FORT SMITH — From the time the Sisters of Mercy arrived in Fort Smith Jan. 19, 1853, to the present day, their ministry has been centered on meeting the unmet needs of the community. They quickly established a convent and girls’ boarding school, St. Anne Academy and catechism classes for adults and Native Americans.

During the Civil War, most of the student boarders left for home, and the sisters adapted, caring for orphans and setting up a hospital where Union and Confederate soldiers were treated side by side. As Fort Smith grew, the sisters built St. Edward Mercy Hospital, which has expanded to include numerous rural hospitals, specialty and family practice clinics and a fitness center.

In 2012, Sisters of Mercy in the South Central Region were challenged to look for and address unmet needs in their communities and the sisters in Fort Smith, Barling and Rogers decided to accept the challenge.

“We wanted a ministry need that was unmet, that all of the sisters could participate in and that would make a difference in the lives of the people to whom we were ministering,” Sister Judith Marie Keith, RSM, said.

After studying and evaluating needs, such as child abuse and elder care, the sisters met with Surennah Werley, director of religious education at Immaculate Conception Church.

 “I know an unmet need that no one is addressing,” she said. “Many children are falling behind each year in school because of their parents’ inability to listen to and support their English language skills.”

As they advance into junior high and high school, some become isolated from their peers and vulnerable to gangs, substance abuse and other negative influences.

The Sisters of Mercy Reading Program, located in the St. Anne Building where the sisters set up their ministry 160 years ago, held its first tutoring session in early February. The planning committee — Werley, Sister Judith Marie and Sister Rebecca Hendricks, RSM — decided to focus initially on Catholic third- and fourth-graders attending public schools who require help in reading. Werley contacted Nancy Gallo, a religious education teacher who also works for the public school system, for selection and recruitment of students. The team also set up an advisory council, composed primarily of educators, to evaluate the program and set goals for the future.

The goal of the program is to listen, evaluate and assist students’ ability to read and comprehend English while enhancing their self-esteem.

Every Tuesday afternoon, up to 20 children arrive at St. Anne at 3:45 p.m. and are greeted with a nutritious snack. After opening prayers, the children and tutors pair off and read together with tutors providing active listening, encouragement and affirmation to their student readers.

Seven Sisters of Mercy participate in the program. Sisters Judith Marie and Rebecca, Mary Sarto Gaffney and Chabanel Finnegan, RSM, are active in ministry. Three retired educators now living in McAuley Convent — Sisters Carolyn Maness, Amalia Hawxhurst and Lucille Sluyter, RSM — enjoy being able to use their career skills and continue their mission of service and outreach. 

As the parish community learned about the reading program, other Virtus-trained volunteers came forward, including an area TV weatherman, an oral surgeon, an attorney and several retired teachers.

 “Father Greg Luyet (Immaculate Conception pastor) has been very supportive of the reading program,” Sister Judith Marie said. “Immaculate Conception is providing the facilities and even staff assistance. Father Greg said he was just thrilled to see the sisters around again.”

Some parents were also interested in improving their language skills. Working with the local adult learning center, the team arranged for a trained instructor who helps parents learn practical English skills during tutoring time.

Sister Judith Marie, program director, hopes the program will continue to grow.

“Next September, if this year’s evaluations are positive, we will increase the program to two days a week in Fort Smith,” she said. “At a later date, we would like to expand the program to Rogers, where two Sisters of Mercy — Sisters Anita DeSalvo and Lisa Atkins, RSM — are ministering.”

“The Sisters of Mercy Reading Program is like a dream come true,” Werley said, “because I deal with so many seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders who are struggling with reading skills and see the negative impact it has on their lives. I’m excited these third and fourth graders can come to their church, the spiritual, cultural and family center of their lives, for this program and know that members of their parish family are eager to help them achieve their goals.”

Among the many traditions driving life at Catholic High School in Little Rock is “the list” — the roster of books each student must complete. It’s a heady dose of literature for each year’s student body, capably shepherded by generations of the English department.

“First and foremost, the list gets the boys interested in reading,” said Gretchen Gowen, department head and a member of Our Lady of the Holy Souls Church in Little Rock. “Books start fairly easy and then become more challenging.”

No one can remember precisely when the list got started including Gowen, whose reign as department chair followed Mike Moran’s retirement in 2008. Moran, who cultivated the list for 41 years before that, can’t pinpoint its genesis, either.

“It goes back to the late 1950s at least,” he said. “It was here when I was a student.”

