School inspires girls to aim high: kids living on the edge find family in Harlem

National Catholic Reporter, March 21, 2003 by Patricia Lefevere

The Sr. Thea Bowman Middle School in central Harlem may be the only school in the nation whose students, all girls, have to climb a mountain to gain admission. What makes the climb so taxing is that there are no practice slopes in Harlem.

None, that is, unless one counts the boulders--poverty, drugs, alcohol, teen sex and pregnancy, street crime and unsafe housing--strewn in the way of most local adolescents. Most of Thea Bowman's students come from single-parent homes where supervision is often scarce because a parent is overworked, burdened by addiction or simply neglectful.

"Our students have not experienced much racism because they've never been out of the neighborhood," said school president and former principal Laurel Senger. To win admission into the middle school--the school program includes grades six through eight--fifth-graders attend four weeks of "basic" summer school, a week's camping trip in Williamstown, Mass., and an interview with Senger.

On the next to last day at camp, the girls make the 3,491-foot ascent to the summit of nearby Mount Greylock. "It's a formidable task for most," Senger said, noting that many fear they cannot complete the three-hour--or longer--climb.

But all do. Why they reach the top has less to do with their brawn and build and more to do with their bravery and the support they receive from other girls on the journey, Senger said.

On their last camp day, the girls sit around a large drawing of "Attitude Mountain." They place their names at various levels on the mountain, indicating how they thought they handled the weeklong experience. Most put themselves halfway to two-thirds of the distance up the mountain. However, they find that their companions move their names to a higher elevation, based on a good deed, an act of sharing, an encouraging word or gesture that may have gone unnoticed by the girl herself, but not by the recipient of her kindness.

Evaluating the climb and the entire camp experience has helped girls unlock their desire to "aim high" and follow the paths that will lead them to higher education, a career and an enriched family life. In their yearbooks, eighth-graders have credited the camp and the climb with being the place and event where they discovered their own talents and their ability to lead, to trust and to master challenges.

Attitude is on a scale with academics at Thea Bowman, which is housed on the top floor of St. Aloysius School on West 132nd Street. Now in its eighth year, the Sr. Thea Bowman Middle School is one of a quartet of programs offered by St. Aloysius School. In 1990 Senger, a school administrator and specialist in romance languages and the arts, took over the school when it was collapsing under the weight of falling enrollment, low teacher morale and much debt. St. Aloysius lacked a library and had no preschool or kindergarten programs. Five years earlier the, Jesuits of the New York province had agreed to assume responsibility for the administration of both parish and school.

For Senger, who had taken a leave from education and was working in New York at Covenant House, the opportunity to build up a school and help students succeed in the central inner city "was an educator's dream.... I thought it would be great to reach kids who might be on their way to Covenant House"--a refuge for street children. "Kids don't realize how one decision or mistake can get them into the street."

Following a year of community assessment, she initiated a program for children ages 2 and a half to 5 years, another for first- through fifth-graders and two separate middle school programs for boys and girls. Fifty-five boys are enrolled in The Gonzaga Program, directed by Jesuit Fr. Edward Durkin. It operates a few blocks away, in a section of nearby All Saints School. In five years St. Aloysius grew from 116 to 300 students.

Bowman girls don't mind not rubbing shoulders in the crowded hallways or sharing classroom time with the boys. "We can be more focused on our studies and do our work better," said Seymone Kelly, an eighth-grader. Kelly doesn't mind wearing a uniform either. It means less daily deliberation over the "What shall I wear?" dilemma.

The Sr. Thea Bowman program is the only all-girls, Jesuit-sponsored middle school in the nation. The Jesuits run some 50 middle and high schools; a dozen are boys only, the rest coed. A hallmark of Jesuit education is contained in the motto, "To be more," Senger said. Kindness and consideration for others are enshrined in the Jesuit charism of cura personalis or care for the individual. "We tend to each one's needs here."

The girls' program takes its name and much of its inspiration from the late African-American Franciscan nun.

Born in rural Mississippi in 1937, Bowman chose to become a Catholic at 10. When she was 16, she joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in La Crosse, Wis., the order that had taught her. She died of cancer in 1990--the year the Harlem middle school named to honor her was being planned.