Called to Teach

Creighton’s Magis Program has graduate-level education students serving in Catholic schools

By Eileen Wirth, Ph.D.

Magis volunteer Jeff Dorr stepped back to review the questions about the Code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylonia that he had written on the chalkboard for his sixth-graders at Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

"What do you think?" he asked Magis Program Director Molly Davies, BA'97, of Creighton. Davies, a veteran teacher and adjunct education/theology professor, had driven the 400 miles from Omaha to observe and mentor Dorr and his fellow Magis volunteer, John Roselle, who teaches theology at Red Cloud High School.

She suggested making the wording of a question about consequences for breaking Hammurabi's laws more specific. As Dorr did this, 14 lively Native American students burst into the room, talking and laughing as they scrambled to find their history books.

Kindly but firmly, Dorr admonished them to settle down as he opened class with a brainstorming session about current laws and the penalties for violations. For the next 40 minutes, he moved methodically through several oral and written activities to help students relate the ancient world to their lives on the reservation.

Toward the end of class, Dorr, a graduate of Xavier University, turned to St. Ignatius' Prayer of Generosity posted on another chalkboard and told students that the class would start reciting it regularly.

"I know that not all of you are Christians but generosity is also a big part of Lakota spirituality," he said.

When the bell sounded, the students departed as noisily as they had come and Dorr made a quick trip to the copy room to retrieve materials for his next class. The remainder of his day included more classes, meetings with Davies, Mass, dinner in the school cafeteria and further school work at the trailer on the mission compound where he lives with other volunteer teachers.

Dorr and Roselle, a 2007 Creighton alumnus, are among the 10 current participants in Magis, a six-year-old graduate program in Creighton's Education Department that places teachers in Catholic schools for two years while they earn their master's degrees in Education Secondary Teaching or Teacher Leadership, as well as teaching certificates, tuition-free. Participants receive a modest monthly stipend and live in community with other Magis volunteers.

Magis is an example of Creighton's efforts to serve Catholic schools, especially economically challenged schools like Red Cloud and St. Richard School in North Omaha, where Jennifer Ward teaches fifth-graders, many of whom are Sudanese.

Timothy Cook, Ph.D., associate chair of the education department and founder of the program, said it grew from a meeting that he attended at Notre Dame, where Catholic universities discussed ways to better serve Catholic schools. A local anonymous donor provided seed money to start Magis. Creighton is currently seeking other donors to help finance the program and assist Creighton in serving Catholic schools.

Pillars of the Program

The "three pillars" of Magis are professional education, spirituality and community living. The program opens with a summer of graduate work in education and spirituality at Creighton. Through their education courses, participants learn how to manage classrooms, discipline students and prepare and present lessons. Ward is this year's only participant with an education degree and teaching experience. Because her master's will be in educational administration, she took different education classes but she has lived with the others in Kenefick Hall and has taken her spirituality courses with them.

Both Davies and Cook said they regard teaching in Catholic schools as a vocation. Participants are selected for this competitive program based on both academic excellence and their interest in undergoing a spiritual formation program that somewhat resembles that of novices entering religious orders.

"The qualities we seek are academic rigor and interest in spiritual growth and development," Davies said. "All of our teachers are practicing Catholics." Many graduated from Jesuit high schools or universities or both. Community living includes faith sharing activities and community involvement. Roselle, for example, teaches confirmation preparation courses at Sacred Heart Church on the reservation.

Davies recruits participants from all over the nation through visits to campuses, but many first learn about the program through its website, creighton.edu/magis. Only about half of the applicants are selected. Sometimes worthy applicants are rejected because there is no suitable placement for them in a regional Catholic school - a problem that is likely to diminish as Magis expands from Nebraska and South Dakota to other states.

Next year, Davies hopes to add 15 participants, bringing the total to 23. The program can accept up to 15 applicants per year for a total of 30 participants, a figure it hopes to reach by 2009. That would be capacity for current staff and budget resources. Tuition and the stipends cost more than $25,000 per participant.

While the goal is to place as many participants as possible at "under-resourced" Catholic schools, placements at more affluent schools such as Omaha's Creighton Prep, Duchesne Academy, Mt. Michael and Skutt Catholic also are welcome and help build the entire program, she said.

Since the program began, 18 people have completed it and more than half are still teaching in Catholic schools in Nebraska, she said. One is in parish ministry at North Platte and another is an education department adjunct professor and teaches elsewhere in Omaha. There is no obligation to continue in Catholic education beyond two years.

Davies said that Magis will likely soon expand to New Mexico and possibly Nevada. "We've met with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and the Diocese of Gallup. They have a hard time recruiting qualified teachers."

