Alliance for Catholic Education
Love is a call to action,
Annunciation Catholic School Principal Matt DeBoer told emerging Catholic school teachers and administrators at the University of Notre Dame. In a conversation on campus, he shared how love as action continues to move and work through a community healing from tragedy.
DeBoer, who was beginning his third day as principal at the Minneapolis grade school last year when a mass shooting took the lives of two students and injured 17 others, joined the IEI’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) students, faculty and staff for a conversation about love, service and leadership within the context of grief and loss.
“Faith is our call to be Christ to all we encounter, especially the children we serve and our colleagues in the school communities and families,” he said. “And so, when we think about being Christ to children, that is love.”
DeBoer spoke to graduate students on July 15, during summer classes for ACE Teaching Fellows and the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, two master’s degree programs that prepare teachers and principals to serve in Catholic schools. A graduate of the Remick Leadership Program’s twelfth cohort in 2015, DeBoer returned to campus to offer insights from his career of service, including what he continues to learn at Annunciation.
“We are created for a unique purpose,” he said. “Wherever you are seated now is exactly where you are supposed to be.”
Before 2025, DeBoer served at St. Therese Catholic Academy in Seattle for nearly a decade, helping balance the school’s budget and strengthen enrollment. He and his family, wife Rose and their three children, had relocated to Minneapolis to be closer to family. At Annunciation, he would again be responsible for helping to create community and improve student outcomes for the K-8 demographic he loved serving.
Safety was among the year’s priorities DeBoer identified for the school in late summer 2025: students were welcomed onto campus with a charge to be “safe, kind, respectful, inclusive, and brave.” During the first two days of school, younger children established relationships with older student “buddies:” following teacher directions, learning routines, and practicing behaviors that would help protect them in a possible emergency.
Love in action—as practice—preceded the violence visited on the school on the third day, August 27, at the first liturgy of the year.
“It was because we love our students, and those students love their teachers, that they listened that day; that the big buddies protected the little buddies, that everybody who made it did so that day,” he said.
DeBoer credited the love of his own Catholic school teachers—experienced as support and counsel in his middle and high school years—as central to the decision-making and discernment that shaped his personal and professional trajectory. And he honored the courage of his Annunciation teachers who overcame profound hardship and adversity to act in love for their students, returning to the classroom with grace and sooner than some may have wished.
“Thank you for saying yes to Catholic education,” he told more than 200 listeners in the Dahnke Ballroom. “The work you are saying yes to will change the world.”
DeBoer says that in the months since August’s attack, love at the Catholic grade school has been nothing more or less than showing up for one another. The words of the children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt echo the community’s lived experience as it has dealt with its shared trauma: “We can’t go over it; we can’t go under it; we’ve got to go through it,” he said.
Almost a year after the attack on the school, the story of Annunciation is one of resilience. DeBoer shared that 100 percent of teachers have committed to returning to the classroom this fall, along with all but two of its students. And there is growth, too: the school will launch a preschool on campus this year with one of DeBoer’s children enrolled in the first cohort. A service-learning initiative will also be unveiled this fall, seeded from service work the school community participated in last year.
“Just having those ordinary things to help us grow and get out in the world and be God’s hands and feet are honestly things I was looking forward to last year, knowing that they would be year two initiatives,” he said of the two new efforts. “And they remain.”
Looking ahead to the coming months, DeBoer discussed the complicated start to the school year for Annunciation. August 27 will be Remembrance Day, one spent “in prayer, in service to others and in community, breaking bread together.”
“There is no way around it: It is going to be an incredibly difficult first day and week of school,” he said.
On the other side of that milestone, DeBoer hopes students will have a shared sense of passage as they continue work to reclaim their school together.
“Once we’ve crossed that threshold, we will have done everything once before, so I look forward to seeing children interact in ways that are a little more free.”
“An Evening With Matt DeBoer” was part of an annual speaker series for ACE Teachers, Remick Leaders, and associated IEI faculty, staff, and program participants. Designed to spotlight and stimulate discussion on important work in K-12 education, Catholic schools, and the Church more broadly, the event has featured speakers from a variety of professional disciplines, including Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ; Gloria Purvis; Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ; Mark Kennedy Shriver; Sr. Norma Pimentel, MJ; Fr. Friedrich Bechina, F.S.O.; Sr. Draru Mary Cecila, LSMIG; and David Yeager.