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High school founded by former NFL star aims to make virtuous students

May 10, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Minneapolis, Minn., May 11, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- Not everyone who goes to high school will go to college, the founders of a new Minnesota high school say, but everyone should be prepared for leadership, service, and virtuous lives.

Preparation for a good life, no matter what comes after graduation, is the goal of Unity High School set to open this fall in Burnsville, Minnesota.

The school was founded by Matt Birk, a retired football player who played with the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Ravens, and Tom Bengtson, the owner of a small publishing company.
 
“At Unity, we are sure a lot of kids will go into college, some will go into the workforce, some will go into the military, some will discern religious vocations, and we think there is equal dignity in all of those things,” Birk told CNA.
 
“We are college prep but we are not only college prep. Not everybody is a candidate for college, people choose different paths and we believe that there is equal dignity in any of these paths. We are happy to prepare kids for post high school life regardless of what it looks like,” Bengtson added.
 
Birk has been involved with education programs in underprivileged communities since 2002, when he was playing professional football. As the father of eight, he said he knows that not all kids thrive in a competitive academic environment, noting that a “high-stakes” test-taking culture is not for everyone.

“If you look back at the genesis of the American education system, I think the original charter says the goal of education is to teach knowledge and develop character. As the U.S. keeps falling on the global list of test scores, we just keep focusing more and more on the testing,” he said.
 
“Character has been pushed out of mainstream education because it is all about the test now,” he added.
 
Birk said that because public school funding is tied to test scores, education models focus on test-taking skills, instead of adapting to the needs of each learner.
 
Birk added that while not every student is meant for college, but every person can be formed for success.

“If we are only doing it to show how well we can take a test, what’s the point?” he asked.

“If you go to an Ivy League schools is that a guarantee to a great life? No, no it’s not. I would say the most important thing to me … is that they would have a firm foundation in their Catholic faith, that would be number one, and then, number two, I would say to be equipped with some skills to be able to help them with whatever path they choose.”

Birk added that digital technology has been detrimental to some areas of ingenuity – communication, team work, and social and emotional intelligence. As a result of increased technology and media influence, he said students are suffering more narcissism and depression and incurring less empathy and abilities to handle anxiety.
 
Unity will aim to address those issues.
 
It will open this fall at Mary, Mother of the Church Parish in Burnsville. At first, the school will only teach high school freshmen, but it plans to add a new grade each year, until the first incoming class graduate as seniors.
 
The school will start small. It has about a dozen students enrolled right now, and its founders hope to bring in around 25 for the first year. It is also working to be recognized as an officially Catholic school in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
 
Unity will focus on practical opportunities for students to develop skills in academics, character, leadership, and service.

Birk said the school will “be vigorously Catholic,” including opportunities for students to engage with an instructor who can foster “interior life and their personal relationship with Jesus.”

The former NFL center’s own faith is central to his life, he said. He is especially active in pro-life work. In 2013, after Birk’s team won Super Bowl XLVII, he declined to attend a reception at the White House.

“I have great respect for the office of the presidency, but about five or six weeks ago, our president made a comment in a speech and he said, ‘God bless Planned Parenthood.’ Planned Parenthood performs about 330,000 abortions a year. I am Catholic, I am active in the pro-life movement and I just felt like I couldn’t deal with that. I couldn’t endorse that in any way,” Birk said.

He said he hopes Unity School will form students who are committed to faithful Catholicism.

“We really want the faith to be alive, to really be a part of the kids’ lives, not just taking a religion class,” said Birk.

Citing the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude, Birk said, the Catholic faith has a great framework for building character. To foster character development, the school will be involved with long term service projects, like monthly outings to nursing homes, where the teens can get to know the people they are serving.

A major component of the school will be its “Real World Wednesdays.” On those days, the students will take “life skills” classes and character development, including opportunities to listen to guest speakers and undergo field trips and service projects.

The teens will learn entrepreneurship, leadership, interview techniques, resumes, and financial literacy. The students will also be exposed to trades, through courses and workshops in auto maintenance, metal or wood shop, or home economics.

