The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington recently announced the 10 local Catholic elementary school teachers who have been named as 2022 Golden Apple Award winners.
The Golden Apple Award, giving annually to 10 Catholic school teachers in the archdiocese for teaching excellence and dedication to Catholic education, is sponsored by the Donahue Family Foundation and includes a $5,000 check and a golden apple.
Jack and Rhodora Donahue, founders of the Pittsburgh-based foundation, sent their 13 children to Catholic schools. Eager to express their deep appreciation to Catholic school teachers for providing a quality academic and faith-filled education for their children, the Donahues through their foundation have established this award in five dioceses around the country.
This is the 14th annual year that the Golden Apple Awards have been presented in The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
The 10 Golden Apple Award winning teachers for 2022 from Catholic elementary schools in the archdiocese are Katharine Balog of St. Jude Regional Catholic School in Rockville, Maryland; Allison Ervin of Holy Redeemer School in College Park , Maryland; Susan Feudale of St. Martin of Tours Catholic School in Gaithersburg, Maryland; Riana Fisher of Sacred Heart School in Washington, D.C.; Cheryl Hanton of St. Augustine Catholic School in Washington, D.C.; Margaret McCoy Padukiewicz of St. Michael’s School in Ridge, Maryland; Maggie Quade of Our Lady of the Sea of School in Solomons, Maryland; Lori Anne Russell of Little Flower School in Great Mills, Maryland; Patrick Sharp of Our Lady of Mercy School in Potomac, Maryland; and Rosanne Weber of Our Lady of Victory School in Washington, D.C.
Responding to email interviews with the Catholic Standard and from background information provided by the schools, this year’s Golden Apple teachers reflected on their work at local Catholic schools.
Blessings all around
For Katharine Neale Balog, a 2022 Golden Apple Award winning fourth grade teacher and the assistant principal at St. Jude Regional Catholic School in Rockville, “teaching in a Catholic school is more than just a job – it is community that you are connected to for life.”
Balog said “being in a Catholic school has allowed me to bring my faith into the classroom, creating a loving classroom atmosphere” as she teaches academic subjects and also “lifelong lessons about being good stewards and caring people.”
She began teaching at St. Jude’s in 2010, after earlier teaching art at St. Elizabeth School in Rockville and Holy Trinity School in Georgetown. Balog has a degree in art and education from West Virginia University and a degree in educational administration from Hood College in Frederick.
Teaching fourth graders “has been an incredible calling,” Balog said, explaining that “it allows me to use my art background and creativity to do project-based learning activities in various subjects, making lessons come alive with hands-on activities and chances for students to express themselves.”
As a teacher, she enjoys bringing her faith into students’ daily lessons. During the 2021-22 school year, she began serving as an assistant principal at St. Jude’s, which she said gives her the opportunity to mentor new teachers, work with students who need assistance, assist with organizing school-wide events, and collaborate on administrative duties with the principal, Jeanne Donatelli.
“One thing we have enjoyed doing is bringing back community events that allow for the students and parents to come together,” she said.
Balog organizes the school’s annual International Day, which she said allows for the St. Jude’s community to celebrate its diversity. Classes pick a country to study during the year, and students learn about that country’s culture, art, music and food. For International Day, parents set up booths with food from more than two dozen countries, and the music teacher organizes student performances representing the countries’ musical traditions.
Her fourth graders also celebrate Maryland Day, learning about their state’s history, geography, businesses and food.
Balog noted how St. Jude’s community offered support and compassion during her battle with colon cancer, and she experiences that same care as a parent, now that her 4-year-old son is attending the school.
“I can’t imagine working anywhere else. St. Jude has been a blessing in my life,” she said.
Teaching as a calling
Allison Ervin’s Catholic education began when she was a student at St. Jerome School in Hyattsville, Maryland and continued at Elizabeth Seton High School in Bladensburg. After graduating from the University of Maryland, she returned to St. Jerome School as a kindergarten teacher. She had met her husband, Peter, when they were students at St. Jerome’s.
