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FALL IMMERSION EXPERIENCES OPEN EYES AND HEARTS
- Ten RJ students stand astonished as they watch families and individuals sift through a massive landfill in Honduras looking for items to sell, keep or consume.
- A senior learns the value of presence when she sits and works one-on-one with young survivors of abuse at the Tennyson Center.
- A bus full of members of the Class of 2024 sits silently as they witness a truck pass filled with Haitian migrants standing shoulder to shoulder as they are being deported from the Dominican Republic.
- Twenty-four seniors spend an evening by candlelight in Kansas City as they engage in an energy fast and learn about the economic and environmental underpinnings of a power plant just down the street.
- Members of the Class of 2025 aspiring to be journalists walk the desert of Mexico observing discarded clothing and shoes left behind by migrant families.
These are just snapshots from our fall Senior Immersion Experiences that took place in October where 83 seniors worked with and alongside vulnerable communities in Colorado, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, and Missouri.
As a Catholic school, we are focused on our commitment to caring for our most vulnerable neighbors. Immersions allow students to meet people directly and witness firsthand the injustices caused by social sin. Former Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Peter Hans-Kolvenbach, SJ, writes:
“When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Personal involvement with innocent suffering, with the injustice others suffer, is the catalyst for solidarity which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry and moral reflection.”
As a Catholic school, we are focused on our commitment to caring for our most vulnerable neighbors. Immersions allow students to meet people directly and witness firsthand the injustices caused by social sin. Former Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Fr. Peter Hans-Kolvenbach, SJ, writes:
“When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change. Personal involvement with innocent suffering, with the injustice others suffer, is the catalyst for solidarity which then gives rise to intellectual inquiry and moral reflection.”
We reserve these experiences for seniors as a culmination of their experiences with community engagement through the Ignatian Immersion & Solidarity Program. We believe that by the time they are seniors, we have adequately prepared them to hold and carry some of the heaviness they encounter in many of these Immersion Experiences. This is especially pertinent to their formation as they discern their futures and place in our global community.
We know that witnessing, dialoguing with and standing in solidarity with those affected by injustice are essential if we hope our students will embody our Catholic values in their adulthood. Our job is to accompany these seniors lovingly at every step as their eyes are opened and as they feel called to act perhaps more deeply than ever before.
Something unique to our Regis Jesuit immersion program is that it is tied directly to our academic curriculum. Immersions are not a separate or additional aspect of what we do—they are central to what we do, demonstrated by the fact that 75% of our immersion trips are tied to academic course prerequisites. In these classes, students have the opportunity not only to prepare intellectually and spiritually for these experiences, but many of them also have a structured academic space in which they can debrief them and apply them to real-life practices upon return while discerning their future career/vocation.
As a teacher of one of our Theology of Encounter classes and director of the IIS program, Christina Ortiz can personally attest to the growth and transformation occurring in these spaces. After traveling to a rural campo in the Dominican Republic with her class, she found their learning environment entirely transformed after the group returned home. They bonded over shared experiences, fell in love with a community and a culture, relished in the incredible hospitality afforded to them, and returned as a group bonded in faith, trust and hope. No curriculum, no matter how brilliant, can possibly match an experience like that!
Our hope is that these experiences offer glimpses into God’s Kingdom. We pray that our students might have the courage to be transformed so that they, in turn, might use their God-given talents to build a more just, more compassionate world for all—the kingdom of God.
We know that witnessing, dialoguing with and standing in solidarity with those affected by injustice are essential if we hope our students will embody our Catholic values in their adulthood. Our job is to accompany these seniors lovingly at every step as their eyes are opened and as they feel called to act perhaps more deeply than ever before.
Something unique to our Regis Jesuit immersion program is that it is tied directly to our academic curriculum. Immersions are not a separate or additional aspect of what we do—they are central to what we do, demonstrated by the fact that 75% of our immersion trips are tied to academic course prerequisites. In these classes, students have the opportunity not only to prepare intellectually and spiritually for these experiences, but many of them also have a structured academic space in which they can debrief them and apply them to real-life practices upon return while discerning their future career/vocation.
As a teacher of one of our Theology of Encounter classes and director of the IIS program, Christina Ortiz can personally attest to the growth and transformation occurring in these spaces. After traveling to a rural campo in the Dominican Republic with her class, she found their learning environment entirely transformed after the group returned home. They bonded over shared experiences, fell in love with a community and a culture, relished in the incredible hospitality afforded to them, and returned as a group bonded in faith, trust and hope. No curriculum, no matter how brilliant, can possibly match an experience like that!
Our hope is that these experiences offer glimpses into God’s Kingdom. We pray that our students might have the courage to be transformed so that they, in turn, might use their God-given talents to build a more just, more compassionate world for all—the kingdom of God.
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Regis Jesuit High School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, athletic and other school-administered programs.