Irish Care, a Support System of The Seneca Way

How our district works to support those in need as a part of the mission of The Seneca Way.

I felt blessed to present to the Illinois Association of School Boards Starved Rock division’s annual presentation, to show off, some of the great aspects of what we call “Irish Care,” as a part of The Seneca Way recently.

#TheSenecaWay is a mantra that is more than a brand or a culture at Seneca High School. It is a blueprint, a pathway for everything that we do as a part of our brand.  At SHS we firmly believe that school needs to be safe, it needs to be meaningful, and it MUST be fun!  We celebrate our students as often as possible.  We support our students by doing whatever our leadership team deems necessary to provide for our students, and in many cases, their families as well. We celebrate our Faculty & Staff routinely. We celebrate our community as well. If a reader dives into my personal twitter account, one will see how we celebrate our students and staff all of the time: https://twitter.com/Supt_Stecken

Culture means everything!  It isn’t something we throw on a whiteboard or a website, it’s something we show off every chance we get.  Take a quick look at what happened today here at SHS… If we aren’t telling OUR story, SOMEONE ELSE is!

You see, in a small town, the high school becomes the pulse, the heartbeat of the community. #IrishPride exists all around us in Seneca. Outsiders would probably view it as a rally cry for our athletic teams, but its so much more than that. That pride emanates in our hallways, not just in our classrooms and athletic arenas, but in everything that we do. We exist to provide a quality educational program for our students, but there is so much more to content, curriculum, skills, classes, athletics, and clubs to our school. Irish Care is about providing and supporting our many high-need students and families within our community. Kudos to the many people who bust their humps to provide for these families in need. I was happy to keynote the presentation at Waltham Elementary School to show off what the people in our building do on a daily basis to support our families in need.

But how do you know what you’re doing is working?  You can’t rely on the Superintendent to be the judge, jury, and ultimate decision-maker on everything.  Gauging our climate takes investment, it takes time, and it takes ownership, from all people involved.  We have administrative retreats, where we audit our culture, we acknowledge our strengths, and our failures, and sometimes we cut deep.  We hold meaningful conversations meant to challenge each other to grow.  We are intentional with our Professional Development to continue to grow our culture and to grow The Seneca Way.

Coming out of COVID, as the district leadership team, we realized that we had many families in our rural part of Illinois, who were struggling more so, post-COVID, than before. Simple sanitary and hygienic needs were not being met. Students were walking into our doors in January in shorts and t-shirts off the bus. We created the Irish Care Closet as another system, in our many systems, of support for students in need.

By reaching out to our social worker, or inconspicuously scanning a QR code, our students can access the Irish Care Closet for much needed supplies like deodorant, shampoo, winter hats, coats, backpacks, school supplies, clothing, etc. Through generous donations from community members and Seneca High School staff members, the Irish Care Closet is fully stocked and fully supported. The Irish Care Closet was created by our school social worker, Mrs. Samantha Leake, an absolute Rock Star, upon recognizing the need for clean clothing, shoes, school supplies, and hygiene products among many of our students.  This is another opportunity for SHS to break down barriers to education by making sure that students’ basic needs are met. Students can access the closet at any time, publicly, or privately through scanning a QR code.  If a need is unfulfilled, an anonymous request is made to staff and is fulfilled usually within a day.

Traditional supports at Seneca High School through Special Education resources, supports, and interventions have always been a critical part of #TheSenecaWay. We are blessed to have a great Student Services Director in Mrs. Jill Rockrohr and her team of leaders put in the work in an exemplary fashion, each and every single day. From like skills of an internal coffee shop and breakfast barista delivery service, to experiential field trips, for a small rural school, our opportunities for these students are endless. Immersive co-taught classrooms allow for real-world collaboration that encourage and foster growth for our students daily.

It can’t just be the administration leading from the front, however.  We have 37 teachers at SHS and darn near all of them are rock stars!  So we took The Seneca Way and developed a steering committee and said, “GO!” Take risks, take chances, how do we get these kids back, back from isolation, back from the anxious moments of the last few years?  We came up with RISE, an incentive program based on three unflinching tenets: Be Here, which focuses on attendance- from remote learning to excuses of apathy, not wanting to be here grew during the COVID years. Our other two tenets are: Be Kind and Be Accountable.  Show UP, and do the work.  Serve others, by being kind, and don’t make excuses or blame others, by being accountable.  

RISE’s main focus is to encourage students, building culture was a secondary accomplishment of the program.  Whether it be through pancake breakfasts, lemon shake ups, food trucks, moments of gratitude, community engagement, etc., the program has had immense benefits throughout the building and throughout the town. 

Kindness is contagious and coming from a time of isolation, mistrust in the media, anxiety, we needed to get our kids back in our building, where we can control the narrative and meaning, away from the outside noise.

There are many components to what we call Irish Care. While the Irish Care Closet and RISE offer great supports, another program is Packs for Pals. Through generous contributions from area churches and community members, our team assembles inconspicuous backpacks full of food supplies that a student can take home on Fridays for needed meals on the weekend. What our district discovered, sadly, especially post COVID, is that many of our disadvantaged students lacked food and nutrition outside of school hours. Packs for Pals is a wonderful program aimed to help those in need. Learning cannot happen without basic human needs met, Maslow taught us this a long time ago.  The Care Closet provides hygiene goods, winter clothing, etc., but what about food.  We all know in the Illinois Valley area that we have many under nourished students and families.  Anytime we have a void, we meet and come up with creative solutions to fill that void. Packs for Pals was created by local churches in Seneca in coordination with our schools. This program initiative is ambitious, to feed all of the hungry children of our community. Packs for Pals impacts not only the students of Seneca High School but also our feeder schools. Our school social worker meets with program leaders every Wednesday evening to help bag the snacks. SHS students from athletic teams to our FFA, have volunteered their time to help every week this summer and Fall. We roughly feeding 200 students every single week participate in the community.

From an administrative needs assessment this year, the idea for a Packs for Pals summer program was born.  The COVID shut down showed us that many of our students were in need but refused to acknowledge such need, so we extended the anonymity of the program as well as the offerings OUTSIDE of the normal school year.

SHS has worked diligently with the Packs for Pals team on the bones and implementation of this summer program to meet the needs of not only our own student population but also the students of our feeder schools students & families. Our old high school, The West Campus housed the summer program. Our school social workers and members of the Packs for Pals team packed the bags. Every Thursday, our social worker and SHS staff member would pass out the bags at the west campus. SHS provided transportation of bags to feeder schools through our Behind the Wheel drivers education program and had many volunteers amongst our Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Student Conservation groups. 

The Seneca Way is what we do, it’s who we are, it’s what we show off. We walk our talk and while an outsider might think it’s about sports, our classrooms, in reality it is about making every single student at Seneca High School supported and present in our educational program.