Bam, Pow, Wham!

The Cristo Rey Jesuit community celebrated in pop art fashion at the "Halls of Thunder" President's Celebration on January 20th. The comic themed soiree, held on campus, highlighted recent renovations to the building and our incredible technology partnership with Data Projections which sponsors the school with all of our state of the art interactive learning technology.

Shelby Hodge, THE Houston social columnist, spread the news of this rocking party!

Fun, interactive activities generated thunderous energy, including charades by videoconferencing, science experiments on a SMART board and a paint-by-numbers life-size superhero.

Sliders and fries (Fr. Martinez's favorite meal!), along with "Reef Lemonade" and "Milkshake No Minors" were generously provided by award winning chefs Bryan Caswell and Bill Floyd of El Real, Little Bigs, Reef, and Stella Sola restaurants.

In his usual "energizer bunny" manner, Father Martinez gave a rousing speech thanking donors for their incredible support in making the school what it is today –a fully functioning college prep high school for low-income students with close to 300 students in attendance in just its third year.

"All of you here tonight have ignited a Cristo Rey Jesuit revolution, reimagining the future for all of our incredible students, and in turn, changing the future of our great city," said Fr. Martinez.

Fr. Martinez brought junior student Andres Salgado on stage to further thank guests, introducing him as Cristo Rey Jesuit's first potential National Hispanic Merit Scholar.

"Who would have thought, that in our first graduating class, we would have a student with the potential to achieve this high honor!"

See below for a video about Cristo Rey Jesuit shown at the event, and a gallery of photos from this exciting night.

Photos courtesy of Beejay's Photograpy, Jenny Antill, and Brandice Pierre

Cristo Rey Jesuit founding President Fr. TJ Martinez, SJ has been busy around town promoting the school’s innovative and alternative education model.

On Wednesday, January 25th, he attended Children at Risk’s 6th Annual Children’s Summit on “New Messaging, New Media for a New Generation” at United Way of Greater Houston, participating on a Latino Children’s Panel about “Reaching the New Majority.” Fr. Martinez shared with public officials, community leaders and local and national experts how Cristo Rey Jesuit has successfully reached out to the Latino community as a great, affordable education option.

“Our experiences have taught us that marketing to our Latino population differs from our other populations,” said Martinez.

He described how Latinos respond primarily to a relational over information approach to marketing: “That is to say, we first had to earn their trust by allowing them to get to know us prior to telling them about our innovating program.”

Second, Fr. Martinez said that the oral word has a more powerful impact that the written word when it comes to explaining what the school is doing.

“Rather than wait for our Latino families to come to us, as some schools do, we realized we needed to go to them,” said Martinez. “We hit the streets, knocked on doors and reach out to as many people as possible. We run Cristo Rey Jesuit less as an educational institution and more like a grassroots campaign –and it is working!”