Don't Stop Believin'

The Augustinian Volunteers have a blog (osavol.org/blog) that every volunteer writes for at some point during the year. This week it's me! Here's my post about my greatest joy in working at SAINTS.

"What I appreciate the most about being the Campus Minister at St. Augustine High School is that I have the opportunity to affect 700 young men who are at a very impressionable point in their lives. The students at SAINTS all have the potential to mature into men committed to their Christian faith and to using the gifts they have cultivated at SAINTS to turn around and give back to their communities in service. The greatest joy in my work this year as a volunteer has been having the chance to help inspire the realization of their potential - and for some of them - witnessing times when they surprise themselves by their abilities and truly believe in themselves.

“Mass Band” is simultaneously my most taxing responsibility and most rewarding. The group plays at weekly Mass, but we have very limited practice time. We’re not always my idea of prepared at 8AM on Wednesday mornings when the liturgy starts, but it always seems to work out and the students succeed amazingly, whether they think they can or not. I watch students become confident in their ability as musicians as they play beautiful guitar solos, and volunteer to sing the psalm by themselves. Being present for these moments is such a joy for me.

Kairos retreats are our office’s biggest project of the year. They require quite a bit of work from a faculty planning perspective, but they really happen because of the six student leaders on each retreat. Each leader gives a long talk that requires them to think critically about themselves and their struggles. One of my jobs is to start with the leaders at the beginning of their talk writing process and to work with them as they develop their stories and the message of their talk. It takes a lot of courage to give a talk on Kairos, so when it finally comes to the point when they’re dressed up on the retreats speaking to their peers, I’m always really proud of them for their accomplishment.

In addition to my work at Saints, I tutor at St. Patrick’s School, where Katie and Anne teach P.E. One of my students is a 2nd grader who I’ve been working with since September. All year he’s struggled with focus, and tutoring requires focus. He does not like tutoring. When we go to find him to start the session, he pretends to be either a 1st or 3rd grader of a similar, rhyming name. It’s hysterical and we love it, but when it comes down to it, it’s really important that somehow he learns how to draw in his attention. I decided to try letting him play “Lost in Migration”, an educational computer game that could help improve his attention skills. It gives him something to look forward to at the end of alphabetizing spelling words and writing them over and over. The game is simply five birds in formation in the air facing one direction, except sometimes the middle bird is flying an opposite way. The point of the game is to hit the arrow key to match the direction of the middle bird. He got really into it and I was just about as excited as he was when he scored 740 first and then 920 on his second try. He’s up in the 1200s now, and the pride and joy he takes from succeeding and breaking records is definitely shared with me.

In my jobs this year, I have the chance to see my students excel quite often and I feel really lucky that I get to be a part of those moments, and even sometimes a factor in their achievements. I’ll miss being a part of their lives at the end of the year, but hopefully the faith I have in them will resonate and transform to strengthen their belief in themselves, and they will continue to have moments of self-actualization and accomplishment."