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SUMMER COURSES Taking Summer Courses Dive into our lineup of summer classes and seize the opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive. Whether you're keen on mastering a new topic, delving into a fascinating subject, or simply staying sharp over the break, we've got you covered. Take the first step towards an enriching summer with resources to best prepare you. EXPLORE SUMMER RESOURCES

DUAL CREDIT ALL COURSES AP Art History AP Computer Science A AP Music Theory AP Statistics Multivariable Calculus AP Calculus BC AP Macroeconomics AP Psychology AP US Gov & Politics AP Comparative Gov & Politics AP Microeconomics AP Spanish Literature & Culture AP World History Dual Credit with Creighton University Unlock Your Academic Potential: Join AVLI's Exclusive Dual Credit Partnership with Creighton University. Elevate your education with select AVLI courses and earn college credit from a prestigious Jesuit institution. Enroll, learn, and seize the opportunity to further your academic journey with ease.

Back to school we go. Buckle up; it promises to be a wild ride. Recently, I’ve been talking about how administrators and teachers have been thrown into the deep end of the pool. While I think this analogy works, earlier today it occurred to me that while the depth of the water is important, it’s the capacity to swim that really matters. Reversing the old adage, for those in education in 2020, it’s “swim or sink.” While I certainly don’t wish to relive it, this spring and summer have graced me with some of the most rewarding experiences of my 25 years in education, particularly since founding AVLI (formerly Jesuit Virtual Learning Academy) in 2007. I’ve witnessed some extraordinary people going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that this fall we can do some very ordinary things - teach, share, learn, know, care, love. Whether it’s parents exploring options, administrators sharing strategies during sessions we hosted, or the more than 500 teachers who participated in AVLI professional development programming this summer, I see a lot of people trying to learn how to swim in these new waters. While these efforts have been inspiring, I’m reminded of an episode of the Big Bang Theory where Sheldon Cooper claims to know how to swim while never getting in the water, instead studying how to do so on the internet because, “the skills are transferable.” In spite of all of our planning and preparations, we won’t know if we can truly swim until we get in the water. With the start of the fall term, that time has arrived. It’s time to jump in! Truth be told, I’m not a great swimmer, and my most vivid memories of learning to swim revolve around one specific activity, the back float. This was among the first skills learned at a very young age, and I still recall the feelings. Few times have I ever felt such a confluence of conflicting forces. In that moment, it seemed as if nothing else mattered; my unyielding desire to float was met directly by an equally strong sense of self-preservation. In the end, fear carried the day. No matter how hard I tried to relax, the moment I felt that I might be sinking, I’d fight. To this day, I’m not sure that I could float. Interestingly, one of my most cherished parenting memories is helping my children learn to float. Standing by with my hands just below the surface of the water as they struggled with the same fears and desires I experienced thirty years prior. Knowing that they are safe. Offering reassurance, “I’ve got you. I’ve got you…” What a simple, powerful moment as a parent. I offer you my back float experiences in that you might find yourself in a similarly conflicted state heading into this school year. On the one end, you may be excited about the possibilities and emboldened by your preparedness. On the other end, there is most certainly a fear of the unknown. Will it be safe? How will I manage? What mental and emotional toll will this year take on students, teachers, staff, and parents? Will the strategies I’ve prepared actually work? Will students learn? The one certainty in all of this is that you will soon find yourself in the water (if you aren’t there already). The good news is that your preparations will pay off. At times you’ll swim and make progress. However, other times will likely be difficult. Things will change too quickly and you may struggle to find your bearings. These are the times when you will need to float - to surrender and trust the weight of the experience to keep you buoyant until you are able to swim once again. Prayer helps. During one particularly difficult period in the early days of AVLI (then JVLA), almost daily I would lie down on the floor in “star” position and imagine myself floating in a large pool. I’d bring to those moments all of my fears, anxieties, and feelings of inadequacy. Then I’d ask for help and simply wait until I could feel the reassurance of God’s presence keeping me afloat. Much like me with my kids, I think God cherishes these moments. I imagine God there, smiling, knowing that I am safe, and telling me, “I’ve got you.” Blessings to you and your families this school year. Be brave and swim hard. CONTRIBUTOR: Jeff Hausman is the Founder & President of Arrupe Virtual vol 3 issue 1

