At St. Benedict’s Prep, a K-12 Catholic school in Newark’s Central Ward, the key to success is community. This sentiment may seem anodyne these days as school leaders exude the importance of social-emotional support. Yet St. Benedict’s does it differently through a full-throated embrace of experiential learning.

That’s according to Dr. Glenn Cassidy who, in a recent interview, described St. Benedict’s intense focus on learning by doing and transforming it into knowledge. It is a model he experienced himself. Like 20 percent of current faculty, he is an alumnus who started 7th grade there in 1990 and returned to a school that “is home for me.” How has this school run by the Benedictine monks of Newark Abbey created a community that feels like home for its 1,000 students, almost all of whom are of color and economically-disadvantaged?

The answer is a structurally embedded emphasis on challenging students, nurturing leadership skills, and insisting that the most important thing students and faculty can do is work together to acquire real-life skills, specifically through four experiences that mark students’ spiritual, moral, and academic growth which Cassidy deems “rites of passage.”

While younger students also engage in experiential learning, this focus ramps up for new ninth-graders during Summer Phase, which runs from late July through August. (St. Benedict’s has an 11-month school calendar.) Rising freshmen arrive for a five-day camp-out on the property of the 15-acre campus with spartan accommodations (no AC, no devices). During that week called “Freshmen Overnight,” students learn about the culture of the school, each other’s names, the history and traditions, the songs and mottos (“the only easy day was yesterday” and “give up what you want for what we need”). At the end they are quizzed through individual oral exams and given school jackets. (St. Benedict’s was originally an all-boys school and went co-ed in 2020 at the request of students. Girls have separate accommodations and classes are sex-segregated. One of the girls’ mottos is “Whatever hurts my sister hurts me. Whatever helps my sister helps me.”)

After Freshmen Overnight is complete, students are assigned to groups that meet every day with a teacher where they focus on building community and students’ individual needs. “All of that, as well as the schoolwide Morning Convocation led by student leaders, marks this place as a home,” says Cassidy, “a place where you want to live.”

The second rite of passage is The Backpacking Project that occurs at the end of ninth grade during Spring Phase, which encompasses the entire month of May. All middle and high school students take immersive courses that involve hands-on learning (everything from “History of Martial Arts” to “Real Men Cook”) but rising sophomores prepare for and execute a four-day 55-mile hike on the Appalachian Trail, a journey that has been chronicled by the New York Times and 60 Minutes. They begin with a three-week boot camp that includes team building, leadership skills, outdoor training, and practice hikes. Each 8-person group elects a captain, navigators, medics,  cooks, and camping specialists. When it is time for the hike, students climb into buses and give up their cell phones to ride to the trail near the Delaware Water Gap, finally strapping on heavy backpacks. If they don’t make it the whole way, they have to do it again.

“No one individual knows everything,” says Cassidy. “They have to rely on each other in order to survive.” (Older students are “commanders,” adults keep an eye on all activity.)

The third rite of passage is the Water Adversity Challenge, prompted by data that shows African American youth are three to five times more likely to drown than others. During Summer Phase new sophomores are taught to become comfortable in water, graduating to higher levels of water skills, all guided by a Navy SEAL. During the final challenge students jump off a ten-foot tower wearing blackout goggles and a backpack, fully clothed in a sweatshirt, pants, and shoes. Once in the water they remove the backpack, shoes, and pants, the latter of which they’ve learned to convert to a floatation device. Then they tread water for three minutes in the deep end of the pool. “It’s pretty dramatic!” Cassidy exclaims. “And now they are so comfortable they can survive in adverse conditions.” 

The fourth rite of passage is called “WILD,” the Wilderness Inspired Leadership Development expedition. During Summer Phase at the beginning of junior year, students experience a “fully immersive training experience that prepares students to lead the community effectively and make their footprint in life.”  After four weeks of training that includes wilderness survival and non-fiction English literature, students spend thirty-six hours on their own camping out in an undeveloped section of Sussex County, taking shifts throughout the night and engaging in challenges within their groups where they rely on each other to complete the challenge.

During the years when students don’t have one of these rites of passage, they still are immersed in experiential learning. Course options during Spring Phase are driven, says Cassidy, “by faculty members’ vision and knowledge.” He recalls one teacher who had trained as a circus clown and taught a course in magic tricks, teaching students to design costumes and shows, as well as mastering the business side of the enterprise. Another teacher taught his class all about cameras, how to photoshop and how to print, culminating in a schoolwide art show. One of Cassidy’s favorite courses is Stage Rage, where a small group of students spends two weeks in intensive counseling. (Some students, he explains, have endured a parent being murdered, domestic abuse, struggles with gender identity, and various traumas.) “They talk about it and realize, ‘he got through this, I can too. We are committed to eliminating the stigma around mental health.” At the end of the five weeks, students perform on stage at other middle schools, acting out their traumas and their survival. “It’s so powerful to watch,” he recalls, “and frequently the only sound is students sniffling.”

St. Benedict’s survives too. Originally opened in 1868, the campus closed in 1972 after the Newark riots and white flight, reopening the following year with 83 students. Currently 98 percent of St. Benedict’s students enroll in college and 80 percent graduate. The school offers a myriad of opportunities, from international travel to an initiative between students and New Jersey State Troopers to “transcend the divide between law enforcement and communities of color” to partnerships with a nearby Jewish yeshiva and an Islamic school to break down barriers. 

The point, remarks Cassidy, is St. Benedict’s is a place you want to live, a place called home.