by Paul Totah
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It was summer school in Los Angeles for Sr. Georgia Yianakulis from Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma and more than 450 of her colleagues, other Jesuit high school teachers and administrators from across the country. They traded curriculum and service program success stories and, most important, worked on plans for the next twenty years of Jesuit secondary education. |
After two days of the Jesuit Secondary Education Association's (JSEA) conference in Los Angeles this June, some of the campers were decidedly not happy. They had complaints.
First, the morning coffee line in the cafeteria was far too long. Next, the hour-long reading of school biographies was far too long, too. Last, there was simply too much information to digest. The conference title alone -- Colloquium on Ignatian Education '01: www.ignatianleaders.org -- was difficult to say in one breath.
This last complaint, however, made Bernie Bouillette smile. It was just the response he had hoped for.
Bouillette, the colloquium's architect, is JSEA's vice president and a 32-year veteran teacher and administrator. He packed a lot into the conference that brought to Loyola Marymount University more than 450 teachers and administrators for the third such conference since 1995. Participants came away enthused, reinvigorated, and passionate about what Jesuit schools can do to promote justice and teach values.
"We're planting lots of seeds here, and people will leave with more questions than answers," said Bouillette. "That can be frustrating, as many of us want the answers. But the answers that really count are the ones they'll work out within their own communities, not the ones they are given."
Bouillette's boss, JSEA President Fr. Joe O'Connell, SJ, weighed in on the conference as well: "All of us in JSEA are responsible for handing on to new generations of teachers what it means to be a Jesuit school," he remarked. "But that effort can be like water passed from hand to hand. Each time a little water trickles through your fingers, so the next person in line gets a little less. Every once in a while you need a good dousing with a bucket full of water, and that's what I hope events like this JSEA colloquium provide."
O'Connell should have said three buckets, for the event had three distinct focuses -- the future, conversation, and leadership -- that, in true Jesuit fashion, flowed together in the course of the six-day conference.
According to Bouillette and O'Connell, along with JSEA vice president Fr. Ralph Metts, SJ, and research director Carolyn Lausch, the real story of Ignatian education in the United States isn't found in the Jesuit universities but in the high schools. They could easily author their own version of How the Irish Saved Civilization and show the good the 47 Jesuit high schools in the United States have done and are poised to do over the next two decades.
"High schools, not the colleges, offer the most formative kinds of education because high school students are more malleable than their college counterparts," said O'Connell. "Adolescence is a dynamic time in a person's life. That's why Ignatius's first schools educated very young students."
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Jesuit educators head to a day of conference work at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. "Society is demanding more and more from schools, and from the better schools even more is expected," says Bernard Bouillette, vice president of the Jesuit Secondary Education Association, sponsor of this and two previous conferences. |
Bouillette added that "Jesuit high schools can save civilization by continuing to ask hard questions, reading the signs of the times, believing that the spirit is present, and sharing the mission. It's already going on. Our schools aren't starting at ground zero. They have outstanding traditions of forming teachers and students."
Those "hard questions" will only get harder. High school students will face issues twenty years from now that we can barely imagine. Even today, high school curricula are playing catch-up to handle ethical questions surrounding globalization, environmental destruction, and scientific discoveries.
To help schools prepare for this brave new world, JSEA formed the Think Tank on Jesuit High Schools for the 21st Century. Teachers at the colloquium discovered the next phase of this process when they found among the items in their canvas goodie bags sunglasses with the phrase 2020 Vision on the sides.
Later, they attended workshops and discussions that addressed the challenges facing Jesuit schools in the year 2020. "Even though our schools are doing a great job in some areas to prepare students for the future," said O'Connell, "our schools don't reflect the diversity that our students will face in their workplace. There's also a need for stronger formation in moral and ethical decision making."
O'Connell pointed to other challenges Jesuit schools face that will only grow more serious over the next twenty years. One is the Church's and the Society's preferential option for the poor, which he hopes will continue to motivate schools.
He also noted that while schools survived the decline in the number of religious vocations, they now face a steep decline in the number of people becoming teachers.
