Upper Midwest Jesuits | Chicago-Detroit Province

UPDATE, September 13, 2011:
If you missed hearing the Tavis Smiley interview on WBEZ, click here to visit the Tavis Smiley website and listen to the podcast. 

Christ the King (CTK) and the Cristo Rey Network are being featured by radio and television host Tavis Smiley as “the ray of hope” in America’s education crisis. Smiley is responding to the alarming dropout rate among teenagers, especially African-American males, by traveling across America to speak to education experts and students about the challenges they face and how education can be redirected to address their needs. He will feature his findings and stories of hope on his radio and television programs (details below). “A new focus on our Black boys is a renewed focus on America,” says Smiley. Only three out of every 100 African-American males will graduate college by age 25, he explains.

CTK will be featured on the Tavis Smiley documentary “Too Important to Fail,” which will premiere Friday, September 9, on National Public Radio and Public Radio International.

Tune in to WBEZ-Fm Sunday, September 11, 2011, at noon and Monday, September 12, 2011, at 1 p.m. to hear the interview.

Fr. Christopher Devron, SJ, with Christ The King students in front of the school, in the spring of 2010.

In the radio story, CTK senior Emmanuel, classmate Stanley, and Rob Birdsell, President of the Cristo Rey Network, discuss the hope and opportunities CTK and Jesuit education provide. In the Midwest alone, the Jesuits run 20 secondary and pre-secondary schools that serve more than 10,000 students and their families. Like Christ the King, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago, Loyola High School in Detroit, and Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in the Twin Cities are Jesuit schools that concentrate on serving communities where the need for high quality education is greatest. More “traditional” Jesuit schools not only support and help make possible Cristo Rey- and Nativity-model schools, but also directly serve students in the greatest need through scholarships and specially designed tutoring programs. Click here for a listing of our schools.

The radio program promotes a five-part PBS-TV series Smiley is doing on “The Education of African-American Boys and their Impact on America,” which will premiere on Tuesday, September 13, at 8 PM Eastern on PBS.

“This school has given me a chance to do something I never could have imagined,” Emmanuel said during the taping at CTK. He plans to attend an engineering program in college next year and is busy preparing to apply. “At first it was tough walking home through the neighborhood in a shirt and tie and hearing all the stuff guys were saying. But now they leave me alone and I think many of them look at me and wish they could be in my shoes.” Emmanuel works five days a month (and kept his job five days a week last summer) at the law firm of Hoogendoorn & Talbott LLP, through CTK’s Corporate Work Study Program.   (Left: Senior Emmanuel poses in front of the banners of colleges and universities–some of which he will soon be applying to for admission in Fall 2012. Photo by Bill Healy)

For more information about Christ the King Jesuit College Preparatory School:

• Visit CTK’s homepage and Videos
• Learn more about CTK being honored with prestigious architecture award
• Read about CTK in Partners magazine: Spring 2010 and Fall 2008