After teaching at St. Jerome’s for 10 years, Ervin took time off to raise their four children. Later she returned to work as a teacher at a local public school, but she missed praying with her students and sharing her faith with them.
“So I returned to my calling, my vocation. I returned to Catholic education. I returned home,” Ervin wrote in an essay about her work.
Ervin, who this fall will be starting her 10th year as a kindergarten teacher at Holy Redeemer School in College Park, was recently named a 2022 Golden Apple Award winning teacher.
“At Holy Redeemer, I am blessed to be able to share my love for God, my love of learning, and my Catholic faith with my students. Teaching about our Catholic faith has strengthened my own faith,” Ervin said. “We begin every lesson with prayer. We celebrate Mass together every week with our school community. We are a school family. The children feel loved. They know that they are God’s children and that He loves them.”
Ervin said that as a kindergarten teacher, she knows this is a key year for her students’ educational experience, and she tries to foster a loving environment for her students and form bonds with them and their families.
“This is their first formal year of school. It is important to me that they love school, and love to learn,” she said.
This past year, her class learned about the gift of life by watching baby chicks hatch from eggs in their classroom.
In her essay, Ervin said each year at Holy Redeemer’s Back to School Night, she sends the parents of her new kindergarten students off with a promise.
“I tell them that during our year together, I promise to keep their children safe. I promise to treat them with respect, to nurture them and to discipline them. But most of all, I promise to love their child like my very own,” she said. “Each year, I pray that I can accomplish this goal with Jesus, the greatest teacher of all, by my side.”
A school family
Susan Feudale had been teaching in Montgomery County Public Schools when she enrolled her oldest daughter Calli as a kindergarten student at St. Martin of Tours Catholic School in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
“I enjoyed volunteering at the school and loved the sense of community there,” she said.
After graduating from the University of Maryland in 1988, Feudale started teaching at S. Christa McAuliffe Elementary School in Germantown, Maryland. As a public school teacher, she taught kindergarten, first and second grades, and reading.
When her youngest daughter Gabriella finished her kindergarten year at St. Martin’s, Feudale heard there was an opening at the school for a first grade teacher.
“I knew immediately that I wanted it!” Feudale said, and she began working as a first grade teacher there in 2003, continuing in that role for 17 years before teaching second grade there for the past two years.
Feudale, a 2022 Golden Apple Award winning teacher, praised the St. Martin’s school community, saying, “For the past 19 years, I have had the blessing to be able to go to work at a place that feels like home and share my love of the Lord and His love for us throughout the day with my students. It is an immeasurable gift from God.”
Over the years, Feudale has taken part in many of the activities at St. Martin’s, including the Homework Club, Bible Buddies, the school’s yearbook, its book fair and summer reading program. One of her most cherished experiences, she said, is serving as a Eucharistic minister at school Masses.
She noted how the size of St. Martin’s School allows older and younger students to become friends and help each other, and the school’s staff and parents have that same spirit, she said.
“St. Martin’s School is not just a school… It’s a family,” Feudale said. “It’s a place where staff and parents are always ready to jump in and help each other. Whether there is a need in the classroom, building or community, the St. Martin’s family comes together to support one another. The modeling of this behavior transfers to the students who are quick to help teachers, staff and each other.”
Those friendships and bonds among students, staff and parents, she said, “are an extension of Jesus’s love for us, and you can feel it whenever you walk through the doors. It is truly a blessing to be part of the St. Martin’s family.”
Seeing faith as action
Her mother’s example and her Catholic college experiences that wove together faith with building a better world have shaped the life and work of Golden Apple Award winning teacher Riana Fisher of Sacred Heart School in Washington, D.C.
Fisher, who is the Middle School instructional lead teacher at Sacred Heart and also teaches science to sixth, seventh and eighth graders there, joined the school six years ago while participating in the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education program, a two-year teaching fellowship as she earned a master’s degree in education.
“From the moment I stepped in the door, I knew Sacred Heart would be my home for a long time,” she said, noting how Dominican sisters founded the school “in hopes of creating a more just and holy world, and our school continues this legacy today through our commitment to faith, justice and compassion.”
