Rather than drifting off into the sunset, some seniors have chosen to do volunteer work for us, said Brother Ed Siderewicz, president of San Miguel Schools. "God put something into their hearts and they bring a beautiful spirit, a wisdom into the buildings." He calls them "anchors" and a "calming influence" on the mostly young staff.

The San Miguel middle schools in Chicago, one in the Back of the Yards, the other in the Austin neighborhood, are designed to bring a quality education to children who have few options. "These were throwaway kids in the public schools," said Mary Jane Grinstead, who tutors in math and reading at the Austin campus. "They said they'd never make it. But these are precious children and there is nothing wrong with their minds. They just had not been taught."

San Miguel teaches them using a nine-to-one student-teacher ratio; an eight and one-half hour day and a year-round schedule with an emphasis on reading. Many enter reading at a second grade level and are soon brought up to speed in the San Miguel program. Most go on to graduate from high schools in neighborhoods with the highest high school drop out rates in Illinois and the second highest in the country.

Grinstead, who was a senior manager in large corporations and now is a full-time freelance writer, said the environment at San Miguel is ideal for volunteers. "You can show up at any hour of the day and there will be a student who needs your help because the curriculum is structured so each student works at their own level. You don't have to prepare. You just help."

She explained that many need someone to drill them on the multiplication tables. Others need someone to listen to them read. Often one hour with an adult will keep the child going for two or three days on their own, she said.

Peter Goschy, a retired Chicago Public School teacher, performs similar duties at the Back of the Yards Campus. In addition, he instructs students in needlework in an end-of-the-day "renaissance" class devoted to special interests such as painting, cooking, and yoga. He learned to do needlework when he was confined to bed by illness as a child.

As a member of the Ignatian Lay Volunteer Corps, retired men and women organized to serve the materially poor, Goschy spends two days every week at San Miguel. Part of his gig is to mentor young teachers and to work with graduates now in high school, who come in the late afternoon for help with their assignments.

Many of the teachers are young people coming out of college who want to give a few years of their life to this mission because they want to change the world, Siderewicz said. "God sends them to us." They are paid $250 a month, receive health insurance and room and board. They live together in a faith community. Other teachers are paid salaries equivalent to those paid throughout the archdiocesan school system.

Because the stress level in the homes of many of the students can have a negative impact on their learning, San Miguel has a Community Outreach coordinator on staff at each campus to help reduce the stress. Sister Brenda Eagan, a member of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, handles the job at the Austin Campus. She works for the Daughters of Charity's St. Joseph Service program, whcih placed her there.

In her job she works with many volunteers. "We do anything that supports the kids, the parents or the community," she said. This runs the gamut from job training, to heating relief, to moving families out of shelters and placing them in housing, to retreats, to empowerment of dads. When she was hosting college students who came to observe the school, a grandmother furnished the lunch. She has enlisted African American men to talk to the dads about things as diverse as budgeting and spirituality. When children come to school with soiled clothing, she gives them shirts from a stash she has collected and another volunteer helps her wash the dirty laundry.

There's even a job for people who can't drive to the school. "The kids often need someone they can call and talk to," she said. "We literally depend on volunteers and we'll accommodate anyone who has a willingness to serve."

Nadia Hilliard, Assistant Director of Community Outreach at the Back of the Yards Campus, said one of their main focuses is ESL classes for adults in the community and there is a constant need for teachers for the daytime classes. Also, volunteers can be utilized in the renaissance classes at the end of each school day. These involve things like Goschy's needlework and can run the gamut from sports to crafts to art to just playing card games, Hilliard said.

Their outreach often involves helping with language and immigration issues. She cited the woman who came asking for help filling out an application for food stamps. "She did not have a child here but recognized San Miguel as a place to come for help. You cannot help kids if the community they live in is struggling."

San Miguel began in 1995 with a conversation between Siderewicz, newly returned from the missions in Guatemala, and Gordon Hannon, then a teacher at De La Salle Institute in Chicago, now principal of the Austin Campus. With few resources and sponsored by the Midwest Province of the De La Salle Christian Brothers, they took a leap of faith, prompted by what Siderewicz calls "restlessness in the heart put there by God." It is that restlessness that stirred all of the people who have come to work with them, he believes, including the first families that entrusted children to the new venture. They started classes with 18 children in the dining room of a former convent in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

Today, they have graduated 156 children from the original school, where the enrollment is largely Hispanic, and the Austin campus opened in 2002 with a predominant enrollment of African American children. The second school was made possible by a $1.2 million dollar gift from Gary Comer, founder of Lands' End. Is is named for him.

Most of the families served by San Miguel, which takes its name from a Lasallian saint in Ecuador who dedicated his life to educating poor youth in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, are below the poverty level. Children are accepted based on financial need or underperformance at their local public school. Only two percent of the school's income is from tuition; the rest is from grants and gifts.

Both campuses are in neighborhoods plagued by gangs and crime. "Yet there is much goodness and great potential in these neighborhoods," Siderewicz said. "Ninety-nine percent of the people are honest and hard working. The parents of our children are very courageous."

Goschy praises the students as well. "They are very self reliant and hard working," he said. Statistics show that 80 percent of the graduates finish high school and a significant number go on to higher education.

Drawn spiritually to the inner-city schools when he began teaching in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement, Goschy said he did not want to be cut off from that when he retired. A graduate of Loyola University, he said, Ignatian spirituality, "an inner journey that leads you into the world," has formed his life.

Grinstead, a native of Tennessee, said she was hooked immediately by San Miguel when a friend and board member told her about it. She said she was raised in a small town with a history of racial discrimination and an ugly lynching. "Although neither me nor my family had anything to do with that (the lynching), it is important to me to do something about it. The bias these children (San Miguel students) encounter does not sit well with me." A non-Catholic like many of the students at the Gary Comer Campus, Grinstead said she is struck by the ecumenical spirit of the place. "It is spirituality and faith in the best sense."

Siderewicz and his board are exploring the idea of a third school, which would be a public charter school. He is deeply saddened by the closings of so many Catholic schools, which, he said, leaves a huge hole in those neighborhoods. "I think it's a sad day for society that it is happening, but we can't mope over it. We have to be more proactive and look for the resurrection. It is calling us to rethink education and how we deliver it."

For a more complete reading of the San Miguel story, read "The Schools that Faith Built" by Terence McLaughlin FSC. For more information on volunteer opportunities at San Miguel or to obtain a book, call Adriana Rundle at 773-890-0233.

Virginia Mullery is a freelance writer living in North Chicago, IL.