Before the second graders at Holy Cross School in Garrett Park, Maryland, start their summer break each year, they take an international trip – in their classroom.
Their teacher, Nicci Falcone, devised the in-school trip with student passports to visit cities like Paris and Rome, so her second graders can draw on the skills they learned during the school year. Before lunch, groups of students rotate between art, social studies, language and engineering centers.
Last year, during the Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church, her students “visited” Rome.
In another school year, her students’ trip to Paris included doing pastel drawings in Claude Monet’s garden for the art exercise, doing a scavenger hunt to find laminated pictures of that city’s landmarks with information to read on the back of each one for the social studies exercise, building LEGO Eiffel towers for the engineering exercise, and learning some basic French words for the language exercise.
The students also drew on their math skills, adding and subtracting numbers with decimals, to help them understand that country’s currency in order to purchase gifts including trinkets, stickers and postcards related to Paris.
After students enjoyed some French treats outside at a pretend sidewalk café, the school secretary checked their passports, and the children returned to the classroom, where chairs were set up in long rows as if they were flying home after their trip, and they wrote a note home to their mothers on their postcards about their classroom visit to Paris.
Nicci Falcone’s own educational journey took an adventurous turn on April 16, when she was surprised at an all-school assembly at the Lewis Room of Holy Cross School, as students cheered loudly when it was announced that she is a 2026 Golden Apple Award-winning teacher in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.
The 10 Golden Apple Award-winning teachers for this school year will be honored at a May 21 awards dinner. The teachers will each receive a golden apple and a monetary award of $5,000 from the Donahue Family Foundation, which sponsors the annual award for teaching excellence and dedication to Catholic education.
Walking to the front of the assembly, Falcone smiled and gave a little wave to her students and confessed that she was speechless.
“I love you all,” she said. “You boys and girls are the reason why every day I come with a smile on my face… because I get to be with you.”
Moments earlier, Lisa Maio Kane, the principal of Holy Cross School, praised Falcone, who has taught second graders there for the past 10 years.
“She teaches you all about the wonderful things God does for us,” Kane said, noting that Falcone was preparing her second graders to receive their First Holy Communion in two weeks.
Addressing the Golden Apple teacher, Kane praised her for teaching in a “loving and faith-filled environment.”
“Mrs. Falcone, you are the best… Our students would not be as successful as they are without you,” the principal said, and then she encouraged Holy Cross students to “remember to carry all the good things Mrs. Falcone has taught you in your hearts and in your lives.”
The guests at the surprise assembly included Nicci Falcone’s husband Joe, their daughter Gina Hopkins and her baby Reese, whose shirt had the words, “I (heart symbol) my Nonna” (the Italian word for grandmother).
Nicci Falcone says she never planned to be a teacher, but the profession eventually “came for me.”
A native of Washington, D.C., who was born at Providence Hospital, she grew up in Takoma Park, Maryland, and graduated from St. Michael the Archangel School in Silver Spring and the Academy of the Holy Cross in Kensington.
She had initially dreamed of working in an advertising agency in New York City and earned a bachelor of arts degree in communication and design at American University. That dream changed happily when she met her husband Joe, and she devoted her time to her family, including their four children Gina, Leo, Joseph and Grace who attended local Catholic schools, including Mary of Nazareth School in Darnestown, St. Raphael School in Rockville, Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School in Washington, and St. John’s College High School in Washington.
When her youngest daughter Grace was a PreK student at St. Raphael School, the teacher left in mid-year, and the principal, Teri Dwyer, invited Falcone to take over the class.
In her essay for the Golden Apple Award, Falcone noted she told Dwyer that she didn’t know how to teach, but the principal pointed to her experience being the mother of four children in Catholic schools, and also serving on the school board and volunteering in the lunch program. So Falcone taught the pre-kindergarten students, thinking she would just be filling in for that year, but she remained in that role for 10 years.
Being the mother of four Catholic schoolchildren was an invaluable experience for her career as a teacher, she said. “I don’t think I could have done it if I hadn’t been a mother first… I gained knowledge that all their needs are different, and (the importance of) tailoring to a child’s needs, and that they all learn differently.”
Falcone, who went on to complete the teacher certification program at Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore, worked briefly in publishing before being drawn back to teaching in a Catholic school, and at an archdiocesan teacher’s fair in the spring of 2016, she met Kane, whom she had known as a fellow parent at Mary of Nazareth School.
Kane became a mentor to her, and she also got advice from Betsy Hamilton, the longtime principal at St. Jane de Chantal School in Bethesda, who told her, “Don’t worry. Just remember to love the children – oh, and don’t forget to teach them math and reading, too.”
Falcone began teaching second graders at Holy Cross School in August 2016 and has taught all the core subjects and sacramental preparation to those students since then, preparing her students for their First Holy Communion and their First Confessions.
She said as a Catholic school teacher, she appreciates that “everything we do is Christ-centered.” She added that, “I teach kids to understand what’s going on through the beauty of the Mass. I teach them they can never be bored if they are paying attention, because there’s so much beauty in the Mass.”
Falcone and her husband are parishioners at Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Potomac, where she has been the lead catechist for the Children’s Liturgy of the Word at 9 a.m. Sunday Masses, and she joins other volunteers in baking casseroles for the SOME (So Others Might Eat) soup kitchen in Washington and helps collect items for the St. Martin’s Food Pantry in Gaithersburg. The Falcones also attend Mass at Holy Rosary Church, the Italian language parish in Washington, where her grandfather was a founding member.
Another blessing of being a second grade teacher, Falcone said, is fostering a “lifelong love of learning” in her students. She explained that “as an educator, my favorite part is I’m taking emerging readers and taking them to the next step.”
After the surprise assembly announcing her as a Golden Apple teacher, some of Falcone’s students in interviews said what they like about her.
“She teaches us really good stuff, that God loves us,” said Rose Stasiowski.
Another second grader, Sherman Taylor, said he appreciated that “she’s kind, and she’s taught us a lot, (including) cursive and multiplication.”
And their classmate Larisa Colturato added, “She’s kind. She’s helpful. She loves to be a teacher, and she loves us.”
Falcone, who leads her students on learning adventures in a career that she found after first being a Catholic school parent, said at the school assembly, “I’m so happy that I’m in the best profession there is.”
Link to series with Golden Apple teacher profiles:
https://www.cathstan.org/series/2026-golden-apple-teachers-in-archdiocese-of-washington
