Photograph by Matthew O'Shea
The morning stillness shatters at 7:30, when the 60 girls of Marian Middle School arrive. Already teasing and giggling, they spill armfuls of books, flop down to eat bagels and poached eggs, then head for homeroom—by which time principal Christy Leming has conferred with the school social worker about “a bit of a family crisis,” found a white shirt for a girl out of uniform, gently lectured another about hygiene, tracked down missing donuts and resolved a problem with the van that brings students (who live as far away as East St. Louis and Jennings) to the old Holy Family school building on Wyoming in south St. Louis.
The managed chaos never enters Founders’ Hall, where a pinkish-gold early morning light warms displays about the seven orders of women religious who founded the school in 1999. A trophy case holds statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her skin sometimes black, sometimes brown, sometimes Irish-porcelain white. The girls who walk past, chattering, are 88 percent African-American, 4 percent Latina, 4 percent Caucasian, 4 percent mixed race and immigrant. Many are Christian; few are Catholic. They are all, in that worn phrase, “at risk.”
Marian is one of the nation’s more than 60 NativityMiguel schools—private schools with negligible tuition and strong values. Funding comes from the government, foundations, corporations and individual donors—anybody who wants to see kids with ability but no resources plucked from indifferent elementary schools and taken by the hand in Grade 6, their minds trained and sparked with curiosity, their character disciplined, their confidence built so they can go on to college-prep high schools. The first NativityMiguel school was founded by the Jesuits for Latino boys on the lower East Side of Manhattan, and Marian’s boys-only counterpart here in St. Louis, Loyola Academy, was started by educators at St. Louis University High School. Loyola recently completed a successful capital campaign and moved into a new facility; the girls’ school, even now, gets less attention.
But it’s making inroads just the same.
“Marian” was one name on which the seven orders could agree, and they forsook the private-school “Academy,” tinged with snootiness, for plain, public-sounding “Middle School.” They knew they’d already have to talk long and hard to explain uniforms, strict rules, high expectations and a 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. school day. This year, though, recruitment’s a breeze; when the St. Louis Public Schools crisis came to a head, Marian’s phone started ringing. Now comes the hard part: saying no. The school takes only 60 girls, and a Marian girl must desperately want to be there. She must also read at least at a fourth-grade level when she arrives, because two years later she will be reading at least at an eighth-grade level, no exceptions. “We tell them if you can read, you can do anything,” says director Maureen Herrmann over her shoulder. She’s about to show off the “Sacred Space”—a chapel with four neatly rolled Muslim prayer rugs at the entrance, where rabbis and Baptist preachers are regularly invited to lead prayer. “The School Sisters of Notre Dame made all our linens, Nerinx donated the altar, the man across the street made the cross,” Herrmann says. “Donors gave the piano, and a St. Louis fireman is going to do stained glass for us.”
Technology arrives just as miraculously: Dell donated 20 laptops, which now roll from one classroom to the next on a cart. Only about 25 percent of the students have Internet access at home, but when they leave Marian, they keyboard fluently. At last check, graduate Alexis Cochran was pulling a 3.8 at Bishop DuBourg High School; Shatavia Reed a 3.7 at St. Elizabeth Academy; Danielle Young ranked fifth in her class at St. John the Baptist … Many grads go on to Cardinal Ritter College Prep: “It’s a great location for us,” Herrmann says. “And there are boys.” Her smile fades. “We just don’t think a Roosevelt or a Vashon is college prep. Girls come back from Nerinx Hall and Cardinal Ritter in their skirts and talk about homecoming or what they’re studying. And we have a women-in-leadership breakfast series where women tell their stories. Shimmy Gray-Miller, SLU’s women’s volleyball coach, said, ‘Y’know what? I’m a Marian girl. Somebody gave me a break on my education. You find your ticket out.’”
Herrmann cuts checks to various private high schools to subsidize Marian girls’ tuition, but there’s a firm contract: The girls must keep at least a 2.5 GPA, have a 90 percent attendance record and come back to Marian once a month to encourage and inspire the younger girls.
At the next change in classes, Herrmann stands in the hall, an island at high tide. “Daisha, where’s your sweater?” she asks, grabbing a young woman in a navy Marian sweat shirt. “It got lost,” Daisha answers, and Herrmann winces at the passive construction: “‘It got lost,’ not ‘I lost it’!” she mutters under her breath. The sweaters are new: “We classed it up a little,” she says, pointing to the crest, “and the girls said, ‘Like Harry Potter!’”