When Fisher was an eighth grader, her mother died after a long battle with breast cancer. “My mom really helped form my faith from a young age,” she said, adding that she and her sister were encouraged by their mother “to lift up others in any way we could.” With their mom’s encouragement, they visited nursing home residents in “adopt a grandparent” programs, they set up bake sales for local charities, and they also grew their hair long and had it cut for the Locks of Love program that supports children who have lost their hair due to a medical condition.
“She truly lived for others, and my sister and I were so lucky to have her as a role model,” Fisher said.
She said her Jesuit education at the University of Scranton, where she double majored in biology and philosophy, gave her “a new way of looking at my faith. I began to see faith as action. I began to see that our faith calls us to be a person for and with others.”
At Sacred Heart, Fisher enjoys helping students explore God’s creation through science.
“I hope to impart never-ending curiosity to my students,” she said. “Our world is a complex, confusing, fascinating and wondrous place. I hope my students learn to never stop asking questions and seeking answers about the world around them.”
One of her favorite moments each year is seeing the school’s eighth graders graduate at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart where they celebrated so many sacraments and holy days together.
“Their lives are deeply interwoven with the church,” Fisher said. “It is such a special moment to see a child that has grown up in our community be ready to move on to a new chapter of their lives, and to see them get ready to use what they’ve learned here to make the world a more just and compassionate place.”
‘I fell in love with the school’
(The following is excerpted from an article for the St. Augustine Catholic School newsletter written by William Murray.)
After receiving a Golden Apple Award during a recent surprise ceremony, Cheryl Hanton, a fifth grade teacher at St. Augustine Catholic School in Washington, D.C., said, “Thank you to God. To God be the glory.”
Interviewed after receiving her award, Hanton said that she tries to teach all of her students as though they were her children or grandchildren, both challenging them and showing them love as though the children were her flesh and blood.
“She gives 100 percent,” said Alphonzo Walker, who attended St. Augustine through sixth grade in the class of 1996 and has become an “adopted son” of Hanton. “She’s down to earth, so you can discuss anything on your mind with her,” he said. Hanton’s son Michael (St. Augustine’s class of 2002) and her daughter Alaia (class of 2000) along with the honored teacher’s two granddaughters, one of whom is a seventh grader, while the other graduated from St. Augustine last year, attended the May 31 award event.
Born in the District of Columbia, Hanton and her family moved to Prince George’s County when she was young, and after beginning elementary school at Our Lady Queen of Peace School, S.E., she graduated from St. Margaret of Scotland School in Seat Pleasant and attended high school at St. Cecilia’s Academy.
After initially studying to be a surgical nurse at Howard University, she changed her major to elementary education with a minor in psychology and completed student teaching assignments in the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten levels.
Soon after their Howard graduation in 1976, Hanton and her friend Avis Baltimore were hired to teach at St. Augustine by the school’s principal then, Sister Barbara Spears, an Oblate Sister of Providence.
Early in her career as a fifth grade teacher at St. Augustine School, Hanton learned to put in extra effort to engage with students who might be the “class clown” or might have difficulty learning, and in doing so, her students tended to learn more. She would discipline her students firmly but with kindness and fairness.
“I fell in love with the students, the school, and the staff,” she said of her first months at St. Augustine. Early in her work at the school, Hanton decided she did not want to teach anywhere else.
She earned a master’s degree from Grand Canyon University in 2009.
Returning home
To say that Margaret McCoy Padukiewicz is at home at St. Michael’s School in Ridge, Maryland, is no exaggeration. She is the 9th of 12 siblings who grew up attending St. Michael’s Parish and School near the southern tip of Southern Maryland.
Like her husband John, she is a graduate of Loyola University in Baltimore. When they moved back to the area, their daughter attended St. Mary’s Ryken High School in Leonardtown and their two sons attended St. Michael’s School and then St. Mary’s Ryken.
“We enrolled our three children in the same schools where I first learned to love God,” she said.
Over the years, Padukiewicz worked at Historic St. Mary’s City and earned a master’s degree in teaching from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Then in 2017, she was hired as a third grade teacher at her alma mater, St. Michael’s School, where her best friend from childhood, Lila Hofmeister, served as principal.