The school will also partner with an organization called Pursuit Academy, which teaches ethical enterprise, encouraging students learn to become entrepreneurs, to plan and manage their future goals, and to be leaders in their communities. Among other things, the teens will learn about engaging with peer pressure, managing risk, and public speaking.

Birk said a focus of the “Real World Wednesdays” will be developing what Birk calls “the-other-people-matter” mindset.

By identifying the good in themselves and in other people, students will establish better relationships in the community and a better relationship with God, he said.

Developing leadership skills and character “might not necessarily help them get an A on a test or score higher on their SAT, but they are going to be equipped with skills that they can use in their lives, whether it is in the careers or their marriages or as parents or as communities members.”

“Let’s get them some of that stuff,” he added.

In light of the school’s emphasis on both academic and practical skills, Unity has chosen two patron saints: John Paul II and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. These saints are not only modern figures for students to model after but fantastic examples of the school’s goals, Bengston said.

“John Paul II had all this rich philosophy of the dignity of the human person, which we will be teaching at Unity High School, including Theology of the Body,” said Bengston. “Then you got someone like Mother Teresa who took that theology and put it into practice – reached out to the poorest of the poor and saw dignity in folks who were in extremely dire circumstances.”

“In my mind, I seem them as both the hands and the heart at work together,” he added.  

Bengston said the school is convenient financially and geographically. Tuition will be $6,500 for the first year, which is half or even a third of the prices at other Catholic schools, Bengston said. He also said the school will fill a neighborhood need in the southern metro area of the Twin Cities.  

“It’s a large geographic area with 10 Catholic grade schools, through eighth grade, who collectively are graduating 300 students per year. Most of those students will go into public schools,” he said.

“About 75 students will stay in the Catholic school system and they have to travel quite a distance to Catholic high school.”

The lower price does mean there will be tradeoffs, Bengston said, noting that the school will have to improvise for a gymnasium, science lab, and auditorium. However, the school will have a thoroughly Catholic culture, he said, with Mass three times a week and a holy hour once a week, which is not offered at all Catholic schools.

Birk expressed enthusiasm for the new venture.

“We are still very much like a typical school in a lot of ways, but we are tweaking the model. I don’t know where this goes, but hopefully it will show people that there is a better way to do it.”

 

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No Picture
News Briefs

Georgia boycott falls flat after heartbeat bill passes

May 10, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Atlanta, Ga., May 10, 2019 / 03:30 pm (CNA).- Following the passage of the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act in Georgia earlier this week, a promised boycott by film and television figures has failed to materialize.

Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed the bill into law on Wednesday. Actress Alyssa Milano wrote an open letter Kemp in March, threatening a widespread entertainment industry boycott should the LIFE Act pass. The letter was co-signed by about 50 Hollywood actors.

At the time of the bill’s signing, Kemp said that “I realize that some may challenge [this bill] in the court of law. But our job is to do what is right, not what is easy.”

So far, only the three companies–Blown Deadline, Killer Films, and Duplass Brothers Production– have said that they will only consider filming in Georgia if the law is overturned. None have previously worked in the state.

Milano herself is still filming for her current project “Insatiable,” which is shot in Atlanta. While she remains on set, the former child star of “Who’s the Boss?” told BuzzFeed News that she would not return to the show if it were to be renewed for a third season, unless production was moved from Georgia.

The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents entertainment companies such as Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, and Netflix, all of whom actually film movies and television shows in Georgia, has not taken any position on the boycott.

MPAA spokesman Chris Ortman told the Hollywood Reporter that the organization had taken no decision to boycott the state, citing its deep ties to the local economy and the likely legal challenges the law will face.

“It is important to remember that similar legislation has been attempted in other states, and has either been enjoined by the courts or is currently being challenged. The outcome in Georgia will also be determined through the legal process,” said Ortman, adding, “We will continue to monitor developments.”

