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News 12 Staff

830spotlightnj2_2025-08-30-09-18-56

Don't you just love this slogan, Benedict's hates a quitter? Yes, it just touches you to the core, and I have 3 people from the school with me here in studio. You all tell me, what does this mean to you? Uh, that, that, that, um, slogan, that motto goes back to when I was a student at the school, at least, uh, from an old, uh, football coach, we had a stencil on everything we did, uh, uh, our jerseys, Benedict hits a quitters, and it just has persisted through, uh, the history of the, of the school, not to, not to give up no matter what. What the challenge is, keep working at it until you conquer it. Do you feel the same way where Rebecca? Yeah, especially it plays into the experiential learning part. We're given so many hard and difficult tasks that you just always have to remember like Benedict hates a quitter, so I can't quit because if I do it's kind of like you're not really yeah mhm. Nigel, you feel the same way? Uh, yes, the motto for me, uh, has been instilled in me since I was young, and I feel as if it really just keeps me pushing forward, uh, as Rebecca said, even through the experiential challenges and even in the classroom as well, just maintaining my grades and etc. because if you give up, you not only give up on yourself but you give up on people around me, my teammates. I love that a team effort. In case you're just tuning in, Father Edwin Leahy is the headmaster. Rebecca Miranda is a senior. Nigel Williams is a senior as well at Saint Benedict's Prep there in Newark. You mentioned the word experiential. What is that about? So we were in the 1970s. This the experiential education outside the classroom experiences was huge in the country, and the challenge was how do you assess it. Teachers will wonder how I assess what the progress that the students made, and it kind of faded, but, uh, we never let go of it, so, uh, we, we have the, the backpack. Experience for our 9th graders, the water challenge for our 10th graders, or wilderness challenge for our 11th graders. We're always trying to create things outside the classroom that that test the kids' resiliency that that's the idea of the whole thing, I think. Do you all love that teach things outside the classroom? Yeah, it's more interesting than just sitting there like taking notes and doing quizzes because you learn to think more outside the box sometimes and you really do learn a lot of skills throughout all these challenges. Uh, being outside the classroom, uh, helps me, uh, instill trust in my brothers and sisters. Uh, as I've grown up in the school, I feel as if just being a part of something bigger outside of the classroom puts confidence in myself and prepares me for things outside of the school. Schools were built on the transmission of facts when we were kids. Uh, but you don't have to transmit as much facts anymore because all you have to do is pick up a device and you get any facts you want. So what does the school need to be about now? And I think what we, what most people are looking for is resiliency, teamwork, oral and written communication skills, virtue, those kind of things are what you have to teach, and experiential education helps to do that.

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830spotlightnj3_2025-08-30-12-39-51

My guests are with Saint Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark, Father Edwin Leahy, headmaster Rebecca Miranda Senior, Nigel Williams Senior as well. Let's talk about your school's core pillars. We also have a lovely picture that I like. Seeing is believing. Explain what that's about and how it ties into the pillars. So the, the core values of the school are community. Uh, leadership Attending to the heart of the students and then academics in that order, I mean which is a little strange because most people think about academics and probably it should be the number one but it's not um so uh. What you're seeing is believing it because if you can address the issues that kids are facing, uh, you can watch them grow right in front of you. Most of what we see, I believe in the whole country as academic underachievement has nothing to do with intellect. It has to do with a lot of emotional noise that goes on in young people in the country. And if you mitigate the, uh, the emotional noise, you watch your grades go up like a rocket. Like a thermometer in July, so we have a pretty developed, well developed, uh, counseling center with clinical psychologists to deal with these challenges that that a lot of people, a lot of our young people are facing the country right now growing up without one parent present, um, unresolved grief, violence around them, those kind of things, uh. And then we try, we work hard to build community we meet every single day, everybody together face to face we don't do any announcements over a loudspeaker. I did not want to go to counseling at all, mostly because where I came from counseling was like considered like bad, but that stigma isn't present at our school. Like if you say somebody is at counseling, nobody is looked at. For being weird or anything, it's just normal and counseling did end up helping me. I started my sophomore year and I'm a senior now and I never stopped going and I noticed that my attitude has just gone up way more and it's just like I'm, I'm glad I went to counseling. What about you, Nigel? Uh, I definitely believe in counseling and. A big part of that is community as well um seeing other people in group counseling sessions has helped me and uh has helped uh other people in the school feel comfortable with expressing and addressing their problems and that's honestly just definitely impacted them in the classroom positively. The most, the third part of it, one of the pillars that we didn't mention is the, the, the student leadership. The kids run the school day to day, so they're responsible for the day to day ins and outs of what goes on. So the, the another motto is don't do for kids what kids can do for themselves. Wow. Heavy. I love that.

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831spotlightnj4_2025-08-31-09-10-53