Red Cloud is eager for more teachers at all levels, said Robert Brave Heart Sr., superintendent of schools. Red Cloud, which is located in the middle of the Pine Ridge Reservation, has long recruited young college graduates from all over the country to volunteer for a year to help staff the school. Most have no education backgrounds but undergo an intense orientation to prepare them to live on the reservation and work with Native American students, often as teacher aides or in staff positions.

Magis' combination of a two-year commitment and graduate work in education helps Red Cloud academically, he said. "We are hoping to get three or four more next year because of the quality of the program. We like it that we automatically get two years and two could lead to a third (year of volunteering). The longer the service, the better the work."

Brave Heart said that it takes volunteers "a semester or a year to establish themselves. By the second year they have a good rapport with students and good teaching strategies." Nick Dressl, principal of the high school, and Jennie Sierria, principal at the prekindergarten through eighth-grade school, agreed. They praised the work of Dorr and Roselle.

Davies said she is particularly grateful to the program's anonymous donor for his personal and spiritual support for Magis and its participants.

"Our donor is still very involved," she said. "He calls about every two weeks. He prays the rosary for our participants. He shows his interest and support for me."

Cook said he feels that Magis has reached a "breakthrough point" with area Catholic schools.

"In the early years, we had to go out and work harder to get schools to participate with us," he said. "Now they come to us."

About the author: Wirth is professor and chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Creighton. She is also author of the book They Made All the Difference: Life-Changing Stories from Jesuit High Schools, which focuses on the role of Ignatian spirituality in Jesuit high schools nationwide.

Jeff Dorr
Hometown: Milwaukee
B.A.: Xavier University in History, 2007

By the time Jeff Dorr graduated from Xavier University with a minor in education, he had decided to teach. He had passed up student teaching in order to spend a semester in Nicaragua but sought a graduate program that would turn him into a teacher. A Jesuit friend from home suggested Magis because of its stress on spirituality.

While he would have preferred to teach high school, Dorr accepted his middle school placement at Red Cloud because it filled the school's needs.

"This is what it boils down to," he said. "I didn't go into teaching for self serving. I'm here to help the whole school. There are a lot of challenges in middle school."

Dorr, who said he tends to be hard on himself, said that the first year of teaching is difficult under any circumstances and even veteran teachers find teaching on the reservation a challenge.

Growing up in an upper-middle class family, Dorr always knew he had many options and talents and his family helped motivate him to succeed. His students face a far more daunting reality.

"Here, the number of jobs is limited," he said. "My students have abilities they haven't realized they have at this point. They have an inability to grasp onto their talents and strengths. I want to encourage them to buy into the knowledge and abilities they have and to believe in themselves."

Dorr said living in a rural setting for the first time also is challenging. "This weekend I wanted to go out and take a break, but where do you go?"

Rural poverty on the reservation is different than the urban poverty he saw in Nicaragua and "there's a lot I haven't sorted out. I'm still trying to figure out how to become a greater part of the community."

In addition to teaching, Dorr supervises an athletic club and drives the Red Cloud school bus. "More than anything, this puts me in touch with where the students come from. I can understand the differences when I see what their front door looks like."

Despite the difficulties, Dorr said he is committed to staying the two years, confident that it will be a "period of growth."

"When I got the e-mail from Molly, being offered this option was a sign that I was meant to be here. It is sometimes hard to see that in the day-to-day, but when I step back and get a tiny bit of distance, yes, this is where I am supposed to be."

John Roselle III
Hometown: Tulsa, Okla.
B.A.: Creighton University in Theology, 2007

When John Roselle came to Creighton, he planned to be a lawyer, but he changed his major to theology as he found his faith becoming increasingly important to him. He joined the Cortina Community, a program in which members live in McGloin Hall and focus on building community, sharing their faith and performing community service.

Other significant undergraduate experiences included a spring break service trip and spending a semester in Creighton's Encuentro Dominicano Program in the Dominican Republic.

He began to think that he should teach theology in order to share his faith. The Magis Program "seemed like a very dynamic way to enter the profession and become a teacher."

Roselle spent an intense summer earning 13 graduate credit hours to prepare for his Red Cloud assignment. He student-taught theology at Creighton Prep to students from various Catholic schools who had failed the course, good preparation for any future work with students "who didn't want to be in school."

At Red Cloud, Roselle teaches five periods of theology a day, drives the school bus twice a week, helps students with ACT test preparation and teaches confirmation prep at Sacred Heart Church. He also moderates a movie club that meets weekly, and he puts in hours of class preparation and grading at night. He and Dorr also are still taking graduate education courses.