Actress Ashley Bratcher, who lives in Georgia, did not join in on the calls for boycott. Bratcher, who starred as pro-life activist Abby Johnson in the film “Unplanned,” wrote a rebuttal to Milano defending the legislation and the sanctity of life. During the filming of Unplanned, Bratcher learned that she was herself nearly aborted.

The Supreme Court found in the 1973 decision Roe vs. Wade that a woman in the United States has a constitutional right to abortion. Since that decision, laws that criminalize abortion prior to fetal viability have typically been overturned as unconstitutional.

The so-called “heartbeat bills” have faced challenges in every state where they have been passed. These legal battles have prompted some pro-life advocates, including Catholic bishops, to withhold endorsing the legislation.

Tennessee’s Catholic bishops chose to oppose their state’s heartbeat bill over concerns that it would not stand up to judicial scrutiny. They voiced concern that it was an imprudent approach to fighting legal abortion, citing other states where legal challenges to such bills ended up further enshrining a legal “right to abortion” and forcing the state to pay significant sums of money to the lawyers representing the pro-abortion challengers to the laws.

The Georgia law is set to go into effect on January 1, several pro-abortion organizations have promised to challenge it in court.

The entertainment industry also threatened to boycott Georgia should Kemp be elected governor. This boycott did not materialize.

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No Picture
News Briefs

‘No greater love’ — Denver Catholics remember Kendrick Castillo, who died in STEM school shooting

May 9, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Denver, Colo., May 9, 2019 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- When Sara Haynes heard about the shooting at STEM High School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado on Tuesday, she prayed. A Catholic school teacher in Denver until just recently, she knew some of her former students were now high schoolers at STEM.

When Haynes learned out that Kendrick Castillo, a former student of hers, was the lone casualty in the May 7 shooting, she cried immediately.

Then she reached out to the other students who had been in the same 7th and 8th grade math and religion classes at Notre Dame Catholic School as Castillo. Details of Kendrick’s death were not yet public, but her students guessed Castillo had died trying to protect others, Haynes said.

“I went to my students and we were all just sharing together. And I said: ‘Do you guys think that he blocked the shooter?’ And they said: ‘Yeah.’ I mean, it just wasn’t a shock to us” that he would give his life for others, Haynes said.

On Wednesday, Kendick’s father, John Castillo, confirmed to the Denver Post what he had learned from witnesses and the coroner: that Kendrick died while charging the shooter to save his friends.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” John Castillo told the Denver Post. “He cared enough about people that he would do something like that, even though it’s against my better judgment.”

“I wish he had gone and hid,” Castillo added, “but that’s not his character. His character is about protecting people, helping people.”

Kendrick’s friends and fellow students share the same sentiment, Haynes said.

“Every time I see a new kid that is in shock or crying, I ask – ‘But are you surprised?’ And they say ‘No, I’m not surprised at all. I’m just mad because I didn’t want him to have to do it. But of course he was going to do it.’”

Haynes said she remembers Kendrick as an unfailingly kind student, who cared deeply about everyone, who tried hard in school, and who wasn’t afraid to have fun and be goofy.

“Kendrick is probably one of the funniest people I’ve ever known,” Haynes said. “He’s really quirky and sweet. And quiet, but not really. He’s one of those kids that he knows the appropriate time to be quiet, and then when it’s the appropriate time for him to just be a total dweeb, he’ll be a total dweeb.”

He was always joyful, Haynes said, and funny – as her trove of goofy videos of Kendrick prove, she said. The only time when he was not joyful was at parent-teacher conferences, Haynes recalled. Kendrick tried hard in school, and he loved technology and excelled at science – but math was harder for him, she said.

“He would get so serious at parent-teacher conferences because he struggled academically and…most middle school kids put blame on other people, but he just always took the responsibility so seriously that he would cry,” she recalled.

“And we would tell him, ‘You don’t need to cry! We just want you to turn in your work.’ And he’d be like, ‘I’m so sorry.’ He really was such a deep thinker even if he didn’t look like it, because he was so jolly. He had this joy that shone through.”

