Life 101

“Wasting time together,” as Fr. Mark Payne O.S.B. ’69 often said, is vital for building connection and community. In the case of Benedictine Volunteer Elijah Browne, it was during downtime in Group that he began helping students with organization skills, which snowballed into a new academic course for UDIs, Life 101. 

The class is called Life 101 because it prepares Gray Bees for, well, life. It launched during the Fall Term and is taught by Mr. Browne, who became a full-time faculty member this year after serving as a Benedictine Volunteer. Throughout Fall and Winter Terms, every UDI in the Girls and Boys Prep Divisions will complete the course, which combines practical skills and topics introduced in earlier classes into a single, more comprehensive learning experience.

Associate Headmaster for Academics Michelle Tuorto H’16 said plans for the course had been in the works for some time. “When we were deciding on student performance objectives for our Middle States accreditation, explicit instruction on soft skills came up.” With a block available in the UDI schedule, Ms. Tuorto and Physics Teacher Rich Molina ’06 saw an opportunity to meld topics like financial literacy, life skills and other subjects into one course.

Mr. Browne hails from the Bronx. A graduate of St. John’s University in Minnesota, his background in educational media was immediately deployed in a media literacy elective introduced last year. A keen observer, Mr. Browne also found ways to support Gray Bees outside of the classroom. While living in Leahy House, he noticed several international students needed help with English language skills, and he took it upon himself to offer ESL instruction. Assigned to the Fr. Timothy Dwyer Group, he used Group time to work closely with students who were struggling with time management and organization skills. “It’s something I’m passionate about,” he explained. “I was also an unprepared student.”

Ms. Tuorto, a faculty moderator of Fr. Timothy Dwyer, noticed the positive impact Mr. Browne was having on the Group. When he expressed interest in staying on as a faculty member, she proposed the comprehensive life skills course. “Elijah creates excellent rapport with kids,” Ms. Tuorto observed. “He’s also a lot closer to kids’ lived experience, is a natural teacher and is willing to learn himself.”

Each term, the Life 101 curriculum encompasses: study and organization skills, preparing for a future profession and goals, financial literacy, media literacy, as well as healthy manhood and womanhood. While media literacy was a stand-alone class last year, Mr. Browne incorporates the hands-on exercises that actively engage students in testing the veracity of news reports, images circulated on the Internet and social media posts into Life 101. Similarly, The Call of Men, a popular course about healthy masculinity, taught by Giovanni Bonilla ’08, was suspended after Mr. Bonilla became the School’s Alumni Engagement Officer. The subject has now been incorporated into Life 101 for the Boys Prep Division. Volunteers from Latina Surge, a national non-profit that advocates for the inclusion of women and women of color in business and society, will lead healthy womanhood conversations for the Girls Prep Division.

Burnt Pancakes

“Things will grow and develop with the course,” said Mr. Browne, who calls the four sections he’s currently teaching in Fall Term “burnt pancakes” because the class is a work in progress. “We’re designing as we go and getting input along the way.” Student input, in fact, prompted him to bring faculty members and finance specialists Bill Fox ’94 and Michael Scanlon H’97 to discuss investment banking with the class. He plans to invite more experts from the Gray Bee network to speak on various topics covered in Life 101. The larger goal is to build greater self-reliance that students can depend on after St. Benedict’s Prep. “Students know more than they think,” said Mr. Browne. “We’re teaching them to rely on their community of brothers and sisters and themselves.”