Chance of a lifetime:
Lilly grants allow teachers to embark on worldwide adventures
After she returns from a trip to Europe this summer, principal Kathy Sleva wants to show the students at St. Vincent de Paul School in Bedford the connection between their parish church and churches in the European countries from which their ancestors came to America.
By John Shaughnessy
BEDFORD—If you were given at least $8,000 to take your trip of a lifetime, where would you go? And what would you do?
Five Catholic school teachers from the archdiocese will get to live their answers to those questions because they have been chosen to receive a 2007 Teacher Creativity Fellowship from Lilly Endowment Inc.
Hailing from Bedford, Bloomington, Indianapolis and Madison, the five teachers will embark on adventures to New Zealand, Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Spain, Honduras and Indiana (yes, Indiana)—all with the plan of transforming their trips into teaching lessons for their students.
From taking a helicopter ride and landing on an active volcano in New Zealand to visiting churches that connect stonecutters from Italy to a parish in Bedford, here are snapshot looks at the journeys the five teachers plan to make.
‘Solid rock in a shaky world’
For 20 years, Kathy Sleva has watched the school children from Irish, Italian, German and French families climb the hill in the center of Bedford, heading toward St. Vincent de Paul Church with its 107-foot spire that is visible from anywhere in the southern Indiana city.
As they enter the church, the principal of St. Vincent de Paul School has noticed how the children stare in awe at the ornate statues, the stained-glass windows and the paintings of angels which have long graced the church that was built in the late 1800s.
“It is constructed of limestone, quarried just a few miles away, as the Bedford area is the site of some of the best limestone in the world,” Sleva notes. “Labor and material were donated by Catholic parish members— Italian stonecutters—who had immigrated to the area because of the stone industry. They lovingly carved the ornamentation, both inside and outside of the church building. Statues of saints were ordered from Carrara, Italy, and stained-glass windows came from the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.”
Watching the children’s reaction, Sleva wanted to show them the connection between their parish church and the churches from the countries that were left behind by the immigrants to Bedford.
So she submitted a proposal to Lilly Endowment for a four-week journey to Italy, Germany Austria and France—some of the countries from which the immigrants to Bedford came—to collect photographs and artifacts of European churches.
“We’re a small Catholic community in a rural area, and our children don’t have a chance to see other Catholic churches,” she says. “They ask questions about the altars, the statues and the paintings. I want them to see why their church is the way it is. I want them to see you can go all over the world and find similar architecture and ornamentation which all have the symbolism of our universal Church.
“To me, the knowledge that these features were purposely installed by the parish founders—out of their love for the faith traditions in the countries of their families—is a source of security and stability in a world that seems to be changing minute by minute. It is important to know our roots, and appreciate those who went before us in our 2,000-year-old faith.”
Landing on an active volcano
In her continuing effort to bring science to life for her students, Elizabeth Applegate will take a helicopter tour of New Zealand and land on an active volcano.
She will also take part in New Zealand’s sport of “zorbing”—an activity in which people crawl into a “human-sized hamster ball” then roll down a hill.
“I’ll be using that to demonstrate Newton’s Laws of Motion,” says Applegate, a science and religion teacher at Father Michael Shawe Memorial Jr./Sr. High School in Madison.
Applegate is just one of nine teachers in the state who were selected as “distinguished fellows” of the Lilly Endowment program. She received a grant of $24,960 for her idea to explore New Zealand to create video lessons and lab activities for her science classes.
“The reason I picked New Zealand is it’s a relatively small country, about the size of California,” she says. “They have everything from volcanoes to glaciers and rain forests. They also have some rare wildlife, including the yellow-eyed penguin, which is disappearing.
“They also have all kinds of alternative energy resources. I’ll be talking to the manager of a huge wind farm which generates enough electricity for about
one-fourth of the country. I’ll also be in national parks and at a seismograph station.”
Applegate plans to take two months for her scientific journey, most likely in January and February of 2008, which are summer months in New Zealand. Her grant will even pay for substitute teachers while she’s gone.
