St. Martin De Porres High School

St. Martin de Porres High School, is a Catholic, coeducational college preparatory school located in Waukegan, Illinois. As a Cristo Rey Network school, we make education affordable through each student’s participation in the Corporate Internship Program. We strive to develop the full potential of each student in an atmosphere of mutual respect for the religious and cultural heritage of every individual.

The Mission of St. Martin de Porres High school reads:

“St. Martin de Porres High School is a Roman Catholic, coeducational college preparatory secondary school offering an outstanding educational program for a diverse student body from the greater Waukegan area. St. Martin de Porres High School will promote its identity through living and proclaiming a shared vision of Christian faith, a commitment to academic excellence, and a strong sense of community. Through a demanding college preparatory curriculum and Corporate Internship Program, St. Martin de Porres High School intends to graduate young women and men endowed with intellectual and ethical values as well as confidence to become social, religious, and caring human beings.”

This statement expresses well a common vision held by a community of like minded individuals, committed to providing an outstanding educational opportunity for the young men and women of the greater Waukegan area. St. Martin de Porres High School is on one hand, a return to the very roots of Catholic education in the United States. It is also an attempt to explore new and creative ways of maximizing the educational experience of our young people through active participation in the local, national and international corporate world.

Catholic schools in the United States were developed to serve immigrants who for the most part spoke a language other than English, were to some degree illiterate, had meager resources, and had common traditions and values. These schools were established to serve the immigrants of Italy, Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, and many others who came to this country with a dream. Their dream was to find a better life for their children and grandchildren and they recognized early that the key to achieve this dream was education. These schools were established to enable their descendents the possibility of achieving positions of leadership in whatever field they chose. But just as importantly as social success was the handing down of their faith and cultural traditions. They made every effort to hold on to those values of human life and their strong sense of belonging and participating in a community that identified their roots.

Today St. Martin de Porres follows well in this long and proud tradition. Our goals are to honor and respect diversity within a community. We learn to honor and respect the diversity of religious practices and beliefs, of racial, ethnic, and sexual diversity, and of the diversity found within each person that expresses the mystery of the God of Creation.

Additionally, our students encounter this process that widens their understanding of the human experience in a new and creative manner. Their teachers certainly include the faculty of St. Martin de Porres who are outstanding professional teachers, well trained themselves and dedicated to the growth of our young people. Their teachers are also one another. They learn that their similarities are much greater than their differences, and that differences are generally superficial in nature. They also find outstanding teachers in the Corporate World where they serve as interns for their four years of secondary education. They begin to learn that the world is much larger than their own neighborhood, their own prejudices, and their own world vision. Their vision begins to expand as they encounter the diversity of human creation. The challenge to change and grow within their own individual potential is constantly in front of them. The students of St. Martin de Porres High School are being challenged to strive to achieve and to lead.

It is our fervent hope that none of us imagine that financial rewards are the mark of human success. Financial achievement and status are often their own rewards. Often however, these achievements come at great cost and do not guarantee a sense of self worth or connection to the world beyond the walls that are constructed to keep the human family at arms length – a sense of illusion based on the fact that they construct their own communities lacking in the richness of human diversity. Human success is based on personal integrity, compassion (passion with and for others), active involvement and conscious participation in the ongoing creation of the world and humanity and care of the environment. Our faith teaches us that the resources of the world are for all, not just for the few. Neither wealth nor poverty are measurements of human success or value. The goal is to understand that each human person is a creature of a loving God – they are our brothers and sisters. How we treat one another is critical. We are not commodities to be bought and sold to the highest bidder or global corporation that uses human labor as a commodity to be discarded due to the whims of the marketplace.

We believe that our goal at St. Martin de Porres is deeply connected to the goal of developing a community of people, called to leadership based on the highest human values and traditions as found in the teachings of Jesus the Christ.