Social emotional learning for high school students has become one of the most discussed topics in education. Jesuit schools have been practicing it for more than 400 years. They just didn't call it that. They called it humanism, they saw it as forming the whole person.
At BC High, the framework for this work is found in Ignatian Spirituality. It emphasizes discernment, contemplation and cura personalis, or care for the whole person. Education that forms a young man by attending to how he integrates his intellect, his sense of self-awareness, and his proximity to those on the margins so that he might encounter and change the world around him. The McNeice Center for Ignatian Identity and Formation is the institutional home of that formation, offering more than 40 programs including daily prayer, retreats, service immersion, and spiritual formation, all rooted in BC High's Jesuit, Catholic identity.
What distinguishes BC High's approach from a standalone social emotional learning curriculum is that it isn't a class period or an add-on program. It runs through the rhythm of the school day and the full six-year arc of a student's time at BC High.
The daily morning prayer, the weekly Examen and a weekly monetary collection for non-profits meeting the needs of those on the margins are the most visible expressions of this. Morning prayers are always done with context. For whom, why or what are we praying about and what might be our connection to it? Prayer begins to feel personal and a natural extension of our world. The Examen is a structured Ignatian practice of reflection: students are invited to look at where they found meaning in their day and where they fell short. It teaches students and adults to be contemplatives in action: reinforcing what one is experiencing, measuring how one has acted or not in face of such a moment, and finally reconciling or changing our response so that we answer the invitation God extends to us. This kind of contemplative education is BC High's answer to the attention and mental health challenges students face, not as a wellness program, but as a spiritual practice with centuries of roots.
A profound expression of the social emotional learning curriculum at BC High is the retreat program–it is the lived out reality of finding God in all things. Each retreat reveals or emphasizes a quality or characteristic of God. Students may hike for 3 days in the White Mountains of New Hampshire focusing on God-in-nature and applying that awareness to their lives, or spend 3 days at a Trappist Monastery wrestling with Silence and what it can teach them about contemplation and how God is experienced in that space. Students can also elect to attend Kairos, Greek for the right time, and focus on events/experiences of their lives and how they have been formed and how they can witness God’s love through the relationships that have sustained them. It is a distinctly Jesuit retreat program - meeting the students where they are and revealing to them God at work in their lives.
The social emotional learning in the middle school programming at BC High follows a sequential retreat/service arc that begins in 7th grade. Seventh graders focus on stewardship of the earth through park and beach cleanups, gardening, and urban farming in partnership with local organizations. Eighth graders focus on cura personalis and the ministry of being present, volunteering at local homes for the elderly or assisted living facilities. Ninth graders volunteer in their local communities and have a day-long on-site retreat built around telling one's story, led by senior House mentors. Tenth graders focus on belonging and wholeness in the community, and serve in a non-profit to experience how many non-profits seek to empower those whom they serve with belonging and wholeness.
The formation isn't one single event. Instead, it's a sequence, intentionally built from grade 7 through senior year. The Stronger Together Student of Color Retreat, now in its third year, is one example of how that formation speaks to specific dimensions of identity and belonging: bringing students from historically underrepresented groups together at Craigville for three days of shared stories and solidarity.
Service immersion trips are part of BC High's social emotional learning high school programming that goes beyond simply traveling. Students are confronting their own assumptions, experiencing the world as it really is, building empathy across differences, recognizing what those on the margins have to teach them and processing difficult realities alongside their peers.
Domestic immersion experiences make this concrete. In Brownsville, Texas, students learn about the ongoing humanitarian border crisis and work with Catholic charities serving people arriving at our borders. In West Virginia, they see the realities of Appalachia and how government and industry can impact communities in terms of ecological and socioeconomic injustice. Through the St. Louis Project in Boston, students go out every Thursday of the school year on two routes through the streets around Downtown Crossing, delivering packages and companionship to people experiencing homelessness. And for some students, they don’t even have to leave school to have a significant impact on the Dorchester community. The McNeice Center partners with a small non-profit in Dorchester (St. Mark’s Community Education Program) and offers evening ESL classes for the local immigrant community twice a week for the entire year. Students can choose to tutor and thus learn how and why people choose to flee their homes and seek refuge in the U.S. It’s a powerful experience that reveals so much about our world and the plight of so many in these difficult times. This is what SEL for high school students looks like when it has roots in something larger and more complex than a curriculum framework.
The McNeice Center's commitment to whole-person formation extends beyond students. New faculty go through an orientation week in August and are accompanied bi-weekly throughout their first year, including a year-end retreat. Second and third-year faculty meet monthly to engage Ignatian spirituality in a fuller way. Tenure retreats built around the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius are offered to faculty in their third or fourth year. In the most recent year, more than 80 adults participated in retreats, service work, and immersion experiences through the Center.
The formation that BC High asks of its students runs through the entire community.
Students engage with the McNeice Center's programming from the moment they arrive at BC High. Retreat experiences begin in 7th grade and continue through senior year. Service requirements run from grade 7 through grade 11, with placements coordinated by the Center. Sacramental and spiritual programming, including daily Mass, the weekly Examen, and school-wide prayer services, runs throughout the year for the entire community. Students who want to go deeper can pursue service immersion trips, a retreat leadership track, or the in-house service experiences that enhance on a daily basis what they learn in class.
Learn more about the McNeice Center for Ignatian Identity and Formation and the programs available to BC High students.