Sister Maria-Therese Petersen, otherwise know as M.T. to her colleagues and students at Mother Cabrini High School, in New York City, is an unforgettable teacher. Even though she has been retired for some years, decades of students still come back and ask about her. The source of her durability is that M.T. cared passionately about education. Her classroom was a theatre, a bully pulpit, and an active forge where ideas, information, knowledge and received wisdom of the ages often left the textbook far behind.

M.T. refused to believe that any girl could not learn-only that she had not been properly motivated. M.T. was there to provide motivation. All her students remember Sister’s carefully orchestrated displays of shock, dismay and despair over the future of civilization, accentuated by grand dramatic gestures, because a student had not read the New York Times, or could not name the Secretary of State or the capital of Denmark.

M.T. declared war on intellectual laziness and it was a battle she intended to win. Where some might have counseled greater patience, M.T. was stubbornly insistent. Excuses for underachievement were unacceptable.

Eventually her students came to understand they had in M.T. a teacher whose critique of them was an act of intense concern. She pushed them because she cared so much. Without ideas, what was life but a flat terrain where nothing much could be cultivated? M. T. was a good gardener who labored to bring the life of the mind to her students.

Proof of the indelible imprint she made on her students comes back to Cabrini with every reunion. When the old grads return the most enthusiastic questions one often hears is “Where’s M.T.? I’ll never forget her!”

Sr. Maria-Therese’s Story of the Heart was written by Mary Kunzler, a teacher at Mother Cabrini High School in New York City and a former colleague of Sr. M.T.

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Stories of the Heart: The Missionary Sisters are as diverse as the ministries in which we work. We are educators, nurses, social workers, campus ministers, pastoral care workers, spiritual directors, and administrators. We invite you to share in our stories.