Students at three schools in the Archdiocese of Chicago are learning the connection between the faith they learn in class and the good they can do in the world.
The schools are working with the Maryknoll Discipleship Institute, which started in the Archdiocese of Seattle.
In Seattle, the institute forms the religion curriculum for middle school students, first teaching them the “see, judge, act” method embedded in Catholic social teaching, said Maryknoll’s Jackie Hopper.
The program began with middle school students because that is when children start to question their faith and their vocations, she said.
“We wanted to give young people at that age a very different experience of their faith formation than in a traditional program,” Hopper said. “We look at it through a lens of missionary discipleship, which we are called to by our baptism. It is centered on the methodology of ‘see, judge, act’ — students are taken through that methodology by putting it into action.”
Hopper said that before starting to work with the institute in Seattle, she taught in the Diocese of Boise and rarely heard students get “phenomenally excited” about religion class. For students in the Missionary Discipleship Institute, that has changed.
“I heard this young man say, ‘I was really frustrated because we had to take a break from our religion class. I loved my religion class. It was what I looked forward to every day,’” said Hopper, who also works with the Archdiocese of Chicago schools and teachers who are using the program.
Hopper said she asked the student why he felt that way, and he said it was “the first time he realized what ‘neighbor’ meant, and his personal responsibility that Christ gave him because he was baptized. … He started this program in September, and by December, he had this transformation of understanding who was neighbor, and what that meant as far as his responsibility.”
Students in the program learn that they are called to serve their neighbors, then explore what situations exist in the world around them that they could impact for the better, and, with the guidance of their teachers, select one issue to address and plan and carry out a project. Students then pray and reflect on the project as well.
Doing so goes beyond simply checking “service hours” off a list of required activities, said Melissa Link, director of mission and culture for the Office of Catholic Schools.
“In Catholic schools, an ideal experience of service learning is serving one’s neighbor in the community and having space to pray about that and reflect on that with our Catholic traditions in mind,” Link said. “That means putting our gifts into the service of others. I think that’s what differentiates it from service hours.”
Link said she first heard about the Maryknoll Discipleship Institute several years ago from an archdiocesan colleague who had seen it in action in Seattle. The first school, St. Josaphat, 2245 N. Southport Ave., began piloting it beginning in 2018-2019.
Plans to expand the program to other schools were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
Since 2023, the program has expanded to St. Benedict and St Giles, Link said, noting that while the effort was introduced to a broader cross-section of schools, the plan was to start small, with principals who were on board and teachers who were already experienced.
In the Archdiocese of Chicago, the institute curriculum is in addition to the usual religion curriculum used in Catholic schools, Link said.
At St. Josaphat School, it is taught as part of Future Business Leaders of America elective, said Seán Eshaghy.
Eshaghy started using the program as part of the religion department. Now, teaching in the social studies department at St. Josaphat, he has found a way to use it there.
About 40 middle school students are in the program at St. Josaphat.
“I like to think outside the book,” Eshaghy said, explaining why he was originally drawn to it. “A lot of the religion curriculum is repetitive."
When kids get to sixth, seventh, eighth grade, they start to question their faith, because they don’t see their faith in action as much as they could.”
From the beginning, he said, “The kids were really receptive to it. This curriculum was a great way to get them involved in the community, especially with social justice issues that the kids care about.”
Eshaghy worked with Andrew Galus, who teaches theology to middle school students at St. Benedict Preparatory School, 3900 N. Leavitt St. At St. Ben’s, the curriculum is also an elective, Galus said, meeting once a week.
“In this class, we look at the social teachings of the church and what it means to be a missionary disciple,” he said. “I’ve adapted it to the timeframe we have.”
He begins by explaining what it means to be a missionary disciple, what the mission of a disciple of Jesus is and what they are called to do.
“We really explore who the people in the margins are, the people in need, and how we can help them instead of ignoring them,” Galus said. “I then start to make it more practical. What issues are they aware of? It’s interesting for me; it’s an eye-opener about what the kids know. They talk about public transit, housing, medical care.”
When he began a couple of years ago, Galus said he tried to do the whole program, but found the class had to race through it. He learned to choose which lessons to use to pace it better, from explaining what students are called to do to guiding them through planning their own project.
This year, he said, students seem to be interested in reducing food waste. In a previous year, they planned a school supply drive for a school where students might not be able to buy what they needed.
That year, the students ran out of time to implement the drive, but the parish Knights of Columbus council picked up the project and carried it out.
“The beauty is, it’s what they decide,” Galus said. “When we first started the planning process, they were a little bit frustrated because they didn’t know what to do. It was neat to watch the light bulbs start to go on.”
At St. Giles School in Oak Park, students and teachers just started using the institute’s curriculum in middle school homerooms this year, calling it their “service block” and using it in conjunction with their usual religion classes.
“It takes religion and puts it into action,” said eighth grade teacher Rebecca Kent. “It gives more purpose to religion classes.”
Principal Meg Bigane said the institute curriculum helps students understand the world around them.
“It’s really relating it back to things that kids can understand,” she said. “Not everybody even in our community has the same advantage of the person sitting next to them. It’s something they feel very passionate about. They’re very passionate about social issues.”
Physical education teacher Steve Siwek said his class has been making food pantry and clothing donations, and he has been surprised how much his students are talking about it.
“It kind of causes them to think a different way,” Siwek said. “They are all things that very much relate to this day and age — climate change, education, immigration. It causes them to kind of pay attention and think more about other people, and see that there are simple ways that we can help them.”