Learning to Serve,
Serving to Learn
District High School Students Live Out The Lasallian Mission
By Jacqueline A. Tasch

The next morning, the 14 students and a half dozen more recruits returned to the tiny rooms, scraping the windows, scrubbing cement, and painting walls and ceilings. As the temperature rose above 100 degrees, closely matched by the humidity, Joshua Calista, a 1998 Christian Brothers High School Graduate, noticed that his peers were losing momentum. Although Joshua's many talents did not include singing, he nevertheless began a tune that moved through the work crew: "We are painting in the Light of God," he sang, and the verses recounted their efforts.

In five hours, the work was done, and the elderly couple met with the crew of young strangers, grateful for the transformation of their home and moved to tears by the manner in which it had been accomplished. It is a scene that Shelly Gorman, Director of Lasallian Youth at Christain Brothers High School, holds close to her heart. "I've been working with teenagers for 24 years, and I've always had faith in them," Ms. Gorman said. "When you're surrounded by teenagers doing incredibly wonderful things for the community, you become even more optimistic about the future."

These activities, which took place in the summer of 1997 at an Assembly of Lasallian Youth in Memphis, are evidence that the schools and programs in the District of San Francisco are working in the spirit of the Christian Brothers' 1967 Declaration, a document that speaks of giving students a keen awareness of human suffering and a sense of the universal connection among people. At the heart of such efforts is a statement from the Brothers' Rule: "When they deal with people in a more favorable social environment, [they are to help students] become more sensitive to unjust situations of which the poor are so often the victims."

Following this challenge, the goal of providing service opportunities is greater than simply preparing students to do good works. "You need to understand that just because somebody looks different than you, comes from a different economic background or culture, that person is no less a human being than you are," said Robert Jordan, Campus Minister at De La Salle High School in Concord.

Many graduates from De La Salle High School go on to prestigious universities and professional careers, but that is not the exclusive goal of their education. "Our goal is to contribute to society," Mr. Jordan said. "If students graduate understanding that their place in the world is one of giving back, then we're doing our job."

At De La Salle, a recently approved service-learning program will integrate service opportunities with curricular and co-curricular activities; for example, students might work at a recycling station as part of their chemistry class. The objective is to make service part of life at De La Salle, not just part of its religious studies program or its campus ministry.

Many schools have welcomed the international organization Lasallian Youth to their campuses. Others are taking advantage of immersion programs to involve students in the world of the poor. Some, like Caroline Chinn, the first Director of Christian Community Service at Saint Mary's College High School in Berkeley, are devising programs that encourage students to develop a passion for social justice and an empathy for the less fortunate.

How can these efforts be evaluated? Hours of service are only a limited indicator of achievement. A better measure of the impact of the programs is gained by listening to students who have participated in these activities.

Student Voices
During a recent lunch hour at Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory of San Francisco, the space outside the Campus Ministry office buzzed with energy. The number of students in the room remained constant despite students coming and going over the 90 -- minute lunch and break periods.

Students arrived and sat at the round table in the center of the room, eating their lunches while they decorated brown paper bags with magic markers. The bags were later filled with donated bottled water, shampoo, soap, and candy and given to the homeless at the school's annual Valentine's Day Clothing Drive giveaway. As the students worked, the stereo alternated rhythm and blues music with sacred hymns.

On the couch, a group of students talked enthusiastically about a recent trip to Salinas, where had worked with homeless people, migrant workers, and their children. Another cluster looked at pictures from a gathering in New York City last summer. Snapshots passed from hand to hand, and favorites were pointed out -- the (awfully round) little boy named Spike who developed a passion for chocolate kisses, a little girl who helped clean up after art class. You could feel the sense of connection among the students and between them and the people they had helped. This was a weekly meeting of Lasallian Youth, which originated in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries of South America and arrived in the San Francisco District in 1996.

Last fall, at a Bay Area gathering of Lasallian Youth hosted by Sacred Heart Cathedral, about 85 students worked at Pier 80 in San Francisco sorting and packing up donations for victims of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua. On another occasion in Sacramento, students worked to spruce up an inner-city elementary school. They painted the cafeteria, cleaned tables and chairs, and created a play yard for the students.

"You have so much fun," enthused Sean Loughran, from Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep, of his service experiences. "When you come back, you're just glowing. Anybody who sees you wants to be part of it." In fact, once students are introduced to service opportunities, the problem is providing enough projects for everyone, not persuading a few to continue.

Saint Mary's College High School's Caroline Chinn notes she never lacks for recruits. "There's a tremendous desire among students to put their words into action and to bring that kind of meaning and depth into their lives." This seems to be particularly true of the most challenging experiences, like the Venaver immersion project in Tijuana: students have to apply in order to participate, and some students are turned away.

