by Mary Beth Sammons | Mar 2, 2023 | President’s Pen
You could have heard a pin drop. The lights were off with only the gentle light from the north windows saturating the cafeteria. A guitar strummed its first note and then the choir began singing:
The Lord is my light, my light and salvation:
in God I trust, in God I trust.
The Lord is my light, my light and salvation:
in God I trust, in God I trust.
Over and over and over… mantra-like… the words washing over all three-hundred-and-something students, faculty, staff, and visitors. This was the beginning of our student-run Ash Wednesday prayer service.
Alternating songs and scripture readings, our observance followed the basic sequence of communal prayer begun in Taize, France in the 1940’s as a contemplative, calming response to the violent beginnings of WWII. Its songs are nearly hypnotic, inviting participants to focus on God’s presence.
After the first song ended, the students shared a scripture reading and then the next song began, this time in Spanish, repeating again and again:
Nada te turbe, nada te espante (Let nothing disturb you, nothing scare you)
Solo Dios basta (God alone is enough)
We were seated in a circle around a giant cross made of two lashed tree limbs laying on the floor. During the second song students could come to the cross, light a candle and say a silent prayer. Then, after another reading and third song, there was a period of silence.
Not a moment of silence but a long, sustained period of silence. Nearly ten minutes of silence! Stop what you are doing and try to sit silent and still for ten minutes. Most people would find it difficult, if not impossible. The pace of Taize prayer is very slow. I’m certain the timing of this silent part of the service coming only after several entrancing songs is intentional. We are gradually brought deeper into prayer so that when the silence comes, the community is ready for it.
It is difficult to describe just how profound this experience is. Can you imagine sitting with over three hundred teenagers in complete silence for so long? No fidgeting, no murmuring, just reverence. And in that reverence, we find a shared bond: together, present to one another, aware, peaceful, content, and drenched in silence. The world outside is speeding by. As Wordsworth wrote, “The world is too much with us; late and soon, /Getting and spending… We have given our hearts away…”. As a species, we seem drawn toward overstimulation like moths to a flame but, in this extended silence, we find something more, something missing, something we hardly knew we needed but realize then just how hungry we were for it: an opportunity to be. And in being, an opportunity to realize God’s presence in us and among us.
Brother Roger Schutz-Marsauche, who founded Taize, expressed it this way, “Right at the depth of the human condition, lies the longing for a presence, the silent desire for a communion. Let us never forget that this simple desire for God is already the beginning of faith… trusting in God is a very simple reality, so simple that everyone could receive it.”
Staying in that extended, shared silence, with our inner ups and downs, with our hurts and our fears, it felt like the entire room was somehow brimming with new life and new energy. We needed something and we received it. It’s hard to think of a better, more powerful way to begin the season of Lent. As the final song neared its end, students slowly stood and walked to their first period classes taking that sacred silence with them.
I hope, in the coming weeks, you, too will find a moment or more when you feel the world awash in grace as I did this past Wednesday. ¡Viva Cristo Rey!
by Mary Beth Sammons | Feb 4, 2023 | President’s Pen
“Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Recently we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at CRSM. Instead of a Catholic mass, we have a tradition of holding services that celebrate other faith traditions shared by some of our students and staff. CRSM is a Catholic school but that doesn’t mean all our students or staff are Catholic. It is a point of pride that we have so many of the world’s religions represented here. Our Muslim math teacher has since moved on, but we still stay in contact. Judaism, Hinduism, Protestantism (including Adventist, Baptist, Evangelical, Episcopal, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist) are practiced by people working and studying under CRSM’s roof – enriching our community and promoting greater connections, empathy, and understanding among us. During Open Houses, we tell prospective students and their parents that, at CRSM, we want to challenge you not only about what you believe but how you are living out those beliefs in the world. That is why community service is such an integral part of our campus ministry programming and our identity as a school.
Our Dean of Students, who is pastor of the Eternal Flame AME Church in North Chicago, organizes MLK Day for us along with our Black Student Union. The service usually alternates year-to-year between and AME service and a Baptist service. This year, it was the Baptists’ turn and we welcomed our Dean’s college classmate, Rev. Angelo Kyle whose church, St. Matthew Missionary Baptist Church is housed in a small building adjacent to our old campus in east Waukegan. Pastor Kyle prepared a scholarly sermon about the life of MLK connecting his legacy from over 50 years ago back to the present day and to our students’ lives, challenging them to seek not only personal success but communal success. The service also included music supplied from old friends from the First Baptist Church and the First Corinthian Baptist Church both in North Chicago. Ms. Donna Dallas led us in traditional hymns, and it reminded me of a colleague of mine when we were first opening Christ the King Jesuit College Prep in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side who would always say to our students, “when you sing, you pray twice!”