Padukiewicz, who was recently named a Golden Apple Award winning teacher, said it has been a special experience for her to return home as a teacher for the past five years at St. Michael’s School, which she said has a Christ-centered environment.
“My life experiences and education uniquely qualified me to be a Catholic educator and brought me to this beautiful Christian community,” she said.
Spreading the Good News of Jesus is at the foundation of every third grade lesson, she said. “Students learn to follow the commandments, understand God’s Scriptures and live by Jesus’ example… They learn that even small kindnesses and gestures can positively affect their communities,” Padukiewicz said.
The St. Michael’s teacher said she tries to help children learn their talents, realize their potential and be fueled by the grace of the Holy Spirit as they strive for academic achievement.
Summarizing her approach to teaching, Padukiewicz said, “Always at the forefront is Jesus as I design lessons, set expectations and manage my class. I collaborate with parents to help their children grow academically and spiritually. St. Michael’s embraces diverse nationalities (and) ethnicities, both gifted and challenged. My special ed and ESOL (English as a Second Language) training are essential parts of my instruction.”
She added, “I endeavor to create a safe, respectful classroom filled with unconditional love for all.”
Three generations
On the wall of Maggie Quade’s third grade classroom of Our Lady of the Sea of School in Solomons, Maryland, she has a photo displayed of her grandmother and other students attending the school in 1947.
Quade, the third grade teacher and vice principal at Our Lady Star of the Sea School, has taught there since 2016 and was recently named as a Golden Apple Award winning teacher. She is the third generation of her family to attend the school, following her grandmother and mother, and aunts, uncles and cousins who have gone there over the years.
“Our Lady Star of the Sea has been a second home to me,” she said. Quade added, “What I appreciate most about our school is the sense of family and supportive faith-filled community that has developed over our almost 90-year history.”
This spring, the first third grade class that she taught graduated from Our Lady Star of the Sea School as eighth graders. She visited them on their last day of school and opened a time capsule with them that they had made as third graders. “Seeing how much they had grown was such a special moment,” she said.
A special activity of Quade’s third graders each year is making rosaries in May that students have presented to their mothers and to graduating eighth graders and sent to their pen pals at their sister school in Belize.
This year, Quade volunteered to have students douse her with water squirters and super soakers if the school met its fundraising goal, which was reached on the final day. “Getting doused by the students was a very fun and unforgettable moment,” she said.
Quade said she chose to teach in a Catholic school “because there is a community built on faith, family and friendship here that is unlike any other. A special blessing of teaching in a Catholic school is that I get to help my students learn about and grow in their faith while I continue to grow in faith as well.”
Her hope for her students, she said, is “that they gain the confidence to face new challenges and that learn how to rely on God and His plan for them… I also hope that my students learn how to live their faith outside of school and come to know God's presence in all aspects of their life.”
‘God has a special plan’
Golden Apple Award winning teacher Lori Russell of Little Flower School in Great Mills, Maryland, said she believes that God “has always provided a path for me to follow.”
Russell, who became Catholic in 1984, said “each year since, I have continued to grow and thrive in my faith.” After serving as a special education teacher and later working with young children as a Montessori teacher, she began her Catholic school career as a teacher at Mother Catherine Spalding School in Helen in 1999.
“My true vocation began when I began working in a Catholic school,” said Russell, who now has more than two decades of teaching in Catholic schools. Since 2018, she has taught the third grade at Little Flower School in Great Mills, where she also teaches religion to fourth and fifth graders.
“Religion is my favorite subject,” she said, adding, “Being a Catholic educator allows me freedom to share my beautiful faith with children, as well as teaching them how deeply they are loved.”
The veteran educator, who earned a bachelor’s degree in special education from the University of Maryland, said all her teaching experiences, and being the mother of six children, have inspired her to become a better teacher.
“Montessori training has enabled me to adapt everyday materials to create a hands-on experience for children,” she said, adding that “my special education and Montessori background have taught me skills and strategies necessary to work with struggling learners.”