“My students are using a textbook made for the state of Indiana,” she says. “It does have some good information, but it’s a textbook. If I can get them more hands-on information and hands-on labs, it will make science more interesting and meaningful to them. It sounds like fun, too.”
A gift of the heart and the arts
As an artist and a teacher, Suzi Abell dreams of a world in which art creates connections with people from different lives and backgrounds.
That helps explain why Abell is a board member of Heart in Education Teacher Outreach, an organization that takes teachers from the United States to Third World countries to share ideas about teaching. It also explains why she will use her Teacher Creativity Fellowship to return to Honduras for a third time.
“Working with the teachers there, I’ve noticed a couple of students who are particularly gifted in the arts,” says Abell, the art teacher at St. Joan of Arc School in Indianapolis. “I want to work with them to give them training in art so they can make a living from it. I also want to work on my own painting as I’m traveling around the country.”
She’ll use her trip this summer to develop an art curriculum for St. Joan of Arc School during its 2007-08 school year.
“We’ll create a cultural celebration at the end of the year,” she says. “I’d like to sell my artwork from the trip, and the artwork that my students here and in Central America do.”
The money raised from the sale of the artwork by the Honduran students will go toward a scholarship for those students at a university in Honduras. Funds from the sale of her artwork and the artwork of St. Joan of Arc students will be used to send another teacher to Honduras, and to create a distance learning program between St. Joan of Arc and the Honduran school.
“It’s really important for people from all over the world to understand the importance of service and what we receive when we do service,” Abell says. “By doing this, I’m helping my students learn more about the bigger world. I want to inspire them that we can go farther and do things to help others.”
All creatures, great and fast
In her love for animals, Linda Brown has always tried to follow the care and compassion of St. Francis of Assisi.
Brown has been rescuing greyhounds for years, adopting and giving homes to dogs that have raced at tracks across the United States.
So when she heard about the horrible ways that greyhounds are often treated in Spain, the art teacher at St. Charles Borromeo School in Bloomington wanted to travel to that country to document the abuses of the dogs—and the volunteer efforts to rescue their lives.
Her Teacher Creativity Fellowship will make her dream possible.
“In Spain, greyhounds are used for hunting and for
‘hare-coursing,’ ” she says. “Hare-coursing is an illegal ‘blood sport’ where two greyhounds chase a rabbit. The one who catches the rabbit first gets to eat it. There’s a lot of betting on it. Then, rather than having to care and feed for those dogs during the winter season, they’re often disposed of.”
In July, Brown plans to head to a rescue center for greyhounds in northern Spain to volunteer for two weeks. She will also travel to southern Spain to visit and document the efforts of other rescue centers and the people who work there.
“I’ll put together a short documentary to show the situation the dogs face and the help they’re getting,” Brown says. “I would like to model the words and compassion of St. Francis for all creatures on Earth. When I get back to school, we’ll do a virtual adoption of one of the animals. We’ll help pay for their food and shelter.”
Back home again
Lori Grant Feliciano knows that many winners of Teacher Creativity Fellowships have used the money to travel to exotic places around the world. She chose a different place that fascinates her and her students:
Indiana.
“At the beginning of the year, we opened up our fourth-grade Indiana Social Studies book and the kids would ask me questions about the places and famous people in Indiana,” recalls Feliciano, who teaches at St. Therese of the Infant Jesus (Little Flower) School in Indianapolis. “We would talk about the places and the kids would say, ‘I wish I could go there.’ So did I.”
Feliciano’s wish will come true this summer when she follows a six-week tour to 45 interesting and historical sites across the state, including the International Circus Hall of Fame in Peru and the Levi Coffin House in eastern Indiana, a key part of the “underground railroad” connection that helped slaves from the South make their escape to the North in the 19th century.
“My tour will start in South Bend,” she says. “I’m going to Notre Dame and that area, and working my way back. I’m going to take videos of the places. Being the computer teacher, too, I can create virtual field trips on our Web site for my students. While I’m gone, I’m going to do a Weblog so the kids can get on the Web site and see what I see.
“All these people are going to Mexico, Italy, France and other places. I’m more excited to go to all these places around here. It’s much more meaningful to me.” †
