Mother Mary Joseph Campbell, a teacher for two decades, knows how to engage students — the old-school/low-tech way.
She starts with stories, as recalled in memories from 2002 on her first day teaching second grade in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Mother Mary Joseph recounted to the Register how the children were immediately intrigued by tales of courageous, honest and virtuous knights of the Middle Ages.
“At that moment, I realized that it is my gift to inspire children,” Mother Mary Joseph, major superior of the St. Mary Sisters in Bismarck, North Dakota, said. “I get students to learn through stories and still get them to work hard on the curriculum while also learning things that are important for their entire life.”
That story-telling ability has been noticed beyond her curious pupils.
Kristina McCann volunteered at Santa Cruz Catholic School in Buda, Texas, when Sister Mary Joseph came to teach third grade in 2010.
“All the sisters radiate a glow of humility, but watching Sister Mary Joseph, I was astounded,” she said. “The children were mesmerized by her. Every day, she would tell them a story about the saint of the day, and she made it so exciting that I never wanted to miss it.”
After 20 years of teaching at 14 schools in seven U.S. states and setting up Dominican missions across the country, Mother Mary Joseph has come a long way from her own school struggles with minor dyslexia, although she was good at math.
And over the years, the Dominican philosophy of education has proven beneficial, offering a way to educate students to be well-rounded people and scholars, she told the Register.
Her students understand that learning is rigorous. “It takes discipline and hard work, but that is because the reward is so great,” she said. “I never give kids candy as a reward. Learning has its own interior happiness that doesn’t need to be overshadowed by sugar.”
She also describes homework as an act of sacrifice. “In the end, it’s about developing hearts and minds and spirits in a way that will change you forever for heaven,” she said. “That is why education is so important and needs religion in it.”
Mother Mary Joseph has taught in Michigan, Texas, North Carolina, California, Florida, Arizona and North Dakota, from first grade to high school in a variety of neighborhoods. One school in Arizona often had school lockdowns due to shootings in the area. The school secretary had been shot and killed two years before Mother Mary Joseph arrived. Yet, regardless of the grade level or neighborhoods, Mother Mary Joseph witnessed that students respond well to gentle discipline given in love with high expectations.
High expectations work, she said.
“We are not afraid to ask of children what is hard because it’s what is going to fulfill them,” she said. “We ask children to be respectful and cannot be bulldozed by helicopter parents or difficult students.”
School volunteer McCann recalls student reaction to Sister Mary Joseph’s teaching in that Texas third-grade classroom. “I saw they were absorbing it all,” she recounted. “I saw her doing physics with them! She’s just amazing and always happy and kind and loving. When she had to correct a child, she had them face her and she spoke very gently. They were getting such an amazing education.”
Discipline and Diligence
The goal is to help students develop skills and self-control to be heroic and not mediocre, Mother Mary Joseph explained, adding that this is especially needed in the digital age.
“AI is putting into high gear the idea that school is worthless because everything is online,” she said. “What is being lost is developing individual self-determination with the salvific end of heaven. Things taken for granted 20 years ago have been lost. Discipline to bring you to your greatest potential is unchanging. We are not harsh, but we have standards that we are not going to give up.”
Discipline and love bring freedom to both students and the administration, according to Mother Mary Joseph. “When principals do their job and support teachers and set boundaries, it trickles down as support for the students. The students may not always get exactly what they want, but they will be training to pursue things that bring them the greatest happiness, freedom and discipline.”
“Maybe 5% of students will fight boundaries,” Mother Mary Joseph estimated, “while most run within them. Whenever bad behavior is brushed off, the kids are in charge and run over you. But if you draw kids towards virtue, it brings them an interior peace because they are getting closer to God.”
And being busy pays off.
Mother Mary Joseph recalled how her first principal stated that 80% of discipline problems come from students who are not engaged. “I run a tight ship, and I don’t have discipline issues,” she said. “The bell rings, and they are surprised that class flew by so fast.”
An example of something she said works is warning students that if they whine about homework, the whole class gets double homework. “If you follow through, they never do it again,” she said. “With zero whining, there is more positive energy in the classroom. When your expectations are high, they rise to it. And when you praise them and point out something specific, they respond positively.”
Overall, Mother Mary Joseph stresses that students are up for challenges in the classroom. “Pushing them higher is ultimately the expectation of holiness.”
Lacey Gallik and her family moved from Montana to Bismarck in 2021. Mother Mary Joseph had daughter Stella in sixth grade and son Matthew the following year.
“She had a diligence and seriousness about the faith, trying to inspire these kids to live their lives heroically,” Gallik recalled. “We had her over for dinner, and she shared that she likes sixth grade because of the importance of reaching these children when they are beginning to make big decisions and articulating the seriousness of faith and sin.”
She noted that Mother Mary Joseph had students keep notebooks about saints and symbols in the Church that included an understanding of the tradition of icons that have ended up as keepsakes to last a lifetime.
Matthew, now a high-school freshman, noted that Mother Mary Joseph’s stories had students on the edge of their seats.
Memorizing is also a part of her teaching — an old-school method that pays off.
“With all this techy stuff, kids are not getting smarter,” she said. “I have kids memorize every day because I’ve seen a tremendous drop in retention. Memorizing gives students an extra superpower.”
Mother Mary Joseph includes cursive writing in her lessons as another skill that she says instills confidence in children: “Cursive is not actually about the hard work but in the gift or stamina needed to obtain the skill of writing in clear cursive.”
Creativity and Cursive
Another recommendation: Team up lower and upper grades, such as junior-high students performing skits that teach virtues for pre-K students. “The little ones look up to the big kids, and an eighth grader will do backflips for a pre-K student,” Mother Mary Joseph advised.
This is among the religious’ most memorable teaching techniques for those who have seen her teaching in action.
Andrea Studenc worked as a first-grade teacher’s aide at St. Francis Catholic School in Hilton Head, South Carolina, when Mother Mary Joseph was moved from middle school to first grade in 2009.
“During the year, she held a Jeopardy! competition with the first graders against the middle schoolers while the other grades watched. The first graders won,” Studenc said.
And don’t forget creativity.
Mother Mary Joseph has had students make an “island treasure map” for a theology lesson focused on spiritual virtues and vices. The students draw vices into places like deserts of lying and cheating, with roads to self-control, plus hell, purgatory and heaven, with an explanation of how to get to those places with one’s choices. “When they are done, they are masterpieces,” she explained. “If I had just taught it, it wouldn’t be the same. But they accomplished this and got satisfaction from it.”
Memories From the Classroom
Teacher’s aide Studenc underscored the impact of this Dominican-led education.
“Sister Mary Joseph had such high expectations for these little first graders, but they were like sponges and could not get enough of her,” Studenc said. “There were around 25 students — a couple were challenging — but they all did very well.”
Studenc’s daughter Anzlee was in that class.
Anzlee, now 23 and attending graduate school, remembered Sister Mary Joseph as always kind and patient. “She made me feel safe and encouraged in the classroom,” Anzlee said. “She always pushed us to be more independent, even at a young age, and I carried that lesson with me growing up and still hold it to this day.”