Roselle is a warm, caring and imaginative teacher who uses such things as popular music to help make lessons come to life. In one class, for example, the goal for the day was: "To think about the role of the prophets."

"Prophecy is not just telling the future, it is telling the truth about the present," he told the class, then led the students in brainstorming about what would make the world better. The class ended with a song by Kelly Clarkson about people who were longing and hoping to be set free.

Roselle said he even loves grading papers because it allows him to see how students are thinking. He tries to cite what they are doing well, rather than to correct errors.

"My goal is not to bring God to them but to basically encourage them to see God already in their lives and consider how God can become an even more important part of their lives. I like to think of each class as a mini-retreat." 

Jennifer Ward
Hometown: Lincoln, Neb.
B.A.: University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Elementary
Education and Theater, 2005

Jennifer Ward's road to a Magis teaching position at St. Richard School took a long detour from her childhood in Lincoln, Neb. — through two years of teaching at a Catholic school in Taiwan. A graduate of Lincoln Southeast and UNL, she had never before experienced Catholic education and it changed her life.

"I met an amazing American missionary who was in his 90s," she said. "He became my spiritual director, and he influenced my desire to continue working in a Catholic school."

When Ward returned home last April, she found the Magis program on the Internet, and was accepted. "It fit perfectly." Because she already had her teaching certificate, she is pursuing her master's in educational administration with the goal of becoming either a principal of a Catholic school in Africa or working to bring theater to inner-city Catholic schools.

Ward said that her work in Taiwan helped prepare her for teaching at St. Richard, where Sudanese students make up about a fourth of the population and most of the rest of the children are African-American. Both are cross-cultural experiences.

"My having experienced life as a minority in Taiwan gives me a perspective from which to better understand the minority experience of my students and their parents."

Ward also teaches a theater class that she is particularly enthusiastic about and will expand next year because it allows students to express things about their lives that they need to convey.

"Theater offers students a forum in which to experiment with decision-making in a safe environment," she said. "The choices students make on stage help build real-life character. Our theater class at St. Richard School is a forum for dramatic literature performance, transmission of thought through art, performance, music and dance. This is theater for social justice. Theater asks us to look inward to better understand and construct a culture of self."

Ward lives in a community of other Magis teachers in the St. Bridget Convent in South Omaha. She said she loves both her work at St. Richard and experiencing the rich cultures of both North and South Omaha.

"When I left Taiwan, I hadn't a clue (about what to do) but this (Magis) fit perfectly with what I wanted to do," she said. "When you allow the Holy Spirit to guide your path, God's will can be done. That's what I think is happening."

Schools Served

Students in Creighton's Magis teaching program have served in the following schools: Archdiocese of Omaha: Jesuit Middle School, Holy Ghost, Holy Name, St. Thomas More, St. Bernadette, Holy Cross, St. Richard, St. James Seton, All Saints, St. Peter and Paul, St. Joan of Arc, Scotus Central (Columbus, Neb.), Gross Catholic, St. Francis (Humphrey, Neb.), Roncalli Catholic, Skutt Catholic, Duchesne Academy, Creighton Prep, Mercy High School, Mount Michael Benedictine, West Point Central Catholic. Diocese of Grand Island, Neb.: Grand Island Central Catholic, Kearney Central Catholic. Diocese of Lincoln, Neb.: Cathedral of the Risen Christ. Diocese of Rapid City, S.D.: Red Cloud Indian School, Pine Ridge, S.D., Red Cloud Middle School, Red Cloud High School.

Creighton Working to Bolster Catholic Schools

Creighton University is at the forefront among universities seeking to ensure a bright future for Catholic schools. Creighton's expertise and tradition of service can have a significant impact on the future of Catholic schools in the United States, and indeed, the world.

In 2005, the U.S. bishops urged Catholic higher education to be an active partner with K-12 Catholic school education - especially in the preparation of teachers and leaders. Creighton University is taking up this mantle, to benefit not only the Church, but all of society.

Creighton's efforts — educating new teachers specifically to serve in Catholic schools, providing certification and leadership training for current teachers, collaborating with (arch)dioceses, conducting educational research, serving as a national resource, and more — are all important answers to the bishops' call to higher education.

Yet, Creighton's legacy and willingness to lead in Catholic school education must continue to excel and meet ever-changing challenges. Creating an Institute for Catholic School Initiatives will provide a formal structure to concentrate Creighton's current efforts and expand to serve even more schools, teachers and students.

The Campaign for Creighton University will partner with philanthropic leaders who share Creighton's transformative vision of an Institute for Catholic School Initiatives that sets the pace for Catholic educational excellence, which is rooted in Creighton's Jesuit tradition of academic excellence and commitment to serve those most in need.