The passing periods of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School come without sound. With seemingly no warning, the Pilsen school’s students rise from their desks and chairs, lunch tables and benches, and head to their next destination, an internal clock running in their brains instead of a bell.
It’s a practice rooted in the school’s desire to teach responsibility and independence, a hope that students will carry that self-sufficiency into the workplace.
Students, dressed as required in business casual to reflect the lives they’re training to lead, move easily through the uncrowded hallways. Monday through Thursday, roughly a quarter of the students — or one grade level — are scattered across Chicagoland at work-study positions in law firms, hospitals and investment banking offices, fulfilling the dual-language, college preparatory high school’s goal when its doors opened 30 years ago.
Cristo Rey matches around 450 students — who are primarily from Spanish-speaking families who cannot normally afford Catholic school — to once-a-week work-study opportunities that help pay for roughly half of their $21,000 a year tuition. The student’s family is expected to contribute around $3,200 toward the rest of the tuition but can receive financial aid to ease that cost, while philanthropic efforts cover the remaining costs.
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This learning model not only helps pay for their education but can lead to internships and jobs that continue beyond the school year. It’s an alternative to traditional academics at a time when career and technical classes are in demand for high schoolers.
While similar work-study opportunities for high school seniors exist within Chicago Public Schools, Cristo Rey students can start working their sophomore year, positioning those who attend college with years of job experience under their belts.
Senior Paulina Key sought out the work-study model when she applied to high schools. The 17-year-old wanted to be ready for college and life after K-12 education, and Cristo Rey has helped her achieve that goal, she told the Tribune during her lunch period Tuesday.
“Cristo Rey stood out because they were offering to work one day out of the week, which I feel like you don’t really get that opportunity anywhere else,” she said.
In her three years at the school, Key has worked at a law firm in downtown Chicago, in construction at O’Hare International Airport, and currently as a certified nursing assistant at Loyola University Medical Center. Cristo Rey began offering the nursing training classes in the 2024-25 school year, introducing a field that Key said she can see herself studying in college next year.
“I think Cristo Rey has prepared me in being open to learning and ready to take on any challenges that come my way,” she said.
Across the table, fellow senior Mauricio Montoya, 17, nodded in agreement. Montoya has spent his work-study time in business and finance, handling expenses and honing his Microsoft skills. The experience has allowed him to be treated like an adult and earn trust despite the age gap between himself and his co-workers.
“I feel like I have an advantage over some other students; I was open to more experiences or more opportunities,” Montoya said, adding that while he may go to work one day a week, it still feels like high school. “There’s a lot of activities, clubs that we have, and so everyone just connects more.”
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The work-study model gives students an opportunity to explore career options, build relationships and skills, and get a sense of the workforce, according to Mary Beth Medvide, an associate professor of psychology at Suffolk University who has studied programs like Cristo Rey’s for decades.
The community aspect is also unique. Medvide found that students see their peers’ success and feel hopeful for their own futures, along with the sense that one person’s success benefits the entire community. Beyond that, there’s a “connection to something bigger than themselves,” she said.
“(There’s) this sense of embodying values, but also doing something for themselves and for their family, and so there is really an appreciation of education,” Medvide said. “Not just as a set of criteria that you’ve achieved or a degree that you’ve earned, but creating a sense of possibility that perhaps wouldn’t have been there in a different school system.”
Further, the school’s education style could help more students face life with resiliency.
“I also think that there are things about the Cristo Rey program … that help students have some of the mindset — the proactive personality, the career adaptability, the critical consciousness about the world around them — that helps them persevere in situations when it is tough to find a job, or it’s tough to balance things in life,” Medvide said.
Anthony Guzman is a living example of that adaptability. A class of 2013 alum, Guzman worked in multiple fields before returning to his alma mater in 2023, where he now serves as the lead partner relations manager. He credits his resiliency to the confidence he developed at the school. For him, returning to Cristo Rey was a way of giving back to the place that shaped his life choices.
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“I want to show the students the same qualities that I have — that it’s OK to make mistakes, and there’s going to be times where your career changes, and that’s OK,” Guzman said.
Some students have already experienced those changes by switching work-study jobs.
Matching students to an ideal work-study opportunity is a monthslong process that happens during students’ summer vacation. It has an effect larger than being a line on their resume — it confirms at a young age that they deserve to be in professional spaces according to Guzman.
“I want our students to understand … that wherever you go, you belong,” Guzman said. “You shouldn’t think, ‘Oh well, I come from a Hispanic background, I come from a poor-income neighborhood. It doesn’t matter.’ You’re there because we want you there, and they want you there.”
For staff members like Guzman, the community, spirit and dedication displayed by students are the same he and his classmates shared three decades before. As a young man, he walked the halls of Cristo Rey, grew up in the same neighborhoods as the current students and, in some cases, attended the same grammar school.
“Everyone wants to be here, and the teachers give that same care and energy to the students that they gave to me,” Guzman said. “… Seeing the students understand why they’re here and the energy that the school gives is really positive.”
Similarly, students are at the heart of Reina García’s work as the school’s director of college counseling. A 2007 alum, García is struck by how much the school has grown in recent years, from its certified nursing assistant training program to additional Advanced Placement course offerings and murals that decorate the buildings’ walls.
For many families, including García’s, Cristo Rey is a tradition. García’s sisters and cousins attended the school, and her goddaughter is currently a junior. Beyond that, the school’s religious Jesuit identity allows it to care not only for a student’s academic advancement but also for their formation as a person.
“I think there’s an additional layer here at our campus, just serving students that come from low-income backgrounds, predominantly Latino, ensuring that those aspects of their background are also celebrated,” she said.
And while the curriculum and students might have evolved in the last few decades, “the spirit is still the same,” García said.
“I think the kids are certainly different, and we’ve been through a pandemic now,” García said. “There are so many things, both good and bad, that have happened, but I think the spirit of Cristo Rey remains. I think that’s why so many people stay here for so long.”