Sr. Loretta Gerk was another teacher who knew Kendrick while he was a student at Notre Dame Catholic School – she taught him in physical education classes, from Kindergarten through eighth grade.

“He was the neatest kid,” Gerk told CNA. “He was so kind and gentle, but yet, he was all boy too, you know what I mean?”

Gerk said that she would sometimes worry about the kind and gentle students, because they could be prone to teasing. But no one ever teased or made fun of Kendrick – he was just too likeable, she said.

“Kids are sometimes cruel to each other,” she said. “But the kids weren’t mean to him. You couldn’t be mean to him.”

“If any little kids were crying or something, he would go talk to them. He would reach out to them. He would notice those things,” Gerk said.

Gerk said when she found out Kendrick had died in the shooting, her heart and her stomach hurt. When she found out he had died trying to rush the shooter, she thought: “That doesn’t surprise me at all.”

A hunter who loved his elk hunting trips with his father, Kendrick’s familiarity with gun safety may have given him additional courage when he rushed the shooter, Gerk said.

Not only was Kendrick kind in school, but he was also a very helpful and active person at church, Gerk recalled. He would often tag along with his dad to Knights of Columbus events, Gerk said. He would usher at Mass with his dad on Saturday nights, and help serve breakfast with the Knights of Columbus during Catholic Schools week.

“Kendrick would be in the kitchen, and he had a blue apron that said ‘Knights of Columbus.’ Kendrick was in there with his dad, helping,” she said.

Cece Bedard knew Kendrick because her dad, too, was in the Knights of Columbus. In a message to CNA, Bedard said that Kendrick “loved his faith and he really loved to serve others.”

It was not just that Kendrick did one heroic act, Bedard said, but “he lived the life of a hero, always helping others to the point where I’m not quite sure what he did for himself.”

He loved his Catholic faith, Bedard said, and once told her when they were young that although he couldn’t picture himself being a priest, he thought “the way of life (of a priest) was simply beautiful.”

“He truly was a living saint,” Bedard said.

Deacon Chuck Parker knew Kendrick at Notre Dame parish, where he remembers him as an altar server and a young usher, and a favorite greeter at the doors of the church.

“If anybody could exemplify a minister of hospitality it was Kendrick,” Parker said. “Even at such a young age, he was always very kind and compassionate, very engaging with people…people loved coming in and being greeted by Kendrick.”

“You hear a lot of people say that he was really a good kid,” Parker said. “And he was really a good kid, he just really was.”  

Parker, like many others, said he “wasn’t surprised” when he heard how Kendrick died, “because he was such a loving kid.”

“I was thinking about John’s Gospel where it says that there’s no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And that was Kendrick,” he said.

In religion class, Haynes said Kendrick was pensive, hungry for the faith, and always eager to play Jesus whenever they acted out stories from the Bible.

“He always wanted to be Jesus,” Haynes said. In a video from her class that she posted to Facebook, Kendrick acts out the part of Jesus, going to search for his apostles or to comfort a suffering person, blessing them with the sign of the cross and inviting them to join him.

“I have this amazing scene where he found the two apostles and they’re all kneeling in front of the camera…Kendrick is peering at the camera and then he does the sign of the cross at everyone watching. And he was so serious in it,” Haynes said.

While religion can sometimes be a difficult subject to teach junior high kids, Haynes said that whole class “was really on a spiritual journey that I just got to witness. They really wanted the faith. And they weren’t afraid to ask the tough questions and to be stuck with some of the answers.”

Haynes credits Kendrick’s parents for raising him to be a kind and faithful young man, and she urged everyone to continue to pray for them for the rest of their lives.

Now a parent herself, Hayes said that while she hopes she never has to experience the tragedy of losing a child, she wants her two boys to grow up to be “just like Kendrick.”

Because of her faith and because of how he died, Haynes said she believes Kendrick “went straight to heaven.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt.”

 

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