Incoming classes are more than aware of the list by the time they report for freshman year, seeing as how the first of its 32 titles, Moran’s “Proudly We Speak Your Name,” is assigned in the intervening summer between eighth and ninth grade. (Moran’s novel, “Jesse Crosse,” was published in 2011 and added to the sophomore reading list.)

“We give each student his first book of the year at registration,” Gowen said of the 2009 book. “This shows students Catholic High values reading and that we are serious about academics from the first day they set foot on campus. We expect the students to have finished the first book by the first of September.”

Criteria for considering books are, as Gowen puts it, “when they meet a delicate balance of interest level for the boys and value as a piece of literature.”

“We are heavily into ‘boy’ books,” she said. “We don’t apologize for this. We’ve got to keep our audience interested.”

It’s not mere machismo that forsakes lacy Victorian romance in favor of a beefy western like “True Grit,” by Charles Portis; more like experienced fishermen who know the best lure with which to hook their walleyed, teenaged quarry.

Moran himself remembers tearing through “The Good Earth” by Pearl Buck, searching in vain for the supposedly salacious passages about the main character and his mistress. He said such topical appeal is increasingly important to inspiring literary appreciation in students awash in opportunities to cut corners.

“Students in the modern era have all of these shortcuts, like Cliffs Notes and Spark Notes,” he said, “and any kid with the IQ of a turnip knows all of them.”

The list is evaluated annually. To make changes, teachers submit a review of proposed books to fellow department members teaching the affected grade. Only those teachers are allowed a vote. Even the sprightly Gowen has no official say in works that are taught in classes other than hers.

In a system where the department head cannot vote on a work that doesn’t affect her syllabus, you can imagine how much sway the outside world holds. Still, teachers receive the occasional outside suggestion and even voted in a title recommended by an alumnus once, to mixed reviews. But no one bullies a book on or off.

“One irate mother complained about ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J.D. Salinger,” Moran remembers. “She wanted to know why her son was reading such a vulgar book and (English teacher) Jim Wells told her, ‘Because it’s the last book Father (George) Tribou assigned before he died.’ And that was it. It was the best comeback I ever heard.”

One title holding a special place in Catholic High lore, is “The Lords of Discipline,” by Pat Conroy. The thinly-veiled and not-altogether-flattering account of his time at The Citadel was, not surprisingly, banned at the military college and for decades, the author along with it. Its coming of age tales told in the common vernacular makes it wildly popular among students; the back-story of friendship between Conroy and Msgr. Tribou only adds to its appeal.

As legend has it, Msgr. Tribou broke the ice by admonishing Conroy on the language he used in his books.

“Father Tribou told Pat Conroy he needed to clean up his act. Conroy told him that this is how his characters have to speak,” Gowen said when asked to separate fact from urban legend. “Oh yeah, that actually happened.”

Gowen said works aren’t included just because they raised hackles here and there, but the department doesn’t shy from them, either. The current list includes 19 titles that have been yanked off shelves, some as recently as 2009.

“Almost every book on our list has been banned or challenged somewhere,” Gowen said. “As teachers in a Catholic school, we are not afraid to tackle the social justice issues presented in the books.”

Moran said the very controversy surrounding a work is instructive, giving students a glimpse of the time into which the work was introduced and demonstrating the way the book and the thoughts behind it impacted the status quo.

“The N-word appears 281 times in ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,’ but the people who would ban it for that just don’t get it,” he said. “Here’s a young man rebelling against the most entrenched values of his time, to the point he says if it means he’ll go to hell for it, well all right then.

“If one of my books got banned for something like that, it would be an honor. I’d be in great company.”

ROGERS — Most parents and students at St. Vincent de Paul School know Mike Martin best for his day job. But it is his weekend job that might surprise a few folks.

For the past five years, Martin has taught at the school, first as a third-grade teacher and currently as a fourth-grade teacher. But when he is not in the classroom cultivating young minds, he is shepherding a flock of his own as the pastor of Northeast Southern Baptist Church in Fayetteville.

It is an unlikely pairing. Not many Catholic schools can lay claim to having an Baptist minister teaching in the classroom. But, it’s a pairing that gives the word “ecumenical” real, visual definition and one that seems to be mutually beneficial for both parties.

“After teaching with Mike Martin for the past five years, I find him to be a remarkable man,” said music teacher Kristi Brackett. “I have said to others that he truly is the hands and feet of Jesus on this earth. His positive attitude and constant spirituality has been an inspiration to all of the teachers and students at SVdP,” she said.