Russell said having a son with special needs and volunteering with Special Olympics have provided her with “a better insight to the specific needs of children with learning challenges.”
The Little Flower teacher said she strongly believes that “Catholic education is absolutely the best education that children can receive. As a Catholic educator I have encountered so many different experiences, from praying with and consoling children who lost their mother to cancer, to praying the rosary with my class during the 9-11 disaster, and starting a Salt and Light Crew to teach students that we are called to serve others, and we can make a positive difference in our world.”
Reflecting on her work, Russell said, “Education is so much more than academics. Teaching in a Catholic school gives me opportunities to help children realize that they are created for greatness and that God has a special plan for each one of them that no one else can fulfill.”
Faith and science
Veteran teacher Patrick Sharp, who has taught for 45 years in Catholic elementary schools in The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, said he appreciates that he can incorporate faith into his teaching.
“For four decades, I have begun each new school year with the goal to have my students get to know God through the wonders of His creation,” said Sharp, who teaches science and math to middle school students at Our Lady of Mercy School in Potomac, Maryland.
Sharp, recently named as a Golden Apple Award winning teacher, said, “This freedom to integrate the Catholic faith into the classroom allows for daily class prayer and provides an examination of science concepts and current events in light of this faith.”
For the past 30 years, he has taught at Our Lady of Mercy School, and for the 15 years before that, he taught at St. Jude’s in Rockville.
The first member of his extended family to graduate from college, he supported himself after graduating from Good Counsel High School in Wheaton, later graduating from Montgomery College and earning a bachelor’s degree from Towson University and a master’s degree in education from Marymount University. He noted that his parents were converts to the faith and sacrificed to send him to Catholic elementary and high school.
Over the years, he worked in construction, warehousing, retail, software development and meat cutting, and as a fishmonger, camp counselor and cook. After graduating from college and being discharged from the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, he began his Catholic teaching career at St. Jude’s.
Just as he received the gift of Catholic education and has dedicated his life to that work, Sharp and his wife have passed on that gift to their five adopted children, all of whom attended Catholic elementary and high schools. Sharp has served as a Eucharistic minister at his parish and school and volunteered with his parish’s food pantry.
Reflecting on his work as a Catholic school teacher, Sharp said he appreciates how students, staff and parents are part of a God-centered community.
“My hope is that my students come to see God through His creation, allowing growth in their faith, with the ultimate goal of making it a part of their daily lives,” he said. “…I teach more than science. Our Catholic faith should permeate everything we do, and it is not confined by the walls of a classroom or the cover of a book.”
Full STREAM ahead
Golden Apple Award winning teacher Rosanne Weber of Our Lady of Victory School in Washington, D.C., begins each school day by reciting this quote to students from St. Francis de Sales: “Be who you are, and be that well.”
Weber, who began teaching art to first through eighth graders there in 2009, has expanded her teaching responsibilities to include teaching math to third and eighth graders, and STREAM classes (Science, Technology, Religion, Engineering, Art and Math) for first through fifth graders.
In an essay about her work as a Catholic school teacher, Weber wrote, “I try to model to my students what it means to be Catholic, to love God and one another, show compassion and share my faith with students.”
Weber said she believes every student can be successful, and she described how a student whom she worked with who had struggled in math is now an honors math student in high school.
The educator earned a bachelor’s degree from American University and completed her teaching certification in middle school math. Weber has participated in numerous teacher workshops over the years, including through the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art and the Phillips Collection Museum. She helped start and leads an Art Club at Our Lady of Victory School and organizes an annual art show there at the end of each school year that showcases students’ artwork, musical performances, writing and poetry.
At the school, Weber has also coordinated student artwork for Advent and Lent displays in the church. She and her family members helped with the planting and tending of the school’s new rain garden. The Our Lady of Victory parishioner also helps deliver food donations to a local homeless outreach center.
Through school activities, Weber said she tries to get to know each of her students, their families, their interests and cultural backgrounds.
In her essay, Weber described Our Lady of Victory School as “a loving, supportive environment where I discovered my career as a teacher.” She added, “What started as a part-time job has become my vocation.”
