that turn with them—highs and lows, joy and sadness--she experiences the whole gamut of emotion right along with the movie. She gets so into it that I tease her sometimes, reminding her that she’s watching a movie in a box in our living room; that she’s not a character in the movie itself. And if the movie ends well, she’s happy. And if ends sadly, it will take her a couple of days to get over it.

That’s why, whenever I’ve seen a movie and she hasn’t, she will ask me: “Will I like it?” That’s code for: “Will everyone live happily ever after?” If I tell her no, then she won’t watch it. "There's too much sadness in real life," she says. "Why would I want more sadness?"  It’s why she likes Disney movies so much.

A few years ago, we were both watching a made for TV movie that neither of us had ever seen, called “Blood Vows,”-- not the title of a movie that my wife would typically risk watching, but it starred Melissa Gilbert from “Little House on the Prairie” fame and a young and dashing Joe Penny, whom my wife liked. The story line is that Melissa Gilbert meets the man of her dreams, Joe Penny, who is fabulously wealthy, mysterious, good-looking, but also, impeccably well-mannered and charming. They get married in a huge, traditional Church wedding, so everything seems to be going well. However, over the next couple of months, Melissa Gilbert begins to realize what the family business is: Joe Penny is the only son of the godfather of the Mafia, and she’s now married into the family, the wife of a crime lord. Having made a blood vow to be faithful in good times and bad, what is she to do? That’s the fundamental conflict of the movie. At first, she tries to live with it, but the more she knows, the more horrified she becomes, and in the climatic scene, on a gazebo in the back yard of the family mansion late at night, Melissa Gilbert tells Joe Penny that she can no longer live this double life, that she loves him, but she cannot condone the family business, and that he’s going to have to make a choice between his family and her. Penny, with love in his eyes, says “Of course I choose you," and they kiss and embrace, when suddenly, a shot rings out and Melissa Gilbert slumps in his arms. The shot pans back, and the viewer sees the gun in Penny’s hand, and you realize he’s killed her. The shot pans back even further to a window in the mansion with a silhouette of the godfather rocking in his chair back and forth. The movie ends instantly and the credits begin rolling. 

My wife was so mad she could barely talk for a week.

I tease my wife, but there’s an important lesson in all of this about human nature: When we know the ending, when we are confident that things will end well, we can endure just about anything. 

Living as Jesus wants us to is a joyful life, but that doesn’t mean it’s an easy one. Sometimes, we’ll be ridiculed for it, excluded by others, whispered about. Some times we’ll feel as if others take advantage of us, knowing that however badly treated we are, we’ll not sink to the level of our persecutors and retaliate or seek revenge. Sometimes, it feels like the bad guys win in this world, that the cheaters DO prosper, despite the phrase to the contrary. Sometimes, we wonder what Job from the Bible wondered: Why does God allow bad things to good people?

But God’s answer to that is the resurrection of Jesus. No matter how difficult the story, we know the ending: We, too, will be resurrected one day, and this world of ours, however much it appears that evil triumphs over good, God, ultimately, wins, goodness prevails, He redeems us and saves.

And that’s why, I think, authentic Christians are people of JOY. Think of someone you know who is truly religious—the real deal, not just a pretender. Every such person I’ve met in my life who is that kind of Christian is a person of great joy—optimistic about the future, kind, genuinely interested in how you’re doing, fun to be around. They are convinced, deep in their soul, that yes, life is sometimes difficult, sometimes sad, but that ultimately, sadness doesn’t have the final say. These people approach death with courage, knowing that they’re on the other side of a great homecoming, where they’ll be reunited to those they love, and ultimately meet their final destiny with the Lord. They know the end of the story. 

We, too, should be people of great joy. We, too, know the ending of the story. We are Easter people, and alleluia is our song!

Alleluia!

Bad joke for the day: Why do kleptomaniacs have such a hard time understanding puns? Because they always take things literally.

Count it all joy!

My brief remarks to our faculty on March 25, 2015

We are approaching the anniversary of my father’s death last year on Palm Sunday, so my 3 sisters, brother and I have been a little nostalgic, sharing memories about him—and laughing a lot. One of those memories was our ritual every morning. We had family morning prayer, and Dad would wake us all up by ringing this bell he had installed at the foot of our stairway, shouting up the stairs “Rise and Shine!”  As teenagers, we hated that bell. My sister Jennifer, not a morning person, would come down the stairway scowling at the world, shooting daggers at my father, who had been up for an hour already, said prayers, and run a few miles, so he was rearing to go. So each morning, there was kind of this competing force of my father’s unrelenting cheerfulness vs. his teenage children’s crankiness about waking up as we stumbled our way through morning prayer. But the takeaway looking back—and the thing you don’t really notice so much or think about until it’s gone—is my father’s cheerfulness and what a gift that was to our entire family.

A few days ago, I was talking to one of you who has been a teacher for quite some time now—I won’t embarrass her by telling you who she is—but it occurred to me, while talking, that one of her great attributes as a teacher is JOY. She loves teaching, she is passionate in looking for ways to become a better teacher, she cares about her kids and their learning in a truly admirable way—and through it all, radiates joy. What a GREAT thing. What a great inspiration for all of us.

And then, just a passing note. Yesterday afternoon, I was talking to Julianne, getting the debrief about our spring break trip to Spain—26 kids, herself, Andrew and Veronica. She said it was spectacular, the kids were spectacular—everything went well. At the end of our discussion, I asked her if anything stood out for her—a memory she’d treasure. And she said, yes, many things, but one small moment in particular. Toward the end, they were about to eat, she was talking with someone, and she turned around, and all 26 kids were holding hands, about to say grace, and she was invited to join them. That moment was very powerful for her—a kind of sign that things were "going right" at JPII, that the mission of the school was alive in our students. She was able to take great delight in that.

Count it all joy, whenever temptation and trials come upon us, because in that testing comes steadfastness. (James 1:2-3)

JOY. Cheerfulness. Delighting in our students. As we tackle these last two months together,  let’s make a very deliberative effort to be people of joy in what we do, so that this joy radiates to our kids. Let’s find ways to delight in our kids—in the small things, in our banter with them before class or while walking down the hallways, or talking about the game we attended the afternoon before. Throw your life into theirs—and let’s enjoy and appreciate this magnificent vocation we’ve been called to as educators. COUNT IT ALL JOY!  May God bless all of you this spring.