Annual leadership retreat helps young people tackle real-life issues
Lars Rascoe of Cathedral High School in Indianapolis drapes his arms around the shoulders of Kaylee Parsons and Paul Mpistolarides of Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis during a recent retreat to develop Christ-inspired leadership skills. (Photo by John Shaughnessy)
By John Shaughnessy
Emily Schafer and Brianna Radici had known each other for barely a day when the two high school students faced a tense moment of potential danger.
Brianna saw the danger as soon as Emily crossed the footbridge in the middle of the woods.
Just to their left was a small, steep drop-off that couldn’t be seen by Emily as she walked blindfolded through the woods while following Brianna’s verbal directions.
When Brianna saw that Emily was veering close to the drop-off, she gasped and reached for her. Then she calmed herself and verbally steered Emily to the safer side of the dirt trail that runs along the wooded grounds of Our Lady of Fatima Retreat House in Indianapolis.
“That was pretty scary,” Brianna said later as the 15-year-old sophomore from Roncalli High School in Indianapolis recalled that moment from an exercise in trusting others.
“You learn to trust,” said Emily, a 16-year-old sophomore from Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis. “You can’t do anything if you don’t learn to trust the person you’re working with.”
That message of trust was one of the lessons learned during an unusual three-day leadership retreat for Catholic high school students on Oct. 28-30.
Facing the concerns of high school
Beyond “the trail of trust,” one of the elements that made the retreat different was that it brought together 41 students from eight Catholic high schools in Indiana.
Indianapolis high schools included Bishop Chatard, Cardinal Ritter, Cathedral and Roncalli. Also involved were students from Our Lady of Providence Jr./Sr. High School in Clarksville, Father Michael Shawe Memorial Jr./Sr. High School in Madison, Oldenburg Academy of the Immaculate Conception in Oldenburg and St. Theodore Guérin High School in Noblesville, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese.
Another unusual feature was that each group of students came to the retreat with an issue or a concern from their high schools that their school administrators had identified.
The hope was that the students at the leadership retreat could develop solutions to address those issues and concerns, which have ranged from increasing school spirit to addressing alcohol use among teenagers.
One of the prominent concerns identified for this year’s retreat was how the Internet—especially the Web sites myspace.com and facebook.com—have been used by some high school students to trash, intimidate and bully other students.
That’s exactly the kind of real-life issue that Rick Wagner hoped high school students could tackle when he came up with the idea of the leadership retreat four years ago—when he was starting his ministry as the director of Fatima Retreat House.
“I just felt we weren’t empowering students as much as we should,” said Wagner, now the principal of St. Theodore Guérin High School. “We weren’t listening to their ideas to make their school better. I had envisioned bringing kids together from different schools. We felt we could train them and make them potential leaders. Bringing them in as sophomores, we felt they would still have two-and-a-half years to mentor other students in their school and make a difference as leaders in their school.”
The retreat now continues under the direction of Cheryl McSweeney, the program director at Fatima, with help from Brian Shaughnessy, a religion teacher at Bishop Chatard. McSweeney noted how the retreat has a definite faith-based component, offering Mass, reconciliation and a focus on being a servant-leader.
“We want them to follow the pattern that Christ set for us,” she said. “He didn’t come to be served. He came to serve. We’re drawing from John 13:15: ‘I have given you a model to follow so that as I have done for you, you should also do.’ ”
Finding the common ground
By late afternoon on the second day, the reactions of one of the student groups was revealing about the retreat.
The group was made up of five students: Katharine Finn from Providence, Korrine Gick from Oldenburg, Erin Mooney from Cathedral, Brandon Scroggins from Shawe and Alex Ziegler from Roncalli.
They had just been together since that morning, but they had already made progress toward one goal the retreat hoped to achieve: breaking down the barriers between students from different schools who often view each other in negative stereotypes or as bitter sports rivals—instead of sharing and celebrating their common Catholic roots.
“I like the fact that everyone seems so friendly here,” Alex said. “It’s nice to get together with all these people from different schools to actually work together on something instead of competing against them in sports.”
Katharine nodded in agreement and said, “With being big rivals, you sometimes get stereotypes and gossiping about different schools. Now that I’ve met people from other schools, it’s not just the school. I have faces to put with it. It’s nice to see the similarities and the differences. We know we all have problems, too. All schools have problems with bullying and cyber-bullying.”
Those shared realities led the group to come together to try to think of ways to foster and create attitudes and atmospheres where bullying and meanness can’t exist or they are minimized as much as possible.
“My principal said he’s going to suspend people if they find them bashing someone on myspace,” said Korrine, a student at Oldenburg.
Katharine mentioned that Providence has an “S.O.S. box” where students can anonymously report problems or suggest changes that will be viewed and investigated by a staff member.
“We could have a program that shows the consequences of what happens when things go on long enough, like the school shootings,” Alex said.
The brainstorming session continued until the group had a list of possible solutions—including retreats, teamwork activities and peer-mentoring groups—that develop trust and respect among the students in a school. Their emphasis was on building relationships instead of punishing people.
On the morning of the third day of the retreat, they shared their ideas with the other groups. They also listened to the presentations that the other groups made. When that part of the retreat ended, they had a concrete plan that could be shared with any school facing that concern.
“We find that gossip comes because people don’t know each other and respect each other,” Katharine said.
Erin noted, “You’ll stick up for people if you know them better.”
A lasting lesson in leadership
The afternoon sun sliced through the trees ablaze with orange, red and yellow leaves as the high school students waited for the last group to finish the trail of trust. It was a moment of free time on a beautiful autumn day, a day during which they had listened as a few speakers shared their thoughts on what it means to be a leader.
“Being a Christian leader means implementing your faith into the things you do,” said Paul Mpistolarides, a sophomore at Bishop Chatard.
“If you want to accomplish your goals, you have to believe,” said Lars Rascoe, a Cathedral sophomore, as he put his arms around the shoulders of Paul and Kaylee Parsons, another Bishop Chatard sophomore.
“I’ve learned a lot of the qualities that a good Christian leader has,” said Katharine Finn. “They need to have confidence. They need to do what’s right for everyone instead of [just] themselves. They have to make sure they are listening to God, and not what other people are pressuring them to do.”
By the end of the three days, the retreat leaders were impressed by what the high school students had learned and offered.
“We always hope they get some true life skills out of it,” McSweeney said. “We talked to them about trust and the importance of empowering others. We talked to them about recognizing the Christian role models in their lives and learning from them. We talked to them about how in a Catholic school, you really get a chance to build a faith-filled community. They got that. And they really got a chance to know each other and accept each other. That part was great to watch.” †
