The Sacred Heart Nativity staff is a community of deeply caring educators who serve and support one another in all facets of the job. We serve, not only the students of Nativity, but one another. We support each other by sharing a smile, a laugh, or a word of encouragement during days that can feel extremely long. We are reassured by the knowledge that we are all in this together.
Every one of us knows in our heart that we have been brought here as a part of God’s plan. Coming to Nativity is always a calling. Sometimes that plan is brief and sometimes much longer. For a few of us, teaching at Nativity is our spiritual path for a number of years and we feel the nudge to move on. Then, like many of our students, we come back to visit because it has become the definition of home for us. We come back, not because we want to but because it is what our spirit demands. We need to be nourished once again by the community that fed and sustained us. Unbeknownst to us, Nativity has permeated our entire being. It has defined who we are as educators and as believers.
The calling from God is for the work as well as the personal connection to the mission. Each day as we walk through the door, we encounter the faces at the margins and find ourselves in the exact spot that Jesus has called us. Whether it be in the classroom or on the playground, it is in these faces that we see the embodiment of what it means to break the cycle of poverty through education. We are making a difference. As we share our gifts and stories with our students, we are transformed as much or more than they are. We gain as much as we give; we are humbled as we stand in the shadow of their strength and resilience. We become better people because we are among these learners who teach us every day what it means to work toward a goal that feels just beyond our reach.
There is nothing easy about this job. It is the hardest, most important work that any of us will ever do. We give our whole selves each day and come back the next day to do it again. We do it because we see the impact that we are having and it is addictive. The more that is achieved today, the more we see what can be done tomorrow. We are lifting up each student in our class academically, emotionally, and socially. When that student goes home to tell the story of his/her day to the family, they too are lifted. They learn through their children that there is a way up. There are possibilities for their children they didn’t know existed. In those conversations, they learn a new word or phrase in English; they learn about a community event that also opens possibilities for their own lives. They learn about an author of a book their children have read who lived the same life as they are living and who made his way to Santa Clara University through the support of teachers like those of their son or daughter. They see what is possible. And as each family is lifted, so is the community. So the work each teacher does with that student to whom they give a word of praise or acknowledgement echoes back through his/her parents, grandparents, siblings, and out to local neighbors and friends. This student will feed on success after success until he/she begins to believe and imagine what is possible; that they too can be the first generation of their family to go to college, to be a teacher, an author, an engineer. And as their siblings then enter through the same doors on Edwards Avenue, they already know what’s possible because they have heard the story and witnessed their sibling’s success.
The Nativity Staff is a team of workers like no other. Every year, we say it’s the best team ever assembled. We believe it because we have seen the results student after student, year after year. We know the dream is within our grasp. From our first day on campus, our hearts have quickly learned the feeling of being broken open, individually and as a group. We laugh and cry with our students and each other. But in the quiet moments of the evening we ponder the day and wonder what it is to be twelve and to struggle with all you have in you to learn, to achieve, and to trust that every one of these adults will come through on the promise of success; that you will follow in the footsteps of the graduate portraits on the walls of Sacred Heart Our Lady of Grace Nativity Schools. And each June, these teachers will heave a huge sigh and proudly lead these graduates out of the doors of the church into the world, to set it on fire.
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