His story is not without its twists and turns. A native of Northwest Arkansas, Martin graduated from Springdale High School, married his high school sweetheart and worked at Ball Corporation.

“I felt like I had a calling, but I was waiting for that surrender,” Martin said, “and it took God 10 years to prepare my wife, Becky.”

In 1996, after attending Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, the Martins, parents to two adult girls, were uncertain of God’s plan for them.

From 1999 to 2005, Martin was instrumental in helping grow the congregation of Oak Grove Baptist in Springdale from 40 members to 115 members. After six years, he felt it was time for him to move to another church.

Martin explains his transitional time in the cadence of a well-seasoned minister.

“I went from doing God’s perfect will to God’s permissive will,” he said. “It was a move I thought I was supposed to make, but not the move God had for me.”

It was a time of struggle both in his faith life and financially. After some soul searching, Martin volunteered to become a substitute teacher and felt in teaching he had found his niche and a ministry within his call to ministry.

He wasted no time earning his non-traditional teaching degree and in the fall of 2008 was hired at St. Vincent de Paul.

Martin considers the pulpit and the classroom equally important.

“I think of it as servanthood leadership,” he said “I am the servant for the students I teach and the people I preach. It’s my prayer that whoever I come in contact with they can see Jesus in me. I do believe that I am a better pastor, teacher and preacher because of St. Vincent de Paul School. I am here as long as God wants me here. I have never doubted since I have been here that I am in God’s perfect will.”

Principal Ann Morrison agrees that Martin’s presence at the school has enhanced what students learn about their faith.

“We often call upon Mike for prayer on different occasions,” Morrison said. “He is always Christ-like in his dealings with students or staff and through the respect he shows for our Catholic traditions and beliefs, our students have also learned to respect those of other Christian denominations and beliefs.”

On Feb. 10, students from fourth to eighth grade had the opportunity to go to Martin’s church and sing for his congregation. Students then listened to Martin’s sermon that tied in with the Gospel reading from the previous Friday morning Mass. He also read Scripture and acted out the stories. Following the service, members of his congregation treated the students to pizza and cookies.

“We wanted to share our love for him with the people of his church,” said Brackett, who organized the Sunday field trip. “He truly shows us that as Christians, we are all on the same journey, we may just be taking a different road to get there.”

Without a doubt social media has changed our lives forever. First was the internet, which created worldwide access to information and communication. It shrunk the world so to speak. Technology today provides us with many more forms of social connectivity.

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. Examples include Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Flickr, Youtube, Blogger and Reddit. With all the bells and blings going off to attract our attention to social media, how does one create a balance to find uninterrupted time to be creative and productive?

As with most research, there are differences of opinion of the impact of social media on creative and productivity. Several studies on the effect of social media have revealed impressive benefits. For students, social media has definitely enhanced learning opportunities. Participation in social media offers opportunities for enhancement of individual and collective creativity through the development of artistic and musical endeavors. It provides for the growth of ideas from the creations of blogs, podcasts, videos and gaming sites.

Through media communication, students are able to share interests that include others from more diverse backgrounds that afford the opportunity for respect, tolerance and increased discourse about personal and global issues. Blogs and other media forms can be used to allow students to gather outside of the school to collaborate and exchange ideas about assignments and work on projects together. Some social media sites have the benefit of reinforcing skills, providing tutoring and creativity.

With the deluge of e-mail, text messages, voice mail, instant messages, Twitter messages and Facebook posts, how does one become proactive to channel our energy to allow us to be creative and productive? In an article written for mashable.com, April 15, 2010, Scot Belsky gives a few tips on how to develop ways to combat this reactionary workflow caused from social media.

1. Create windows of non-stimulation: Proactively block out time for creating and absorbing, rather than just responding.

2. Keep to-do lists: When organizing the tasks to be done create two lists, one for urgent items and another one for important long-term goals.

3. Schedule focused periods of processing every day: Set aside uninterrupted time for checking inbox and media sites.

4. Don’t hoard urgent items: When you are in the position to do so, delegate urgent items to others who can efficiently and effectively respond.

I personally have found these tips to allow me to be more productive. It is easy for one to react all day. However, when we spend all our energy on reacting, our ability to think about bold ideas will suffer.

As with anything that can become addictive, social media addiction can quickly derail all of our creativity and productivity. The important thing is to find a balance.