I was privileged to be able to give some closing remarks at the service. It so happens that, over the weekend, I was reading King’s speech, “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence.” He delivered this speech at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967. I stared at the date – it was exactly one year to the exact day before he was assassinated! A chilling thought. King’s words are as relevant today as they were decades ago. He calls to us from across those years to continue the movement, to keep dreaming the dream. While it is disappointing to think we have accomplished so little in breaking down racial and economic barriers since the 1950’s, there is still hope and we are charged with not letting that hope die – it’s a hope elemental to all our faiths: “…our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional.”
Here is an excerpt from his speech, Beyond Vietnam:
“This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all [humankind].…
When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.
This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another, for love is of God. And everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.… If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and [God’s] love is perfected in us. [1 John 4:7–8, 12].
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day…
If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of [sisterhood and] brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when ‘justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ [Amos 5:24]”
The CRSM community of students, faculty, staff, business partners, and donors give me hope. You give me hope. We are a mighty stream TOGETHER. ¡Viva Cristo Rey!
by Mary Beth Sammons | Dec 25, 2022 | President’s Pen
Two days before Christmas and all through the school
Not a creature was present, I felt like a fool.
The work-study vans were all parked in a row
Under our new canopy and out of the snow.
I pass empty classrooms as I walk down the hall,
Whatever happened to that season called Fall?
The desks are all clean and exams are all through.
No one will be back ’til Semester number two.
The bulletin boards still announce former events
Like food drives, retreats all now in past tense.
In the chapel the altar is covered in roses
Above them a portrait of La Virgen reposes:
Our mass for the feast of Guadalupe was great,
The skit of her appearance was really first rate.
Las Posadas’ inn doors propped against a lunch table –
José y María at last found the stable.
Sometimes silence and solitude can be a gift…
Stepping back from the action can give you a lift,
Like thinking of people who make our lives better
Teachers, students, and YOU changing the world together.
There are angels among us regardless of wings
Christmas invites us to find our God in all things
God with us and for us, loves all that we are
And invites us, in joy, to follow His star.
To shine in the darkness, be people for others,
To live on this Earth like sisters and brothers.
May you keep Christmas always in your minds and your hearts
And we’ll see you again when another year starts.
The divine became human on Christmas Day;
God’s love calls us to love. ¡Viva Cristo Rey!
by Mary Beth Sammons | Nov 29, 2022 | President’s Pen
Gratitude…
Last Monday, twenty-two CRSM students gave up their evening to be here at school calling nearly 400 donors simply to say, “Thank you.” They reached more than ninety in-person. What a treat to hear them talking to benefactors on the other end of the line, expressing gratitude while answering questions about their studies, hopes for college, and dreams for the future.
Gratis…
Another evening, some of our staff and students gathered after school (as they do every week), to get on a bus and go over to the local PADS shelter where they make beds for the homeless and then prepare a meal and eat it with them. CRSM does not require community service hours. Instead, students are invited to freely give their time and talents without expectation of reward or credit. Service is done gratis or it is not truly service.
Congratulate…
I visited Arrupe College at Loyola University Chicago earlier this month and was greeted in the lobby by a large poster of a CRSM alumna now studying there. She had just been awarded a 2022 President’s Medallion from LUC. Here is what the Dean of the college said about her:
“[She] embodies what we hope for all our students at Arrupe College; she understands the value of hard work and demonstrates that value on a daily basis. In addition, [she] exhibits authentic qualities: she is person-centered, compassionate in her dealings with others, and is committed to excellence, especially when it comes to her personal growth.
For her part, she says that her teachers at CRSM and Arrupe, “have taught me to be selfless, to be motivated, and to be brave and caring.” Congratulations to a remarkable young person who is and will be making a difference in our world!
Agree…
Recognizing that soccer is king in Waukegan and that most of our students yearned to watch Mexico play in the World Cup, we agreed to alter the school schedule so that the lunch hour coincided with the weekday matches. The first game was televised in our cafeteria on the large monitors we use for weekly assembly. Imagine the entire school community – faculty, staff, and students (except for the students working that day) – all crammed into one space cheering and sharing the moment. So much fun!
Grace…
Educators do not often realize the full impact they have on the lives of their students. Often, students don’t fully appreciate teachers until they have the perspective that only time and life experience can give. “Thank you’s” aren’t always practical to make when you are years and often miles apart. Once in a great while, a “thank you” does make it back and it is truly a grace to get one. Our Principal received this unsolicited email from a CRSM graduate who saw a license plate with the word “grit” on it:
“Grit is something you told us about possibly every chance you got and while sometimes it was repetitive, it really stuck. Back in the day, I didn’t realize how important Grit would be in my life, but believe me, college made sure that I knew I needed it in order to succeed. I will never forget when I tried to convince you to give us a snow day because of how cold it was going to be and you instead, showed me a picture of how cold it was going to be in Russia and told me that if the Russian kids go to school in negative degree whether then we can too, because we have grit. Believe it or not, I think about this conversation from time to time, especially when it’s freezing outside, but also when I feel like giving up on something because no matter what, life keeps moving and we have to learn to keep moving with it.
