By Sr. Stephanie Baliga
Teaching at St. Sylvester School in Logan Square has been one of the most formative experiences of my religious life! I’ve been teaching at St. Sylvester’s since 2017. Our teaching apostolate focuses on going into under-resourced Catholic schools to provide direct religion instruction and whole school faith formation support – all of which adds up to a lot of different roles! My favorite way to describe my teaching job is that I’m the “school DRE” – I teach K-8 religion, do all the Sacraments preparation for the school, and try to provide faith formation for staff and parents.
Although I have experienced many graces as a Catholic school teacher, I never expected to have ended up in this kind of role. When I was discerning religious life, I specifically avoided teaching communities because I had absolutely no interest in teaching. My own schooling experience was more than enough for me, and I didn’t really want to go back. As I reflect back on those days now, I know that God was certainly laughing at this grand plan of mine!
My direct avoidance of teaching came to a close when my superior, Bishop Bob, asked me to consider teaching in a poor Catholic school on a part time basis. The plan was that we would work in our apostolate of serving the poor at the Mission most of the time and then spend 2 days a week teaching in a school. Imagining teaching on only a part-time basis seemed possible and realistic, and I could definitely see the great need for religion teachers in our Catholic schools, and so, not quite sure what I was signing myself up for, I agreed to go back to school for my teaching degree.
Now, more than eight years into my teaching journey, I can confidently say that teaching constantly pushes me out of my comfort zone and towards Jesus. A great example was a saint lesson I taught my second graders. Second graders, especially my second graders, are notoriously noisy. There is some cognitive lightbulb or linguistic benchmark that appears to be reached in the fall of second grade that seems to lead kids to constantly talk. I was battling against the constant chatter to teach a lesson about saints. Throughout the lesson we had learned about Mother Theresa, St. Francis, St. Therese of Lisieux, and St. Paul. Now, each student was supposed to pick out one of these four saints to draw a picture of and write a description about why he or she was a saint. As the students set out to complete the activity, it became clear to me that despite my efforts, most of the class wasn’t paying attention and that I was going to have to re-teach essentially the whole lesson next class.
When I got to the back of my classroom, however, much to my surprise, one of my students had completed an incredible assignment on St. Francis. The picture contained a very detailed drawing of St. Francis in his habit with a toolbox in his hand standing next to an actual church building and a bunch of people. The caption of his drawing was “Francis rebuilt the Church.” Looking at that second graders drawing was an important moment for me. Not only did it assure me that some kids were in fact paying attention, but that was also the moment that my role as a teacher became crystal clear to me. My teaching was neither going to be the “magic” that got all the families at my school back to Mass nor the answer to catechetical problems at our parish/ school. My role was to be faithful and, like St. Francis did, to slowly build the faith of my students, brick by brick, so that no matter where their lives took them or whether or not they fell away from the faith at some point, they would always have a firm foundation of faith to come back to. My role was to make sure that my students knew, even if they wouldn’t admit it, that they always had a home in the Church.
My time teaching has also been marked by some incredible miracles- whole families entering the Church, middle schoolers deciding (despite their parents) to get baptized and confirmed, parents returning to Mass, and parents going to confession after decades away from the Church. The humdrum daily building up of students pierced by these periodic and unexpected miracles has taught me to be humble, realize that I am REALLY not in control, and to let grace do its job. Please pray for our students and our schools and for openness to the grace that Jesus wants to pour into so many hearts!
