Teaching in a ‘foreign’ country

Two worlds come together in the U.S. heartland

By Mike Beckman

I grew up just outside Madison, Wisconsin and attended a mostly white high school that had many resources, so I was not prepared for what awaited me when I began teaching in Chicago’s public high schools. I thought I had seen many walks of life during my own high school years, from the students who lived on farms and had to milk cows every morning before school, to those who would go on to compete in college sports and the NFL, and those who enrolled in Ivy League schools. It wasn’t until I attended DePaul University in Chicago, that I grasped the other realities in this country.

Nothing in my background could prepare me for my part-time student teaching position in Chicago’s public high schools. On the first day, I felt I had entered a foreign country.  The school’s main hallway had mostly information on enlisting in the Marines.  In contrast, my high school hallway had information about community colleges and state universities. A few of my classmates had joined the military, but plenty of other alternatives and information were presented. 

Everything I had heard–while attending the annual School of the Americas protest and vigil in Fort Benning, Georgia–about minority high school students being aggressively targeted by the U.S. military to enlist became reality. Fort Benning recruits, trains and deploys soldiers all over the world. In November 2006, I attended the annual vigil and although it was my fifth time, it felt like the first, because it was my first one traveling with Jesuits. The November anniversary commemorates the date in 1989, when six Salvadoran Jesuits were assassinated, along with their housekeeper and her daughter, at the University of Central America in San Salvador.

We met as a group for faith sharing and liturgy on several occasions before traveling and spent much of the weekend in Georgia in prayer. Participating in the November 2006 vigil was a coming together of past, present, and future. Witnessing and experiencing the faith-based activism in Georgia helped me to figure out my calling to study theology as a lay, male student at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. 

I had always thought I was an anomaly: wanting to develop a theology that covered a sense of personal, social and economic liberation in the Roman Catholic tradition.  However, it couldn’t be all brains without being hands-on. Studying at Berkeley has put me in touch with some of the most talented future leaders in the Church, both lay and ordained, who are not only intelligent, but also know when it’s time to go out into the community and connect with people in real-life situations. Our ministries range from working in prisons and hospital chaplaincy for some of the poorest residents of Oakland to ministering in bi-racial parishes, and supporting and working to improve the plight of immigrants in this country.

Your turn
Have you ever thought that you knew a lot about something only to realize that there was much more to learn? On which occasions have you felt that God was calling you to a particular service?

The beguines were lay women who, in the 12th century lived alone and, without taking vows, devoted themselves to a life of prayer and service to others. They lived in the cities and created communities of faith and commitment to service. At the beginning they were few but, by the end of the century they were counted in the hundreds and in the city of Ghent, their numbers climbed to the thousands.