“As a headmaster, you’re dealing with people, teachers, students, parents all day long. If you understand who they are as God’s creation, it just helps everything in your job.”
Stephanie Kaye first enrolled at Holy Apostles in the summer of 2020. After years as a music teacher and choir director, Kaye became a dean before accepting the position of headmaster at Great Hearts Archway Cicero in 2021. She served until 2025, when she took a sabbatical before retiring. Looking back on her theological studies at Holy Apostles, Kaye has no doubts about the value of her education. “It was the right degree, the right decision.”
Kaye believes God first drew her into teaching when the music teacher at her children’s parochial school quit midyear. Hired part-time to fill the vacancy, she discovered both an aptitude for teaching and a sense of calling. At 42, she returned to school to earn a
bachelor’s degree in music.
At Great Hearts, Kaye was soon asked to serve as a dean overseeing student behavior. After prayer, she accepted, eventually growing into a school leadership role. “God gave me that desire… even though I was very afraid to do it,” she says. In retrospect, she sees that her professional work also gave her a creative outlet as her daughters got older and it was a good transition at the right time for her family.
One of the things that Kaye noticed over her many years in education is the role of school culture in shaping a child. Having a virtuous school culture and intellectual virtue “are synergistic. That is what I really grew to learn through that work… saying ‘You better love Jesus,’ does not make anybody love Jesus. It’s the culture that they’re surrounded by.” Kaye became interested in studying graduate theology after hearing about Holy Apostles on The Patrick Madrid Show. After exploring schools listed in the Newman Guide, she decided to pursue a degree rather than take a single course. The M.A. in Theology with a concentration in Moral Theology offered a foundation for addressing student behavior, making disciplinary decisions, and discussing those topics with parents.
“What I would say to anybody in education is that philosophy and theology – when it’s properly taught and well-ordered – will inform everything else you do in your school. That is a base I wish I had before I got into it… If you’re educating the human person, you have to know what the proper end and purpose of the human person is, or you won’t be able to educate them.”
Returning to the classroom in an online setting was a natural experience. Kaye believes teachers and leaders should always remain students themselves. She found the professors very accessible and loved to partake in the occasional optional Zoom.
Kaye related an experience where she earned a C on her first paper from her professor, Fr. Brian Mullady, O.P., who has since passed away. “At first I was like, ‘Oh no, should I be doing this program?’ But then I was really happy because I knew this is someone who’s going to tell me the truth and I’m going to learn a lot. I got A’s in all of his classes, and his finals were probably the most difficult that I ever took. He just raised me to another level and I know that was love.”
Attending her 2024 graduation ceremony in person became one of Kaye’s most memorable experiences. She almost didn’t come because of the timing of the graduation and the demands of her work that year. However, she is so glad she made the trip from Arizona to Connecticut. She shared that graduation was “just this breath of fresh air that I needed, and I hope everybody knows it’s worth it… [E]verything exceeded my expectations. It was like a pilgrimage coming to a really holy place.” Meeting fellow graduates whom she had only known online provided a lasting sense of connection.
In retirement, Kaye is putting St. Teresa of Calcutta’s maxim into practice: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” She just launched a part-time Catholic classical homeschool called Sancti Futuri (Saints of the Future). She also has the desire to grow in her faith through learning about the lives of the saints and Doctors of the Church and through living a devout life. Most of all, though, Kaye describes her desire to get to know her husband better. As her vocation of marriage takes center stage, she enters this new chapter trusting in God’s providence.