Preston Kendall’s President’s Pen

A very good friend of CRSM frequently marvels at the results our students are getting.  He repeatedly asks, “Why is it that your incoming 9-grade academic and behavioral profile is essentially the same as other schools serving low-income youth from Waukegan and North...

Hard to believe we are two weeks into Lent and have already begun the fourth quarter of the school year! What’s more, Daylight Saving Time just stole another hour.  While I can’t complain too much about driving home now and getting to see the sunset, the message this...

Boxes were distributed a couple weeks in advance to faculty and staff with instructions to begin packing up and leaving only the barest essentials needed to do their jobs in those few work days before the big move.  Our CFO at the time was charged with managing...

Nearly every Friday morning during the school year, we hold an all-school assembly.  It is a chance to remind students of our mission and share some relevant research or data about college completion, grit, or the types of mindsets and behaviors that lead to success. ...

“What’s happening at Cristo Rey St. Martin?” is a question I’m often asked.  After days like today, I’m tempted to answer, “What ISN’T happening at CRSM?!”  It would be a much shorter response. I’m just home from our quarterly board meeting.  We finished around 8:00pm...

If there were ever a month in the calendar that belonged to Cristo Rey St. Martin, it would be November.  It literally and figuratively has our name written all over it!  The month starts off with All Saints Day on the 1st, Dia de Los Muertos on the 1st and 2nd, the...

You can’t escape Artificial Intelligence.  Everywhere you turn - the news, business, manufacturing, politics, shopping, entertainment – you’re confronted with mentions of algorithms, Large Language Models, machine learning, Chat GPT, Visio, Gemini, Claude, Canva.  It...

“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.” ~ Hans Christian Andersen We are back at it!  Only a couple weeks into the new school year and the easy rhythms of CRSM are back in swing. There is nothing better than...

Where did the summer go?  Hard to believe that August is already upon us and we will be back in full-time classes in a couple weeks.  Speaking of time just flying by, this school year will mark the 20th anniversary of our school opening in 2004.  In that year, six new...

When we started the first Cristo Rey School in Chicago, there was a 24-hour diner I drove past every day, called the Steak n’ Egger.  The sign outside said, “We may doze but we never close.”   A lot of people think schools take off the summer or at least only carry a...