"Many potentially excellent teachers enter the business world or other professions. All of us in Jesuit education need to be much more proactive in promoting the vocation of teaching. We need to encourage our students to seriously consider teaching as a career."
Bouillette is concerned about another trend. "In the past our schools have relied on longstanding veteran teachers who have been their schools' backbones. Some might have been obstructionists at times, but they kept the ship stable. I'm not sure we'll have many people staying at the same school for 25 or 35 years as we've seen. Instead, we'll experience significant turnover every five years. On top of all this, society is demanding more and more from schools, and from the better schools even more is expected."
Luckily the JSEA team shares this higher expectation for Jesuit schools. In their terms, it's part of the magis, the search for the greater good. O'Connell translated that desire into two questions that he asked teachers at the colloquium: "What are we doing to prepare students for the world of the 21st century? And how can we help them transform the world in terms of peace, justice, and the fulfillment of the human potential?"
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"What are we doing to prepare students for the world of the 21st century? How can we help them transform the world in terms of peace, justice, and the fulfillment of the human potential?" were two questions JSEA president Fr. Joseph O'Connell, SJ, had for the educators gathered at Loyola's University Hall. This huge building, recently acquired by the university, boasts a four-story atrium (photo below right), parking for 1,150 cars, and 1 million square feet, by the way. |
For the teachers at the colloquium those questions dovetailed rather nicely with the questions of how to prepare students and teachers to be Ignatian leaders and how to build a school for the future. They pondered, discussed, and became passionate about these topics at breakout sessions and at 130 Educators' Fair presentations, where teachers presented classroom strategies and activities or discussed "Big Question" topics such as diversity or spirituality.
Pete Musso, a teacher at De Smet Jesuit High in St. Louis, for example, gave a presentation entitled "Teaching English on our Heads: Developing Action-Based Leaders Through Creative Activities in the English Classroom." One of his lesson plans has students reading and discussing an autobiography dealing with a man's descent into homelessness, then spending the night sleeping in cardboard boxes and the next day working at an inner-city food bank.
Science teacher Jen Snyder and theology teacher Chris Zaker of Loyola Academy near Chicago presented a project for their classes that asked students to choose a manufactured product and to document its construction, from raw materials to marketing. Students then had to learn about the political and economic issues for each country involved in the creation of their product.
"Our kids were amazed at how many countries are typically involved in the production of a product as simple as a t-shirt," said Snyder. "We discuss the justice issues surrounding how much workers are paid and what truly is a living wage."
On day four of the conference, teachers, meeting by departments, continued to discuss the twin topics of future schools and leadership. In the English session, teachers discussed how teaching The Great Gatsby could tie into the notion of "men and women for others."
"Kids struggle with ideals and with the Jesuit notion of finding God in all things," said Tom Danforth of Brophy College Prep in Phoenix. "That's why Gatsby, and his pursuit of the ideal woman, attracts them. To be a man and woman for others implies imagination, empathy, and sympathy. These are skills they develop as they read the novel."
The hectic pace of most schools discourages students from reflecting on what they read, let alone on their own lives. Some teachers suggested that they need to encourage students to be "contemplatives in action" by asking them to reflect on novels through journal activities and through classroom prayer and then to plan some activity similar to Musso's homelessness project.
"We need to allow students to see that what we do in the classroom relates to the world," said Musso. "If we can create activities that transcend the classroom, then we will create leaders who think critically about justice issues and who see that texts are a commentary on society. The preferential option for the poor has to frame everything we do at our school and in the English classroom. We want to make our students hope, think critically, and act. Without the lesson leading to action, I wonder what's the point."
Teachers came away from these sessions excited about what they might do in their own classrooms. This was precisely the fruit the JSEA team hoped would grow from putting good people in a room and letting them talk. " I love seeing what folks from other schools are doing," said Danforth. "It gives a great context to what I do. I learn that the issues concerning us at Brophy also concern other schools across the nation. This kind of conversation creates great camaraderie and helps us reinforce our Jesuit identity. Also, this helps us to define all the buzzwords we've heard over the years."
