“At Providence St. Mel we believe. We believe in the creation of inspired lives produced by the miracle of hard work. We are not frightened by the challenges of reality, but believe that we can change our conception of this world and our place within it. So we WORK, PLAN, BUILD and DREAM – in that order. We believe that one must earn the right to dream. Our talent, discipline and integrity will be our contribution to a new world, because we believe that we can take this place, this time, and this people and make a better place, a better time and a better people. With God’s help we will either find a way or make one!”
Providence-St Mel's, located on the southside of Chicago was a unification of a girls' school and a boys' school when both were failing due to changes in the neighborhood and white flight. Sr. Pamela Hickey went there as a counselor and Sr Bonnie Kearney as a religion teacher. The school was 99% Black, but under Paul Adams' leadership had gotten some large donors who wanted to support a school that was going to send students to college. The difficulty was that in order to maintain the message that the school sent 100% of its graduates to college, it often asked juniors, whose grade or study habits were not strong, to leave at the end of their junior year. It was also problematic that this affected more male students than females.
