Wednesday, March 13, 2013
I would like to acknowledge the contribution to this post of the Finance Director of St Vitus Parish, in which the High School is situated, who noted inaccuracies in my post and emailed me information about the school, which I have used to update the post.
Just after 7.00 am, I took a taxi from the hotel in downtown Cleveland. The taxi driver was a Vietnam vet who had grown up in the downtown area and knew it well. He once worked for Yellow cabs and he informed me that his boss was on the board of the school I was visiting. He told me that the "genius kids" went to the school. It was an interesting ride, informative and entertaining. He dropped me off in Lauschke Avenue at the corner of the school after we arranged that I would ring him about 30 minutes before I was due to leave. He would pick me up and take me to my next appointment.
Compared to the young school I teach in (Kolbe Catholic College will turn 25 in 2014), St Martin de Porres High School looked old and well-worn. It was a large red brick building that had seen better days. Completed in 1913 as an elementary school, it once housed about 1,000 students. In 2004, it opened as as St Martin de Porres High School, one of a nationwide network of 25 Cristo Rey schools. These schools have been established to provide opportunities for children from poor families to receive a private education.
The Finance Director of St Vitus Parish in Cleveland emailed me the following description of the development of the Church's involvement in education in this part of Cleveland. "The first such building was a wooden building constructed 1902 to meet the increasing demands of incoming Slovenian immigrants, the majority poor. The Sisters of Notre Dame was the principal religious order with their primary mission to be teachers.
"The rather "old looking" building as you noted performed its primary task, that being to educate children from age 5 to 13 years-old, with a sufficient knowledge of math, English, religion, spelling, history, geography, and the sciences. From this humble building, a number of lawyers, doctors, accountants, dentists, clergy, one US Senator and one auxiliary bishop, all graduated and became contributing members in society despite not having English as the primary language at home.
"A second wave of Slovenian immigrants arrived in the early 1910 through the 1920s followed by Slovenian political refugees at the end of WWII; and then Croatian immigrants in the 1960s and 1970s, immigrants from Ethiopia, and toward serving primarily non-Catholic African Americans in the 1980s, 1990s, toward 2003. The school served primary low income households. [And] St Martin de Porres HIgh School ... also serves low income households in Cleveland, providing a college preparatory curriculum alongside a corporate work study program. Most of the students are most likely the first such household children to attend a college and also graduate from a college....
"The high school uses the parish church, St. Vitus Church, for its main prayer services, Masses, etc. The school and auditorium buildings have been and continue to be owned by St Vitus Parish: The high school has a lease agreement for the use of said buildings as well as parking lots."
Steve, the Director of Campus Ministry, met me out the front of the school as we had arranged. He took me into the school - security is important in the school, with locked doors and codes for entering the building. We went down to the Campus Ministry Office, where I deposited my jacket and other items. Then we headed for the central meeting area where breakfast was being served.
By now I was used to hearing the terms "freshman", "sophomore", "junior" and "senior" to identify the different year levels. The school is maintained through the provision of funding from the State of Ohio, the Work Study programme and other funding. The State provides more than $5,000 subsidy for each student. Those who attend the school sign up to the Work Study programme, which requires students to spend at least one day a week in a work programme. The school has sourced funding from more than 120 businesses. Each business undertakes to pay $28,000 to the school, which in return provides one student each day to work in the business doing tasks that are practical enough to give the students the chance to succeed with consistent effort. The students are broken into groups of 4, one from each year level, and they are cycled through the days of the week. For instance, in Week 1, the freshman would attend on Monday and Friday. In week 2, the sophomore student would attend work twice.
Students are provided with breakfast and lunch. Steve let me just stand and watch. The sophomores were getting ready to spend the day in their workplaces. They served themselves - cafeteria style - and were signed off. Normally, they scanned their finger print at the check out, but the server was down, so the staff member responsible for checking the students had to write down their names. The meals are funded from a government grant and they have to keep records.
The sophomores had a brief meeting at which awards were presented and one student announced a talent quest. Then they headed outside to a line of small buses to take them to the places where they work.
Rather than show me around, Steve had arranged for one of the "smurfs" to take me around. The school often has visitors, so a team of students take charge of showing them around. Meesha is a freshman. Her work placement is a medical centre, where she does filing, some computer work and other general office duties. She took me around the school, upstairs and downstairs, and introduced me to some of her teachers who wanted to know when she would be coming to class. We visited their chapel and spoke briefly about life at the school from a student's perspective. Meesha spoke with pride about the school and considered herself privileged to be offered the opportunity to study there.
"This near northeast neighborhood in Cleveland has many challenges and this HS is one manner to have a child rise above the poverty level."
The administration centre is set up in a building across the road from the school. It was once a market with a boarding house above it. Later, the building was converted to a set of units. Then the school purchased it and was involved in renovating it so that it would serve their purposes. Their board room was on the top floor. I spent most of my time there meeting with faculty and staff members, beginning with members of their executive, then some teachers and finally with staff members involved with ICT and with fundraising and maintaining their programmes.
The use of technology in the school impressed me. The use of Apple TV, the implementation of a 1:1 iPad programme - these features reflect our own journey at Kolbe, but they were further along with experimentation with Google Apps for Education (as they have come to be known). It was their use of PBL in the senior year - referred to by someone at the school as the "Capstone Program" - that really impressed me. While there are some teachers at Kolbe who would welcome it, most would never entertain the idea because it would bring undue pressure on students in an already overheated curriculum.
Campus Ministry at St Martin de Porres
I was impressed by the flexibility and creativity of the campus ministry programme provided by the school.
They provide two staff retreats each year, one at the beginning of the school year and the other in the middle of the school year. These retreats set the tone for the whole staff - I found great enthusiasm for the mission of the school in whomever I spoke with during my visit. Staff were provided with options in the retreat programme to meet the spiritual needs of individuals. Moreover, the retreats were designed and run by staff members.
The school does not have a Student Ministry Team, but there are opportunities for students to be involved in ministry. For instance, the school provides an elective through which students are trained to lead school liturgies.
What we call "Christian Service Learning" at Kolbe exists on an "as needed" basis. When the school is approached for help, students are urged to volunteer. Some assist with a local soup kitchen, or help out when needed to shift things in the local parish drop in centre.
However, they are well-advanced in building service opportunities into the curriculum. For instance, their sophomores responded to the perceived need in the local community for information about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Through their curriculum, they organised and ran a health fair for the local community.
I was impressed by their commitment to providing Immersion experiences for their students. Bearing in mind that the students come from poor families, the immersion programme can happen only because the school attracts funding for the trips. Some staff have committed themselves to taking students to New Orleans to expose them to the poverty caused through hurricane Katrina in 2010.
While I was there, I spoke with only one student who said that she felt welcome and at home in the school. She was grateful for the opportunity to attend St Martin de Porres High School. While she was not looking forward to the introduction of a school uniform, she understood why it was being introduced.
I came away from the school convinced that I had glimpsed something special. There was a buzz about the place. I had been in the presence of passionate professionals who modelled friendliness, respect for strangers and patience. It was clear that they were proud of what they were achieving with their students. St Martin de Porres High School offered me insights into Catholic education that will stay with me for years to come.
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