After A Year of Growth, ELM Flourishes at BDS
“Not every call to ministry leads to a parish,” according to Tony Jarvis. He should know. Father Jarvis spent 30 years working with high school students as the headmaster of the prestigious Roxbury Latin School in Boston, Massachusetts. The challenge of working with young people —to help them deal with life’s great questions and to help them acquire ethical compasses—is both immensely difficult and immensely rewarding.
When Berkeley Divinity School decided to develop a program to prepare students for ministry in schools and colleges, Father Jarvis was a natural choice to help design it. Thus was born the Educational Leadership and Ministry (ELM) Program which serves students of all denominations at Yale Divinity School – as well as interested students throughout university. ELM involves Tony’s course (“Educational Leadership and Ministry”), visiting practitioners, field trips to schools and colleges, supervised ministry and internships at schools and colleges, all supplemented by relevant courses offered at the Divinity School and other Yale graduate schools.
Tony’s spring course attracted almost equal numbers from YDS and Berkeley. The course involved an array of readings and extensive use of case studies -- involving real life incidents of cheating, difficult parents, and the like -- that take students beyond the theoretical. Thirteen distinguished practitioners visited this term to share their experiences in schools and colleges. There were two required field trips, both in New Haven: inner city Roman Catholic St. Martin de Porres Academy and St. Thomas Episcopal Day School, as well as three other voluntary site visits.
“We are, we believe, the first divinity school to prepare master’s level students for ministry in schools and colleges as well as in parishes,” Father Jarvis notes. “ELM’s focus is on preparing leaders to serve as ordained and lay chaplains, administrators, and teachers of religion for a variety of schools -- public and independent, religious and secular. The program also considers the various types of college and university chaplaincies.
“We seek to prepare students to work in a whole range of schools. I confess I have a particular interest in inner city schools such as tuition-free Epiphany in Boston – founded in my parish in Dorchester to work with children of the poorest of the poor. That is why I am so eager for Yale to develop a relationship with St. Martin de Porres here in New Haven. Like Epiphany School (an Episcopal institution), St. Martin Academy (Roman Catholic) enrolls 5th to 8th graders in small classes, with mostly novice teachers – working for subsistence wages -- who invest two to four years to help these least-advantaged children. These Nativity-Miguel model schools run 11 or 12 hours a day – including two or three meals. Students’ reading scores soar as a result of the individual attention. These schools care about the whole child; each child is known and loved, each child comes to realize that he or she is a child of God, called by God to do something with his or her life.”
But Tony notes that the Program pays considerable attention to more traditional boarding and day schools – especially church-related schools – that undertake Christian formation with middle class and affluent students. “All are children of God and all are called to Christian service.”
Catholic students constitute the second highest denominational enrollment at Yale Divinity School. Father Jarvis expresses his hope “that the ELM Program can attract Catholic women and men who are increasingly being called upon by Catholic schools to serve as lay chaplains, administrators, and principals. But we are also, obviously, interested in training non-Catholic students to work in schools – the fastest growing aspect of most non-Catholic denominations.”
Even though school chaplaincy may not be a student’s goal, many of Yale’s students will, as parish pastors, head parishes with a school. Tony adds, “Our program seeks to develop an appreciation for the very different challenges that school heads and parish pastors face. We hope, therefore, to prepare each “side” -- of what is frequently a contentious relationship -- to understand and sympathize with one another.”
Asked how the first year has gone, Tony replied, “That’s for others to judge, but for myself I’d have to say that I have never – in my 44 years of teaching – enjoyed a class more those who were victims of my teaching this year. Being at Yale has been hard work, but an absolute delight!”