At Carondelet the message I was clearly given was that within the Charism of the CSJ, they had a profound love of God and a love of dear neighbor without distinction. I believe that I’ve seen this embodied by the senior class that I teach, and I wanted to introduce it to my Freshman class.

Each individual student in my Freshman classes were asked to “show” the profound love of God and love of dear neighbor without distinction. I told them that there were now boundaries to how they could show me this. They could use any form of media or any medium that spoke to them. They could use technology, but it wasn’t required. Essentially they were permitted use their gifts to best create an assignment that was individual to themselves, and enlightened the class on how to think outside the box.

I know that this could sound like an assignment without enough direction and that the students would need more information in order to succeed. I am happy to say that these young ladies did the exact opposite. Not every project was outstanding, but the outstanding assignments went so far beyond my imagination, that I wouldn’t have done this differently if I had to do it again.

Four examples I would like to share show the creativeness of the young ladies and very different ways that they achieved the goal of the assignment. The examples that you can see below include a young lady that texted her friends messages of affirmation, The assignment written out in different languages, a video showing concrete ways this assignment can be lived out, and lastly an original composition that was performed in front of the class.