the ups and downs and sideways and inclines and declines, we did it together and that's what's most important. They made it. That is it right there in a nutshell. I love that. Father Edwin Leahy, headmaster Rebecca Miranda senior Nigel Williams, senior at Saint Benedict's Prep. Tell me what this event is and what it's all about. Uh, it's the backpack project that, that began 50 some years ago when we had, we were committed to experiential education, but there were 12 students that nobody wanted to take. In those days out on the outside the school because they didn't know what they were gonna do so we wound up with 12 guys. I had no idea what to do so we said let's take them out of the Appalachian Trail. And now you take girls. Well now we take now it's a requirement, but then we took them out there. We didn't, I've never been on the trail in my life. I lived in New Jersey my entire life, so it's a miracle that all 14 of us came back, but out of that grew what's now the Appalachian Trail. It's a requirement of all of our 9th graders. 9th graders, they're so excited. I love that. This is 55 miles you do. How many days point to the to the gap? How many days? 55 days. How does it work? Do you do it 5 days continuously? So they're in training during the whole month of May and then there's a practice hike that's for 3 days so that they can kind of fill out what the trail is like and test their skills. like the navigation, the cooks, the medics, and the captains so they can fill it out and then the 5 days is the real thing where at the end after they complete it they get like this little patch and then that's it. You want to sleep out there on the trail. Yes, we sleep, we cook by ourselves, we eat, everything is done out there in the woods. What is that like? Uh, out there in the woods is, uh, it's a peaceful, um, but it's definitely an adverse situation, uh, it's not something that inner city kids are used to, uh, being out there in the woods and having to provide for yourself, but the experience is honestly extremely surreal and I feel as if it unlocks something in you that you never knew you had. Something like courage and and. And wisdom and just trusting in others as you are assigned with 7 other people uh to hike with. And that's part of it being a team. Transference of resiliency too, teaching resiliency is one thing, but most of the kids that we have in school who come grow up or our kids grow up, you know this growing up in, in the south of this country, you're resilient just to get through from one part of the day to the next, but realizing that your resiliency can be transferred to other situations is what we really try to get the kids to, to understand.

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832spotlightnj5_2025-08-31-09-17-35

Nigel Williams is a senior at Saint Benedict's Prep in Newark. You are looking at the backpack project that the boys went on. Tell me about that. Uh, the backpacking project, uh, was a 5 day hike on the Appalachian Trail, uh, each. Of the eight members were assigned a role, uh, captain, cook, medic, and such, and throughout each day we hiked around 10-11 miles, uh, we slept, provided for ourselves and we honestly faced a very adverse challenge and we grew together as as a community and as a group and throughout that we experienced and and overcame things that we honestly did not think that we could. Things like. Uh, we overcame like rain, we overcame our, our mental, and we overcame, uh, just ourselves, you know, as in being in such adverse situation, things tend to get, you know, between members a little sticky, and we, we resolved many issues and we honestly pushed through and and remembered the motto Benedict hates to quitter. Hates a quitter. You provided for yourselves. What does that mean? Uh, we cooked our own food, uh, with the rations that we were given, uh, throughout those five days we set up camp, uh, each and every day so that we obviously had a place to sleep even, you know, throughout the rain. And we also, uh, navigated throughout the woods on our own, uh of course after learning through uh our teachers. That's the message you want to resonate with these kids on our own. And yeah, we, there's adults present at various places on the trail, uh, but no adults will make a decision. If it's not life threatening, so we've trained, kids have trained, we've had situations over the years where kids have trained for 4.5 weeks. They go out on the Appalachian Trail from the very first steps they were taking, they were going in the wrong direction. They had to figure that out for themselves. No, but, and if you happen to have been the adult that was walking with that group, you, you see, you're stuck because you're not gonna tell them you're going the wrong way. You have to let it happen and then ask questions. Are you sure? Where's the son? What do you think? I said, to try to get him to reconsider, but oh yeah, we've had him go the wrong way. So eventually they did figure it out. Yeah, they, they'll, yes, they, they do figure it out, uh, uh, but it's, it's, uh, it's all student led, and, uh, um, no adults will decide anything unless it's life threatening then obviously an adult would have to step in.

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831spotlightnj6_2025-08-31-12-18-12

We've been putting the spotlight on Saint Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark. Father Edwin Leahy is the headmaster. Rebecca Miranda is a senior, and Nigel Williams, a senior as well. What are your future plans? Uh, well, if a future is every year for us because, um, we have to recreate the school each year when the school is built on student leadership, your primary leaders graduate each year in June of the seniors. New class rises, so you have to recreate the whole thing every time we have a new school year and um uh that's the big, that's the big challenge. So it's always in that sense it's always new bigger than that is uh the the question of what schools need to look like in the next 5 to 10 years and what are the, what are people, what do we need to be teaching kids and how do you go about teaching it because the transmission of facts with so much with so much of our education relied on that. You don't have to do it anymore. You can get it off your device, a lot of the facts. So, um, getting, getting kids to, um, To be flexible, to have to think about virtue and teamwork and oral and written communication skills, I think that's what we need to be about. In other words, we need to be creating a generation of thinkers. Correct. With the critical thinking and thinking about other people's reality. That's what we can't do in the country right now. Thinking about the real the reality of, of Florence, South Carolina is not the reality of Newark. So being able to understand what other people, uh, live with every day is the key. What are your plans Rebecca? I plan on going to college. I wanna major in medical anthropology because I wanna become a doctor, so I plan on going to med school after college. What is medical anthropology? Um, I didn't like wanna major in biology because I knew that like myself I wouldn't be too interested in that so I feel like medical anthropology goes beyond just like the basic biology you go on through like how medicine affects society and like how it came about. And what about you, Nigel? Uh, I would like to study biomedical engineering in college and I would also like to participate in, uh, track as well and um I just wanna find a way to give back to those who have helped me, uh, you know, and brought me up as well and I feel like uh there's definitely ways to do that and your closing message, Father. Uh, everybody needs to keep their courage up and to, to trust in the young people and the, uh, that are entrusted to our care in the country and, um, help them to understand other people's reality and other people's suffering. That's the key, I think.

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Fr. Edwin Leahy, student Rebecca Miranda and student Nigel Williams spoke to News 12’s Della Crews about what the school means to them.

Spotlight New Jersey: St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark

Fr. Edwin Leahy, student Rebecca Miranda and student Nigel Williams spoke to News 12’s Della Crews about what the school means to them.

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