As an institution, De Smet Jesuit High School has exercised a guiding hand in my life since before I can remember. In 1983, the year of my birth, my father accepted a teaching post there before eventually becoming the Dean of Students for the rest of his career, retiring just a few years ago now. I attended school there from 1999 to 2002 where I participated in sundry sports, activities, and classes and, after four years at Loyola University—Chicago, I returned to teach in the English department where I’ve been for the last fifteen years. The De Smet faculty, staff, administration, and student body have all influenced my maturation in just about every facet of my life, but especially as an educator. The school—old enough to have whittle out some rare breathing room amongst the suffocating local competition, but young enough still to evolve with the world around it—the school actually engages with its students in a manner similar to its namesake, Belgian Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet, the missionary famous for his unconventional-yet-effective work amongst Midwestern, Northwestern, and Canadian Native Americans. Whereas the stereotype depicts the missionary charging into an unfamiliar territory and correcting the native peoples’ supposedly errant ways, updating their rituals with new-and-improved Christian replacements, De Smet interpreted the Jesuit mission as working with and amongst the people he sought to serve rather than condescending them with heavy-handed customs absent their defining context. He sought first and foremost to learn from the natives, to earn their respect and admiration, to become one of them, to exchange ideas with them rather than to indoctrinate these communities of people he wanted to help. De Smet eventually negotiated on behalf of the Native Americans with the United States government and even inspired from the natives a brace of warm nicknames: “Black Robe,” referring to his attire, and “Friend of Sitting Bull,” a more telling sobriquet that demonstrates his cache amongst even the aggressive adversaries of the Americans’ “Manifest Destiny.” I suppose De Smet taught the Native Americans in a way, but more importantly, he allowed himself to be taught. He entered these tribes with deference instead of harboring any preconceived notions of social or racial superiority. He fostered a community and expanded the works of Christ beyond traditional religious signposts that over time undercut the original message. Christianity, we all know, isn’t just a crucifix. And school isn’t just a textbook—at least, not anymore. The information the textbook offered in the past—the information the teacher had and the student wanted—that is now free and available at the push of a button; on the phones in their pockets, students can access information faster than any teacher could lecture it out and in greater depth than any textbook could explain it. School now is about skills: What do we do with the information we possess? How do we use our knowledge? These are the questions our students ask when they enter our halls, or, increasingly, our Zoom meetings. On top of that, our students now inhabit and control a territory—that brave new online world of computers and digital technology—that schools only have begun to explore. I believe we as Catholic educators need to plant our flag in this space, but only has Father De Smet would have it: learning from the students about their experiences and utilizing that knowledge to help them appropriate actual skills that apply to their world today and in the future. Only then, when we show the connection between the digital and the actual, will those two domains begin to converge for our students into one recognizable whole. Ultimately, helping our students make this connection is exactly what attracts me to the collaborative classroom and the Bridges project at AVLI. If administered correctly, the blended learning model has been proven to open new opportunities and awaken new intrinsic motivations for our students, and with AVLI already having developed the network, the philosophy, and the aptitude to push forward in this area, joining their mission was the obvious next step in my career. I look forward to learning from my new colleagues, certainly, as what they have built represents a colossal achievement for education as a whole, let alone Catholic schools; crucially, though, I take my new role as a way to learn more from our students, to help them find and become the best version of themselves rather than dictating what that is or may look like. School isn’t just a textbook. Catholic schools have known this from their inception. And now that the technology has caught up to this belief, I look forward to the challenge of designing and building a blended environment that prepares our students for whatever comes next. CONTRIBUTOR: Nick Dressler, Director of Collaborative Programming - Arrupe Virtual vol 3 issue 2

