August 2026 President’s Pen with Preston Kendall

by Miranda Eby | Aug 27, 2026 | President’s Pen

The movie character Ferris Beuller famously said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”  That line came to mind last week when we held our opening Assembly for the first day of the new school year.  Looking around at the students eager (for the most part) for their classes to begin and at the teachers also eager (for the most part) to get underway, I wondered if God had played some trick and skipped summer altogether.  It really seemed like final exams and graduation just happened yesterday.

Don’t get me wrong, summer at CRSM is action packed!  The fresh-faced freshmen at assembly were already old hands navigating the corridors of CRSM, having undertaken 8 weeks of academic bridge classes and work-study training.  12 Juniors and Seniors joined us for 8 weeks, too, as they earned their Illinois Certified Nurse Assistant credentials through Dominican University.  Even more students took a dual-credit Statistics class with a professor from Lake Forest College.  A group of Sophomores were in the gym and fitness room earning their Phys Ed credits so that they could free up a class period this fall to take AP World History.

Besides that, CRSM hosted a BreatheEasy soccer camp for 2^nd – 8^th graders with Heart of the City and the Christopher D. Redding Youth Asthma Foundation, a STEM Girls camp with the Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization (iBIO), and the mission preparation sessions for area veterans joining a Lake County Honor Flight to Washington, DC.  Oh, and we also conducted basketball, soccer, and volleyball camps for our own students.

Despite all the activity, summer really just seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye!  Time flies.  I often tell people outside of the education arena that working in a high school is a pretty humbling experience.  You could spend decades of your career at a single school, pouring your heart and soul into the work, but when you leave, after one year only 75% of the students might remember you, only half after two years and, after four years, there’s not a single student in the school who knows who the heck you were.

The ephemeral nature of high school is also what makes it so incredibly exciting to be part of… especially at Cristo Rey St. Martin.  Sure, you are forgotten quickly, but the present is so charged with fulfilling experiences, it’s worth it.  As I looked around the packed cafeteria during assembly, I could feel the electricity throughout the room.  Each new school year is brimming with new possibilities, totally awash in hope!

Second only to the first 18 months of life, the adolescent years produce the most significant physiological brain development in a human being’s entire life.   Between the ages 14 and 20, the brain undergoes massive structural and functional remodeling – prioritizing efficiency, emotional processing, and complex decision-making.  Ask any parent, all that change makes for quite a wild ride.  But the rewards are worth it.  Bearing witness to the growth in a young person as a student, a worker, a member of society, and a spiritual being over their four years at CRSM is a grace.  It truly is a gift to be able to walk beside them during this period in their lives and see them discover more and more about themselves and their abilities.  Over the years, many seniors have expressed in their exit survey that the adults at CRSM, “saw more in me than I saw in myself.” 

Seeing is believing.  Helping students see their own potential and start to realize the impact they can make on their world is what we are all about!  That’s why we are here.  It is a new year at CRSM and I can guarantee you this year will be both humbling and hopeful.  Life moves pretty fast, so don’t miss it.

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

June 2026 President’s Pen with Preston Kendall

by Miranda Eby | Jun 5, 2026 | President’s Pen

There are two times in the entire school year when all of our students are on campus together.  For the first assembly of the year, we have a late start for the students working that day.  And the last assembly of the year is held on the Friday after the last day of work.  We refer to the last assembly as Senior Send-Off.  Seniors get shout-outs and props from their classmates before graduation the next day.  They announce the colleges they will be attending in the fall and, for those who qualify, they receive their cords or sashes to wear with their graduation robes – Magna, Summa, and Cum Laude GPAs, National Honors Society, Student Council, etc.   Senior Send-Off also doubles as our Year-End Awards assembly.

At Cristo Rey St. Martin we have many of the typical awards you would expect, such as recognition of our Student Ambassadors program, Athletics, Arts, and Campus Ministry.  Also, for each grade level, we honor a Corporate Work Study Outstanding Worker and Outstanding Academic Achievement (Highest GPA).

Unlike most schools, however, we also recognize a student from each grade for being Most Improved Academically.  This award is as highly valued as any of the others.  Huge rounds of applause follow the announcement of each name.  It is a communal celebration of having a growth mindset!  Our principal frequently reminds students that they need “claim” their education.  Students need to be active agents in procuring their education, not passive recipients of instruction.

The teacher who presented the Junior award put it this way, “At face value, the award for most improved is given to a student whose grades have jumped, but I think the award encompasses a lot more than that. It is also meant to recognize better academic habits, greater ownership over your education, and growth as a person overall.”  She described the student’s progress this way:

“When I taught him freshman year, he might have told you that he just wasn’t a good student and had just accepted that about himself. Two and a half years later, it is clear that this guy can see what he is capable of. Freshman year, just staying on task long enough to complete classwork was tough and passing in homework was out of the question. This semester in theology, he has no missing or late assignments. Whereas he once struggled just to stay awake for the whole period, he is now a thoughtful, curious, and engaged student, raising the bar for others around him. Brian, your teachers always knew that you’re capable of greatness, and we’re glad that you can see that now, too.”

Diego was the sophomore award winner.  One of his teachers mentioned, “He has grown into an incredibly responsible student that has taken ownership over his learning.”

A teacher for the freshman winner, Jaylene, illustrated her progress in this way:

“[She] has grown tremendously throughout the year.  The transition from middle school to high school can be difficult and many students struggle at the start of the year.  This was the case for this student.  In math, this student struggled to understand and keep up with the topics in class and therefore did not perform well on assignments and tests. 

Throughout the year, this student recognized that they were not doing as well as they wanted to and really worked to make a change.  She opted into AAP (CRSM’s Academic Assistance Program) so she could get extra help during study hall and started coming to [office hours during her] Flex time to ask questions about the homework.  Not only did she want to improve her grade, but she really wanted to make sure she had a strong understanding of the material.  She took her time on her work, and it started paying off.  Her test scores and understanding of the material started improving.”

Humor me for a moment.  These awards remind of a story about Biosphere 2.  Biosphere 2 was built as a prototype for self-sustaining human colonies in outer space. It is a three-acre sealed ecosystem in the Arizona desert – the largest closed system ever built. Scientists designed it as a miniature Earth, with rich soil, clean water, and carefully measured light. Among many other living organisms included in the experiment, they planted trees.  They grew fast but before they could reach their full height, they buckled under their own weight. The culprit wasn’t something in the biosphere – it was something missing from its “perfect” environment: wind.

In the natural world, wind stresses trees constantly. And trees respond by producing what scientists actually call stress wood — a denser cellular structure that allows a tree to reposition itself toward light, to push around obstacles, to find what it needs when the easy path is blocked. The tree doesn’t wait to be rescued. It grows into the difficulty.

Without wind, the Biosphere 2 trees never developed that ability. They were given seemingly everything but it wasn’t enough. Because what they actually needed was to be challenged.

This is why we honor the Most Academically Improved.  Students who learn how to learn are better prepared for what comes next.  Our students are graced with tremendous God-given gifts but without cultivation, development, and use, those gifts – those students – do not reach their potential. The ones who flourish are not always the ones who find school easiest. They are the ones who discover in the struggle, that they are stronger than they realized… that they can reposition… they can grow toward the light.

Their strength comes from facing difficulty head-on, leaning into the wind… with people alongside them who believe in them until they believe in themselves.

¡Viva Cristo Rey!