Solidarity, Solidarity; Solidarity Forever

Teenagers can be jerks.

They talk smack behind each other's backs. They lie to each other's faces. They enact social warfare on each other on social media.

They ignore deadlines. They break rules and criticize them upon punishment instead of challenging them beforehand. They disrespect and disobey authority figures. They give no care toward important things and worship leisure activity above all else.

Teenagers can really be jerks.

This is utterly inescapable working in a high school. And going through year four of my young career in high school ministry, I'm getting my heaping helping of this on a regular basis.

I've seen students argue with teachers. I've seen students cheat on homework and tests. I've seen students promise to take actions and totally blow them off.

It's enough to drive a minister, teacher, or administrator to a career change. But as the twistedly optimistic people who we are for even having tried to answer such a vocational call, we come back for more every day, ever the glutton for such turmoil.

The reason why that last glowing ember of that internal fire never fades to a sparkless, smoking rubble is that now and then - sometimes more rarely than others - a student or a group of students shows that they get it. What "it" is can change often, "it" can last just for a brief moment or few hours, "it" can be just a fleeting, superficial realization. But that glimpse of their getting "it" keeps us going.

I never see this more clearly and convincingly than when I get students doing solidarity-based, relationship-driven service. I learned early in my career, from some of the best mentors and colleagues I'll ever have, that solidarity in service makes all the difference.

There will always be parishes that need tables and chairs set up, organizations that need backrooms and storage spaces organized, streets and parks that need cleaning. But it is the organizations that partner students with marginalized people in need of interaction and those that serve with them that fuel the best realizations of getting "it" that I have seen, and help students make the strongest impact on society and in their own hearts.

A few months ago, in an action-packed three days, I had a back-to-back-to-back, a triple-header, of a Wednesday morning at the food pantry, a Thursday day-long Freshmen Retreat, and a Friday build day with Habitat for Humanity.

Students are never more industrious than when they have to bag fruits and vegetables in time for the herd of clients who are ready to roll in. They're never more generous than when there's a giant box of food in front of them and an endless line of hungry people who want them. They're never kinder than when their task for two hours is as simple as asking people how many of something they want and offering that quantity up to them for their boxes and carts. In my dozens of times working food pantries, I have never had students who wanted to leave when it was time to go, and I've never had students who didn't want to come back.

Coming off of that Freshmen Retreat, I missed a Friday in-service day for teachers in favor of chaperoning students to a Habitat for Humanity build site. Complementing some fundraising our parish and school had done for the Pope Francis Home Challenge and its matching fund pledge, we went down to contribute our time and talents in addition to our treasure. When you're standing in the skeleton of an unbuilt house, students don't disrespect each other, rip on each other, or lie to each other. instead, they're relying on one another to hold ladders, pass tools, or reinforce giant sets of heavy lumber. They work together; they encourage each other; they delight in the concreteness, the visual fruits, of their work. They learn from the volunteers who spend their full-time jobs building these houses, and they delight in learning about and meeting the families who come and go to invest their "sweat-equity" into their new house.

The constant renewal for me has come more potently through the theology class I am now teaching. While my responsibilities in teaching middle school feel onerous, like a distraction from my gifts and talents, and like something I'm not especially well-suited to be doing, my Social Justice & Vocations course for our high school seniors has been a godsend.

Our school took the one-trimester course on social justice and the one-trimester course on vocations and hybridized them. Now, seniors take a one-trimester, double-period course that integrates these topics into a beautiful monster who I call "SoJuVo." One of the reasons for our double-period is that it falls at the end of the day to facilitate service outings and experiential learning.

So far, our students have done an urban immersion exercise (a scavenger hunt that simulates the challenges for homeless teens), visited and assisted with operations at a homeless shelter/services organization, created shadowbox art with infirm senior citizens, shared a games-afternoon with active seniors, and spent an activities period with mentally/psychologically challenged people, and we have more opportunities on the horizon (like a full day at the Habitat site).

The students are never better behaved and more respectful and generous than they are with these marginalized people and those who serve them. They are constantly smiling and laughing. They are asking questions and learning about their new friends. They are charitably and patiently playing games, forestalling their own obsessions with the rules of the games or the level of competition (or lack thereof) in favor of laughter and memories. They put their phones away and focus their attention on each other and their new buddies.

It's freakin' beautiful.

And every weekend, following the service outing from the week, students have to write a 1-2 page reflection. They have to report what they did. They have to analyze it from social, historical, and cultural angles. They have to relate it to a Catholic Social Teaching theme or an insight from Scripture. And they have to share how they feel and what action they want to take to respond to it all. And I get to read them, and praise them (well, the ones turned in on time; and the ones that take the time to do it carefully), and share them with the world (check out our SoJuVo blog here!).

As soon as our van and bus pull back into the parking lot - or even as soon as we climb back into our vehicles when we start to depart a service site - they're back on their phones. They're talking smack about each other. They're telling stories, sometimes so unsavorily that you which you could just shake them and tell them to stop.

But for that hour or two every week, part of their education, part of their required course-work, is to spend time with people who society too often ignores. They have to strip away their layers of cynicism and being too cool, and confront those who they otherwise might not want to think about. They get laid bare from their superficial obsessions and their immature preoccupations and have to simply be human, with other humans. How Christ-like.

These experiences are so crucial to their starting to get "it". They need to understand what it's like to confront and embrace the dignity and value of all people. They need to appreciate that we have to opt for and consider the poor and marginalized in every decision we make, especially as it relates to investing our time and treasure. And they have to live out Christ's call to solidarity, to being mindful of all people as our brothers and sisters, whether friend or stranger, whether fully functional or differently abled, whether stable or poor, whether prosperous or jobless, whether well-fed or hungry.

It's awesome to force their hand with this. It's something they want to do, but they won't take the time to do it for themselves. The grace of Catholic schools is that we can integrate these experiences into their education because we value education as something that must also be spiritually formative.

Teaching and practicing solidarity is crucial to their getting "it." Call me crazy (it's accurate), but it's what keeps me coming back for more.