Founded about ten years ago, Venaver (from the Spanish for "Come and see!") is now under the direction of Christian Sullivan, former Director of Campus Ministry at Sacred Heart Cathedral. At sites in Tijuana, Mexico, and Salinas, California, students are immersed in settings where they will have the opportunity to connect personally with the poor.

Sharing and Learning from Service Experiences
Sashi Chadha will never forget her first visit to the Tijuana dumps, where dozens of people were scavenging through the garbage for something they could turn into dinner. It was a powerful experience for the ten students from Saint Mary's College High School. "It was hard for a lot of us to get used to what we were smelling, let alone what was going on," Sashi recalls.

She had applied for the Tijuana trip "to experience something outside of home. I went with the idea I was going down there to help. When I got down there, it was quite different. I was the one who was helped." On her return home, she found it difficult to understand fully what she had experienced. She says, "I felt hypocritical in a sense because I have so much, and I had gone down there and had seen that other people had so little. I didn't know what I felt anymore. I wasn't comfortable wanting more. I felt guilty wanting more. It took me a while to figure out where I stood."

Encounters like Sashi's, which trigger a personal transformation, are at one end of a spectrum of positive effects from service experiences.

During a Venaver trip to Salinas last fall to work with homeless people, migrant workers, and their children, students learned firsthand how raids by the Immigration and Naturalization Service make it virtually impossible for Mexican workers to accumulate the ten consecutive years of residence required for U.S. citizenship. Entire families were living in homes no larger than their meeting space at school. And the students were surprised to find that the migrant laborers greeted them with smiles, laughter, good cheer, and optimism. Some workers joked, however, that the convicted criminals in nearby Soledad Prison lived more comfortably than they did.

"They seemed happier than we are," the students concluded, even though the migrant families had far less material things. Rebecca Shirah from Sacred Heart Cathedral sums it up: "They seemed more content with what they have. They don't need those Nikes."

Suna Akmese, who was not raised as a Catholic, says her experiences "shed a positive light on Christianity, helping me to see Christ in other people," such as the woman who needed her help in writing a letter to an inmate at the prison that she had just left. "If I had seen that woman on the street, I probably would have crossed to the other side."

Kevin Meenan of De La Salle High School in Concord, who worked the cafeteria line at St. Anthony's Dining Room in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, came away struck by the graciousness of the homeless people he had served. "They were really anxious to eat, but still they took the time to say thank you," he says. "I've always been told that we're all the same under the skin, but sometimes that's hard to believe. At St. Anthony's, I really saw it. We are just the same."

The visit to the Tenderloin includes a before-and-after discussion that helps students understand their experiences. As part of their day, students are asked to go to a street corner in the Tenderloin and make a list of what they see, then do the same at a street corner near home. Reflecting on and discussing contrasts between life at home and life in the places they visit are part of the learning experiences.

From Impressing Others to Serving Others
Lauro Lopez couldn't wait to get his first car, but not in order to head for the beach or impress his peers. He had always wanted to participate in Meals on Wheels, and now he had the necessary transportation. However, because of his age, Meals on Wheels redirected him to a "senior buddy" named Gene who had Alzheimers' Disease. When Lauro's sophomore biology class studied diseases of aging, Lauro says knowing Gene "made it real, because I saw how it looked."

The service opportunities Lauro has enjoyed at De La Salle High School in Concord have done more than enrich his classroom education. After a Venaver trip to Tijuana, he returned with new values. "We saw people who didn't have the best of the material world, but families still expressed their love for one another," he recalls, "whereas families in my community seem to be bound by what they have. Teens here sometimes don't talk to their parents or involve them in their lives. I tried to bring back some values that I experienced down there . . . Now, I try to talk to my parents more often and show them that I love them." Although he hasn't decided what his vocation in life will be, Lauro already is planning to be a Lasallian Volunteer after college.

Lauro's story illustrates the many ways in which service education in the Lasallian tradition enriches those who serve at the same time that it benefits those who are being served. Through service opportunities, classroom education is enriched, personal values are transformed, and commitments to social justice are strengthened.

The United States Catholic Bishops have said that "Social justice and the common good are built up and torn down day by day in the countless decisions and choices we make. This vocation to pursue justice is not simply an individual task . . . [and] cannot be carried forward alone, but only as members of a community called to be the 'leaven' of the Gospel."

Through the many service programs in the schools, students are discovering, through and in community, that the poor are real, social justice is real, the Gospel is real, prayer is real. They come to find the presence of God in the poor and marginalized who slowly become their brothers and sisters. They come to understand that education happens on many levels and is particularly focused when real lives are shared in genuine community. Finally, they come to see more and more that as they are learning to serve, they are serving to learn. In that learning process, Lasallian education becomes a reality.