Judy Christian, English department head at St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia, agreed that the colloquium was "energizing and exciting. You have to go back and realize you can't change the world, but you can take baby steps to implement some of the things we've learned here. It's a powerful experience."
"This is a great way to get together with fellow ministers," added Brian Mack, theology teacher at Seattle Prep. "The most powerful thing for me was listening to how others envisioned the future through the Think Tank and the 2020 Vision. I loved talking with other teachers and gaining some practical ideas through the Educators' Fair."
Mack wondered how many Jesuit-trained students "go out into the world and don't give a second thought to spirituality or justice issues. Clearly there are kids who do. Our schools are centerpieces where alumni, parents, and students can come to feel deeply connected, spiritually fed, and challenged in a healthy way to raise questions. Our schools are places where everyone is at the table and all are welcome."
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"All of us in JSEA are responsible for handing on to new generations of teachers what it means to be a Jesuit school," says Fr. Joseph O'Connell, SJ, president of JSEA. Fr. John Foley, SJ, president of Cristo Rey Jesuit High in Chicago listens to Penny Gibson, theology teacher at New York's Xavier High School. |
This vision of Jesuit schools is just what the JSEA team hoped would come into focus for the teachers at the colloquium. To help them think of themselves as Ignatian leaders, O'Connell first encouraged teachers to explore more deeply what it means to be Ignatian. And because the Spiritual Exercises are the cornerstone of the Society of Jesus, O'Connell invited teachers to take part in guided meditation for the first three mornings of the colloquium.
"With more lay people teaching and administering Jesuit schools, we're trying to create an understanding and appreciation of Ignatian spirituality in both how we run our schools and how we teach," said O'Connell. "These guided meditations were an attempt to give everyone a taste of what we've been talking about for years."
The real trick, he added, is translating prayer and theory into action and combining leadership with service. "Students graduate from our schools with a strong sense of service, but I'm not so sure they have a strong sense of their leadership potential. They might also have a wrong sense of themselves as leaders in a non-collaborative way. We want our students to be agents for change in actively building the Church."
To emphasize the leadership and the future-vision dimensions of the colloquium, the JSEA team added the "www.ignatianleaders.org" conference subtitle. But they also did something concrete. They held up a living example of a Jesuit leader -- Robert "Jerry" Starratt, a former Jesuit, with its Ignatian Educator Award at the banquet.
The award helped teachers look both at the past and the future of Jesuit secondary education in America, for they could see the influence that Starratt, professor of educational administration at Boston College, has had in both places.
Given how vibrant and healthy most Jesuit high schools are today, many of the younger teachers would be surprised to know the crises that many of these schools faced 30 years ago, before the JSEA formed.
In the post-Vatican II climate of the late 1960s, with some pundits questioning the need for Catholic schools and with many schools in fiscal trouble, Starratt took the principal's job at Fairfield Prep in Connecticut.
Shortly thereafter, in 1969, the Jesuit Educational Association, which included Jesuit high schools, colleges, and universities, disbanded after the colleges and universities decided to form their own organization. Jesuit high school administrators from around the country gathered in New Orleans in November that year to explore the question of forming their own group. Starratt, the youngest delegate, wasn't familiar with the culture of the group.
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What's Jesuit education going to be like twenty years from now? How best can current teachers pass on to new faculty what makes Ignatian education Ignatian? The conference's idea was to put together hundreds of people like (above) Scranton Prep dean of students Jeanne Kowalski and De Smet Jesuit assistant principal Paul Drury and set them loose on these questions, in formal sessions and (below) informal gatherings. |
"When they began planning the meeting around the Texas-Arkansas football game on TV," Starratt recounted, "I announced that I didn't come all the way from Connecticut to watch football. A deathly silence filled the room, and then the group grudgingly agreed to proceed without the game. For many years those guys would remind me how I ruined that meeting. But that's where we seriously addressed the question of forming JSEA."