Anyway, I’d like to say thank you for making sure we knew about grit because it truly has helped me in college with my classes, [and now with my] work opportunities…”
Grateful, gratis, congratulate, agree, grace…
These words all share the common Proto-Indo-European linguistic root of “gwere” meaning “to favor, to thank, to praise.” Not coincidentally, they also each require a level of selflessness to enact. We cannot be grateful without acknowledging that someone has given us something; something cannot be offered gratis without first giving up any conditions placed on the receiver – there can be no quid pro quo; we cannot truly congratulate someone if we think only of ourselves; we can only agree on something if we acknowledge the other side; and we cannot receive grace without first recognizing our own vulnerability. Somehow, we cannot be truly thankful without looking beyond personal interests and we cannot find grace without thinking about the needs of others.
During the Eucharist (which, by the way, means “Thanksgiving” in Greek), there is a point in the mass when the priest says, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give You thanks, Lord…”
Community is a prerequisite to giving thanks. We are called to be persons for others because it is the only way we can recognize God’s grace already at work within us. Recognizing that we belong to one another and have a responsibility for one another is what saves us. Giving thanks is both our duty and salvation. Happy Thanksgiving! Happy Advent! And thank you for supporting CRSM!
by Mary Beth Sammons | Nov 1, 2022 | President’s Pen
Email is both the bane and the salve of my existence as president of CRSM. I was travelling last week and, despite using most free moments to weed through the growing list, there are still, at this moment, 313 unread messages in my Inbox. Granted, most are frivolous ads from sites from which I have yet to unsubscribe, or they are blasts from good organizations I intentionally subscribe to like The Chronicle of Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Crain’s Chicago Business, or Independent School Management. There are also regular school-wide emails to faculty and staff about the day-to-day running of the school, such as the revised schedule for November 3 when we will celebrate the feast of St. Martin de Porres with mass at 8:00am.
As much as I want to take a broad-brush approach and delete away anything not individually addressed to me, I find that some general emails can, on occasion, offer important and celebratory news. This morning included one such example. Our Dean of Students sent out the most recent ineligibility list comprised of all students currently earning less than a 2.0 grade point average. If you are under a. 2.0, we withhold your ability to participate in extracurricular activities until you correct the situation. This allows students to prioritize… put “first things first” because your grades really do matter.
A cumulative CRSM grade point average (GPA) is the most accurate indicator of how our students will perform in college. The correlation between GPA and college completion is significantly higher than the correlation between standardized test scores like the SAT or ACT and college completion. At CRSM, the correlation coefficient for GPA to college completion was 0.68 compared to the correlation coefficient for ACT to college completion of 0.3. The higher the coefficient, the stronger the relationship. So, your CRSM GPA is more than twice as accurate a predictor of college completion than your ACT score. Of all CRSM alumni, 82% of students with a GPA greater than 2.95 earned their bachelor’s degree. For students with less than a 2.95 GPA, only 23% get their diploma.
Back to the email. I opened the ineligibility list and there on the spreadsheet for 10/31/2022 were five names… FIVE! That’s only five out of 403 students! The numbers are all the more remarkable when you consider that CRSM does not filter its admissions requirements for academic performance. We do not administer an admissions exam. We do not have a junior high GPA minimum. And we do not have a standardized test score cut-off. Our first filter for admission is family income. The average CRSM family’s household income for this school year is $37,051 and the average family size is 4.7 individuals. Our second filter is to favor students who are the first generation in their family to attend college.
Only five ineligible students out of the entire student body are better than our best pre-pandemic numbers. What’s up with that?
The list’s shortness is testament to the collaborative efforts of three groups within CRSM: our faculty, the Student Support Team, and the Academic Assistance Team. It is a deliberate and intentional response to assist and promote student success. First, our faculty are incredibly professional and mission-driven experts in their craft. They work at CRSM because they love what they do and love who they do it with – their colleagues and students – and they are dedicated to continuous improvement.
Second, our Student Support Team consists of representatives from all aspects of student life at CRSM: counselors, the nurse, our Dean of Students, work-study representatives, teachers, and our assistant principal. They meet weekly to address individual students’ situations and develop customized scaffolding plans, taking into consideration the whole student or what the Jesuits coined as “cura personalis.”
Lastly, our Academic Assistance Team provides the academic encouragement and framework for students to develop lasting study skills that will serve them in high school and beyond. Students come to the AAP during their study hall period and after school to receive individual and small group support. Additionally, AAP teachers will attend class with students to accompany them in-the-moment and help then with notetaking and strengthen information processing.
At the end of the day, CRSM has 1.24% of students currently below a 2.0 GPA. That’s 98.76% ABOVE a 2.0! It is no accident, and it involves the concerted efforts of many different adults encouraging students to be their best, regardless of the challenges they face… or, more accurately, acknowledging those challenges and leveraging the students’ own proven resiliency to find success in school.
Miracles come in many forms, but you cannot discount the daily miracles resulting from a shared mission, hard work, and care for each individual student. Now, if only there were a miracle to get rid of too many emails!