A young woman passes, looking sleepy. “Her family was living in a homeless shelter,” Herrmann explains. “They moved into a home this weekend, a house fully furnished by one of our volunteers.” She pauses to introduce Yamon, a seventh-grader from Liberia whose mom cleans lawyers’ offices downtown. Yamon’s just warming up, saying how she loves to read, when Leming beckons: “Sister’s looking for her!” Sr. Janice, a retired Franciscan, comes regularly to tutor Yamon—and when she wasn’t able to come the first few weeks of this year, Yamon panicked: “I need Sister! When is Sister coming?”
Classes end at 3:15, and the girls do chores—sweeping, recycling, watering plants—until 3:30 p.m. Then comes “enrichment”—drumming, chess, model United Nations diplomacy, yoga, theater. Homework’s done from 4:30 until 5:30 p.m.: “No more ‘Up until midnight, I have to do a report,’” Herrmann says. “There may not be a quiet place at home or an adult to help.” Every assignment will be done, however; dogs don’t eat these kids’ homework.
The most serious offense of all is disrespecting someone—whether a teacher, another student or yourself. The first weeks of school mean serious adjustment and stunned students arriving one after another to Leming’s office. There’s one warning, then a teacher conference, then the student fills out a “think sheet” reflecting on what she did and what she’d do differently, and the parents are notified and there’s a conference.
New students also learn to take notes, to review, to use a textbook intelligently—to use a textbook, period.
“Do your kids have books?” one mother asked Leming.
“Well, yeah, they have books!” Leming thought to herself and assured the woman that they did.
“Are they allowed to take them home?”
“We want them to take them home!”
The mother nodded. “All right. This seems like a pretty good place.”
Leming knows how physically poor the girls’ families are, but what troubles her even more is “a poverty of vision.” They need to believe in themselves, she says, and in their future. She’s especially wary of “quiet girl syndrome”—the girls who are docile and sweet and work just hard enough to get by unnoticed, but would be capable of rocket science if they only knew it.
Take Ines Guerrero. Anxious to please, she was miserable when she arrived, because she’d come to the United States from Mexico, then gone back, then returned here, and Spanish and English were scrambled like eggs inside her head. Now she loves the unconventional parent-teacher conferences at which she explains her projects to her parents (“My dad got to touch the Amazing Ooze in my science project; he was like, ‘Wow!’”) and talk about what she could improve (social studies). “I’ll probably go to an all-girls high school,” she confides. “My mom said first it’s the education, then it’s the boyfriend.”
After school today, Guerrero has a Zonta International meeting: “We are talking about women around the world, how men treat them. I’m doing something about, if they cheat on the man, what are they going to do to the woman? In one country they kill her.”
Tomorrow’s art; Wednesday’s basketball; Thursday’s “Choices”—about sex, work, life. “My brothers say, ‘Why do you come home at 5:30, and we get out at 3:30?’ and I say, ‘Because we do enrichment.’” She sighs in mock resignation. “They ask too many questions. They say, ‘Why are there no boys?’ and I say, ‘Sometimes boys talk about girls, or they bully you.’ I had that problem when I was in elementary.”
Another difference: “Teachers pay attention to you.” Guerrero hurries off, afraid she’ll be late to language arts with “Miss K.”
Kate Kozlowski was teaching about 100 eighth graders at a public school last year. She jumped at the chance to come to Marian. “Last year we couldn’t read any novels because we didn’t have any books, just one textbook,” she says. “This year I said, ‘I really want to read The Alchemist with the eighth graders,’ and Christy said, ‘OK, let’s order it.’” The students thrive on the discussions: “They have strong opinions; they have already thought a lot of things through, because they’ve had to.”
A girl comes into the classroom, shivering. “It’s so cold in here!”
“That’s ’cause you don’t have your sweater on,” a friend informs her.
“Anybody have a bookmark?” another girl calls, holding a copy of Schindler’s List.
They start rehearsing their assigned scenes from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Shanshatara is Scrooge, and she practically dances through her part, gestures sweeping, emotions to the 10th power. Careful, studious Niambi listens and asks, “Is that what the stage directions said?” ’Tara ignores her.
Kozlowski comes over as ’Tara exclaims, “Yes! God bless us, every one!”
“This is a famous line,” Kozlowski says. “What is the difference in Scrooge here?”
’Tara describes his newfound, joyful self-awareness.
“Exactly,” Kozlowski says. “We’re witnessing a transformation.”