In 1970 the same group gathered in Scottsdale. "One of my colleagues, a Jesuit principal in New York, announced that the morale in his school was at an all-time low," Starratt remembered. "He told us that if he didn't come away from the meeting with any sense of direction he was going to go back and close his school."
That brought immediate focus to the meeting. "I had just read an essay dealing with the Jesuit character of the various ministries, by Fr. Jim Connor, the Maryland provincial at the time, who wrote that no matter what ministry Jesuits are engaged in, they're basically giving the Spiritual Exercises," said Starratt. "I began talking about what that might mean in a high school setting, citing themes from the Exercises such as the Call to the Kingdom, Finding God in All Things, Contemplative in Action, and Carrying the Cross with Christ. I spoke off the top of my head about how to translate the Exercises into the curriculum and pedagogy of a Jesuit school and thereby to recapture the Jesuit identity of our work."
His friends told him to go to his room and put those ideas into writing. "I went to my room and said, 'My God, what have I gotten myself into?' The trouble was that I couldn't remember what I had just said," said Starratt. When he returned to the meeting, Starratt had in his hand what became the preamble to JSEA's constitution -- one of the key foundational documents that gave those assembled a reason to continue assembling.
The response was electric. "The preamble became a rallying cry for the schools," said O'Connell. "It proved to be a transformational point for Jesuit education in the United States. Had it not been for Jerry's inspiration we would have been in a very different place than we are now."
Starratt's influence is far from over. The author of more than 30 books on education, he is still pointing the way for Jesuit teachers, many of whom attended his talk at the colloquium regarding a preferential option for the poor as a defining characteristic of Jesuit high schools.
"If you want to take that statement seriously," said Starratt, "then you need to relate the curriculum, the admissions process, and the faculty hiring process to the life experiences of the poor. It's not just a question of admitting poor kids into the schools and then conducting business as usual. We ought to think about these issues in hiring faculty. Why not ensure that 20 percent of your teachers grew up in poverty? Why not require all seniors to write an essay in which they will explore ways their careers will respond to people living in poverty? There isn't any one right way for every school to respond to this preferential option for the poor, but every school should take this issue seriously and state how it will become a defining characteristic of its community."
Starratt wanted teachers at the colloquium to take back to their schools the message that "the construction of knowledge involves the construction of the self. If we don't do this, then what we're doing is rewarding the recall of prepackaged information. The reason students don't understand the relationship between leadership and what they study in the curriculum is that they don't see it applied to life's challenges. Student leadership is going to emerge from kids recognizing that they can take what they are learning and apply it to a real situation in their communities and in their personal lives."
As an example, Starratt pointed to The Scarlet Letter. "After discussing the novel, why not ask students to address the practice of stereotyping and scapegoating at their school and to speak out or act against these practices in some concrete way? Ask students to talk to each other and to their parents about how all kinds of scarlet letters are pinned on people and how they can respond as a community to a specific incident."
Author Paul Totah, English teacher and director of public information at St. Ignatius College Prep in San Francisco, also edits the school's alumni magazine, Genesis IV. He is co-editor of The San Francisco Fair: The Golden Gate International Exposition 1939-1940. |
This kind of service-based education goes well beyond the grade-chasing that continues to plague schools. "Teenagers need to feel needed. Society tells them that they are a nuisance and that they are only valuable when they grow up and get jobs," said Starratt. "If we help kids apply their education right now, then they will know they can make a difference and that what they learn in school does matter."
The young teachers who attended the JSEA colloquium made Starratt optimistic that the good work started 30 years ago will continue to prosper in the next 20 years. "I'm now seeing the third generation of leadership forming since our start in 1970. This new group includes young women and men, lay trustees, and young Jesuits. I get energized as I see people opening themselves up to the challenge of Jesuit education. We're all Don Quixotes, in one sense, tilting at windmills. What we're up against is huge, but God is present to us in this work as we continue to build the kingdom of God in the world. It sounds like a sacramental, pious overlay, but it's true.
"We're still a long way from seeing fully transformed Jesuit schools," he added, "but we've been on a 30-year journey, and things are still opening up and the journey is continuing."