Growing up in Belfast, Ciaran Quinn enjoyed a strong bond with the people of his community. “For me, in Ireland, everything is based on community – whether it’s sports, whether it’s parish, whether it’s where you’re from – everybody knows everybody and everyone is connected in a certain way,” he said.
That’s what makes being a teacher at St. Casimir School in Canton so appealing, Quinn said. He has found a similar kind of connection.
“There’s a community-based extension of the family within the school,” said Quinn, a St. Casimir parishioner whose two children attend the parish school where he teaches.
A strong sense of community in Catholic schools across the Archdiocese of Baltimore is one of the major reasons many teachers choose to work in the Catholic school system. Teachers also report that a sense of freedom and the ability to share faith are other factors that keep them teaching in Catholic schools year after year.
Although they know they might earn more money in the public school system, many Catholic school teachers make that sacrifice to be part of a Catholic school system they love.
Raleigh Davis is a first-grade teacher at Bishop Walsh School in Cumberland. She teaches in the same school she attended as a child, and her 4-year-old son is now in a pre-K classroom across the hall from the class she teaches. Her son’s class is being taught by Sherry VanMeter, who was Davis’ teacher as a little girl.
“This is where I’m supposed to be,” said the 35-year-old parishioner of Our Lady of the Mountains in Cumberland, who began her teaching career in the public school system seven years ago. “I know that now after these past two years. I see wonderful things in the public school, but this is where I want my children to be.”
Davis appreciates the opportunity to share faith in the classroom.
“We can mention God,” she said. “He does exist here.”
The freedom to teach creatively is also appreciated by the teachers. Carmen Sund, a language teacher at Maryvale Preparatory School in Lutherville, likes that her language department can decide on its own on the most effective way to teach students.
In other school systems, everything is “very prescribed, right down to what you teach and how you teach it,” she said. “I feel like they really trust that what I’m doing (here), and (that) how I’m delivering it is of high quality.”
Carole Gonzalez, a Maryvale science teacher, said that freedom allows her to touch on some very important points in her class.
“I can teach about the relationship between faith and science,” she said.
Gonzalez said she felt more at home at the all-girls high school in the first year of employment, than she did in 18 years of college adjunct teaching.
“I love it,” she said.
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