If you are anything like me, at least once a day I find myself shaking my head and thinking, “How in the world did we get here?” As many have written about recently, incivility appears to be the order of the day. Our socio-political climate is in a ditch and rather than grabbing a rope and climbing out, we instead grab shovels and dig deeper. It’s as if we are incapable of saving ourselves. If you’ve watched The Social Dilemma , a documentary on the power and influence of social media rooted in artificial intelligence (AI), it’s evident that the cards are stacked against us. I highly recommend it’s viewing. Here are a few claims from the tech insiders who produced the film. Social media (Facebook, Google, Twitter…) is free for a reason. It’s because we are the product. The customers are the advertisers. The AI algorithms associated with these platforms are efficiently designed to harvest our online footprint to keep us online and feed us content and connections meant to produce “gradual, slight imperceptible change in our own behavior and perception.” We’re being programmed. Fake news works. AI cannot discriminate between the truth and fake news. However, studies have shown that false information spreads at a rate six times faster than the truth. Since AI is built around expediently reaching the endgame, it biases toward fake news. Everyone operates with their own set of “facts”. Everyone’s feeds are completely different, optimized around each individual’s online tendencies. Not only can simple Google searches produce vastly different results, the AI algorithms intentionally push tangential information to our feeds to help shape the narratives of advertisers. This goes beyond simple confirmation bias to manipulation - surveillance capitalism. Disturbing. Right? No wonder it’s so difficult for us to get along. But economist and writer Arthur Brooks (see his book or talk ) points out that we’re not just angry with each other, we have contempt for one another. Most often, we genuinely care about the people with whom we are angry but are critical of choices they are making. With contempt, we believe that we are being motivated by love while our adversaries are being motivated by hatred. When motives are in question, trust cannot be established. In the absence of trust, dialogue is impossible. Even if we can’t exactly name the problem, reasonable adults recognize that there is one. Experience tells us that something has changed and not in a good way. What scares me more is that young people have grown up having known nothing different. Note that I am not damning technology as the root of all evil. Rather, there are certain pervasive aspects of the social dynamic of the digital world that have extraordinary influence when left unchecked, and there are few among us who understand it well enough to hold guard. So how do we pivot? Arthur Brooks suggests that to move from a culture of contempt to an orientation of love, we need to recognize that love is not a feeling, but an act and a commitment to “will the good of the other.” This is what makes loving your enemy possible. This doesn’t mean that we temper our stand on big issues, quite the contrary. Rather, it’s modeling consistent behaviors to resist showing contempt, demanding the same from others, and refusing to reward contemptuous behavior. This won’t necessarily change the minds of those with whom we most ardently disagree, but it will likely change their hearts in a manner that keeps people in relationship and civil society operating. This is where Catholic education at all levels can and should provide leadership. Our shared mission is to form young women and men of competence, conscience, and compassion. This necessarily means an oft-counter-cultural resolve to animate love, truth, and justice in their many forms - both conservative and progressive - and to humbly dialogue with those who disagree so as to come to a deeper understanding of the human condition in order to serve more fully. This begins with what we teach, but more importantly it’s about helping students understand how to think. At AVLI, we point our students to a core set of learner skills (see page 3 ) that we hope they improve through practice in our coursework. Key among them are the partner skills of self-reflection and self-transcendence. Both are critical to combatting the sirens of social media and crowd psychology on the one hand, and complacency on the other. Self-reflection calls us to critically direct our learning inward while self-transcendence encourages an outward focus. The result is a form of discernment, and it is at this intersection where we find ourselves most alive, grounded, and capable of responding to a world in need. I used the word “combatting” above which connotes conflict. In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius employs a meditation on the Two Standards, a standard being a flag around which troops would rally before battle. One standard represents standing with Jesus while the other represents standing with Satan. It seems like a pretty easy choice, but is it in today’s complex, divisive world? This is why it is so important at this time for our schools to embrace their Catholic identity, modeling care and compassion while continuing our search for Truth. We can be a light in the darkness. CONTRIBUTOR: Jeff Hausman is the Founder & President of Arrupe Virtual vol 3 issue 1