By James Millikan, SJ
“Hey! Yo! HEY!!!”
With the last “Hey!”, the banter changed. Joshing and good-natured ribbing gave way to shirt grabbing and wide-eyed ultimatums.
“Break it up, gentlemen!” I said, jettisoning a half-eaten sandwich while making strides towards the quad.
The jostling reached a fever pitch as I drew close, taunts escalating with neither party showing signs of backing down. A sort of brinkmanship had taken hold of the group, and, in the buzz of intensity, you could sense that an all-out brawl was imminent.
Just when the first blow was about to be thrown, a commanding voice rang out from the corridor. “Gentlemen!” the deep voice boomed. Coach Stevenson—our levelheaded Dean of Men—had arrived on the scene. Tensions dissipated like air from an overblown balloon. Most of the group shuffled off sheepishly to class; the two would-be fighters were whisked to the main office.
As part of my Jesuit formation, I was assigned to teach for three years at Verbum Dei Jesuit High School in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Verbum Dei calls itself “the school that works” because students earn approximately half of their tuition from an innovative Corporate Work Study Program. More than 70% of the school’s diverse student body is Latino, and 15% are African American. The majority of faculty and staff members are also people of color. An extraordinary 100% of seniors are accepted to college, and the school is devoted to preparing students who will exhibit five key characteristics at graduation: open to growth, intellectually competent, religious, loving, and committed to justice.
Verbum Dei has long enjoyed what Ignatius called unión de ánimos—a unity of hearts and minds—even as conflict swirls in the surrounding neighborhoods. But those bonds were strained in the wake of the pandemic. Zoom classes and social distancing stymied impulse control and frayed nerves. Simmering tensions bubbled to the surface. Part way through my first year teaching algebra 2, precalculus, statistics and calculus, it was abundantly clear that this assignment would span a broader syllabus than I had initially imagined.
A Simple Contest
Verbum Dei does not primarily serve a quiet, passive, sedate student body.
In the squirrely hours before the Christmas break, lecturing for the 90-minute block period was out of the question. Instead, I announced a competition: “Gentlemen, you have been chosen to serve as expert witnesses for the McDonald’s scalding coffee case. The team that develops the most accurate mathematical model and most precise explanation of when it’s safe to take the first sip wins.”
We boiled a hot pot of water, carefully recorded a few temperature readings, and the students were off to the races.
Groups eagerly worked away on equations to approximate the experimental data and prepared talking points on constant multiplicative rates of change, intercepts, logarithms, asymptotes and initial conditions—all in an effort to one-up their peers. Many presentations were excellent, but one group was the clear winner.
“Nah, Fr. Jon carried you!” one student said playfully to the winning group, referring to Jon Fuller, SJ, who frequently helped in the class. As the bell rang and students filed out onto the quad, they continued to debate the merits of their models, taking friendly digs and giving each other good-natured shoves.
Youthful zeal channeled into collective achievement. Ignatius—whose attempt to “outcompete” Francis of Assisi and Dominic of Guzman started him down the path to heroic virtue—would be proud.
Wisdom and Stature
Other classes presented the opposite challenge: pandemic withdrawal and anxiety enveloped students like a dense fog.
For months, a calculus student entered class with his eyes downcast, hoodie up and ear buds in. He gazed wearily into his iPad screen until the bell rang, a six-foot chasm separating him from his nearest peer.
But today is different. He powers off his iPad, pulls back his hoodie and removes his AirPods. Standing tall in the front of the class, he takes a deep breath and presents the results of his “thrifty farmer” investigation—a classic related rates and derivatives problem on the maximum area of land that can be enclosed by a three-sided rectangular fence built along a river.
Taking a page out of my undergraduate Calc 2 prof’s playbook, I insist on careful justification of each step. He knocks it out of the park and is met with hearty classroom applause. He takes his seat a more poised and confident young man, better equipped to navigate whatever life throws his way.
The next day he walks in chatting cheerfully with a classmate, no hoodie or headphones to be seen.
The Victor’s Crown
W. E. B. Du Bois prayed that the next generation would “grow the grim grit of men who never know they’re beaten, never own defeat, but snatch success and victory out of the teeth of failure by keeping everlastingly at work and never giving up.”
Our Corporate Work Study Program—where students work one day a week to offset a share of the tuition—plays a key role in this formative work. Retreats and service projects further advance that goal. But one activity continues to make an outsized contribution to the students’ holistic development: sports.
For the last three years, I have served as an assistant soccer coach, drawing upon my time as a collegiate soccer player and filling in wherever needed. Towards the end of practice, I would don a referee whistle clipped to my UC Davis Health chaplain lanyard—a nod to the broader purpose of our time on the field—and ref scrimmages.
The arc of the seasons was telling. At first, I was forever stopping plays for reckless tackles and heated verbal exchanges. Partway through the pre-season, I winced at the thought of hotheaded seniors being launched into the world in a few short months.
But inevitably, progress was made. Soon, players called their own subs and calmly handed over the ball after disputable calls. We gelled as a team and—following our athletics motto, “Victory through brotherhood, integrity, dedication, and discipline”— secured the league championship in the spring of 2024.
I see this heartening trend playing out throughout Verbum Dei Jesuit High School. Pandemic school closures are receding in the rearview mirror. Our students once again —as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote—“study side-by-side in the socially-healing context of the classroom.”
Academic excellence is on the upswing. Physical altercations are now few and far between. Faculty, staff and students work together towards a shared horizon of possibility; unity flowing from the Word made flesh lives on. “The grass withers and the flowers fall,” writes the prophet Isaiah, “but the Word of God [Verbum Dei] endures forever.”
James Millikan, SJ, a Jesuit in formation, served for the last three years at Verbum Dei Jesuit High School. This fall, he began theology studies at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, California.
