Sr. McDuffie’s “fabulous stories” and her love of animals are what some students remember, love and miss most about their time at Sacred Heart, indicated by the Facebook postings of former students. She says she always tried to illustrate religious and English teachings using real-life stories so students could relate.
“I think for me, unless I have a relationship with the children, I can’t teach them. Maybe it’s because of the wonderful teachers I’ve had and the relationships I’ve formed with them. There’s a fine line between pretending you’re a child with the children and having a really good time with them and yet letting them know you are the adult. I have been able to do this. If you don’t know the kids, she says, it’s difficult to really teach them anything.”
“One of the things I always loved -- most teachers always roll their eyes at this -- but I always loved the parent teacher conferences because you find out so much that you didn’t know about the child,” she says. “There are all kinds of little ways of relating to different children. The shy child who thinks she’s stupid and in the end asks a question and you reply, ’that’s just what I was thinking about,’ and their face turns to a smile. …So I think there’s just a lot more than subject matter in teaching.”
When Sr. McDuffie wasn’t teaching, she was likely caring for one of her many animals in what was referred to as her little animal kingdom on the grounds at Grand Coteau. One former student remembers a lingering scratch on her forehead from Sr. McDuffie’s rabbits. And, there were the dogs, Coteau and Sean. “Sean went to class and likely everywhere else with Sister McDuffie,” says Sr. Lieux, who was a student at the time. “Sean was probably the most educated dog…. He probably knew more about Old Scripture than most people,” she says.
Sr. McDuffie delights in telling how this Irish setter came to be known as Sean. “When I brought him home as a little puppy it was the feast of John the Baptist,” she says. She goes on to reenact how Sr. Sezian took one look at the little puppy and declared, in a booming voice, much like you imagine God declaring Sunday a day of rest, ‘His name is John.’ And, of course. the Irish for John is Sean,” says Sr. McDuffie. “That is how he got his name. He was hit by a car 13 years later on the feast of John the Baptist, she says. She likes to think he’s now with John the Baptist.
Sr. McDuffie retired from the classroom two years ago where she last taught religion to 6th, 7th and 8th graders. In the last two years, she’s substituted and worked at an outreach community center in Grand Coteau. She’s still driving mostly in and around Grand Coteau. “I won’t drive on I-10. I do brave drives to Barnes and Noble, but I keep to back roads, simple driving. And there’s a nursery down the road. Most of the things I want to do are within very easy access.”
We walk out to a garden dedicated to Sr. McDuffie on the grounds of Grand Coteau where the five goals of the academy instilled in every student are distilled on ceramic plaques: love of God; love of learning; social awareness, helping others and wise choices. The preamble to the original founding goals and criteria for Sacred Heart Schools in the United States is based on the premise that “values taken for granted or left unarticulated become inoperative.” Every child learns to articulate these goals. Sr. McDuffie, it seems, has spent her life teaching and living them. “The students, even the young ones, love them, have absorbed them and bring them up in conversation,” she says proudly.
Sr. McDuffie is obviously happy with the choice she made at the age of 21 to become a nun. There are not many making that same choice today. Only 360 nuns remain in the Sacred Heart Order in the United States with only 38 under the age of 60, says Sr. Lieux. “We’ll not likely have another Religious of the Sacred Heart as headmistress of this school. For its 189-year existence, the school has had only one lay head, but she’s hardly counted as such as she was a former member of the order,” says Sr. Lieux.
Sr. McDuffie thinks they are fewer women becoming nuns because there are many more opportunities for lay people to contribute without joining a religious order and, she adds, “being a single woman today is fine.” Sr. Lieux agrees. “No matter what you do in life, you can still live those five goals; do them well as a lay person, and have it all.”
On arriving at Grand Coteau in 1970, says Sr. McDuffie, “I loved it from the minute I walked in the door. I suppose I loved the country. It is a school that has such a deep, long tradition, which I could just lap up. Then, of course, when I got to know the boarders, I loved them. When I look back I can only remember happy or funny things....I will miss the people. After 40 years, you’ve gotten to love a lot of people. There’s no doubt about that. Not just the students and headmistresses, but all kinds of people. They are just so delightful.”
She’s looking ahead and happily toward her next chapter and her retirement in Atherton later this summer where many of her dear friends in the order already reside. “I am happy to be going while I can still enjoy it and be a reasonably contributing member of that community,” she says. There will be no formal teaching, but there will be gardens, reading and friends …no twiddling of thumbs. One of the reasons it’s so easy to retire is that many of my friends are there, a series of wonderful people I have known, loved and lived with. And, they get The New York Timesevery day,” she says smiling.