The right environment and the right mentorship can turn the life of a student around. That is the message Cornerstone Academy’s new principal is bringing to the small private Christian high school in Oak Park.
Jeffery Fields, who started with Cornerstone Academy in June 2023, has always had a history of routing for the “underdog,” often finding himself relating to the hurdles they are facing.
For Fields, who had been in Special Education classes throughout his own education because of a disability, it wasn’t until he found a mentor in a retired principal that he was able to see his potential.
“He treated me with dignity and respect,” Fields said. “He never ‘you have to go to college,’ or ‘you need to better yourself,’ he just treated me as a person. That humanity, I was just drawn to that.”
Having that mentor speak into his life during a time he was vulnerable set him on a path toward a career in education, and after graduating from Prescott College in Arizona, he began coaching and teaching physical education.
Then, following a tragic situation where a student died as a result of bullying, Fields wanted to do more.
“I said I need to be able to work with these kids to have some sort of influence or policy,” he said.
Fields received his master’s degree in school administration and began working in school support services.
Fields, who grew up in Chicago after moving to the city from the Dominican Republic at two years old, found his way back, completed a principal internship at a charter school on the South Side before taking a position as a dean in a school in Detroit.
However, two years of having a long, five-hour commute on Sundays and back to Chicago after the school day was done on Fridays began taking its toll and Fields wanted to find a job closer to his home. Fields then worked as a dean for a school district in Waukegan and as a principal at a therapy day school before coming to Cornerstone.
At the small private Christian high school, Fields found a real chance to bring positive change into the lives of students who needed additional support.
“It is really different from what I am used to because it is private and I come from public schools,” Fields said.
He began with the school just in time for the 2023-24 school year.
The high school, located on Harvard Street, purposefully maintains a small student body population to help provide more individual support and fresh start to students whose “dreams and talents are in danger of being wasted.”
This is exactly where Fields wants to be, helping students and putting programs into place that gives them a better school experience and sets them up for success.
The work-study program is one that is expanding, growing from two partners to almost 12, Fields said.
“They get credit for their time spent there and the skills they learn they bring them back into the school and they are helpful as they transition out into the world,” Fields said. “I try to place them in jobs that will benefit their personalities and some want to try careers they want to do after high school.”
Having those additional responsibilities is also important in creating a well-rounded student.
Fields wants to instill giving back, and the work study program allows students to learn to be “givers of their time,” as well as advocating for themselves.
Being able to get students out working is a win, Fields said.
“They are learning to navigate for themselves,” he said. “Students who come to Cornerstone a lot of the time are struggling with mental health challenges, like depression or anxiety, so to get them out working and placed in positions that they normally might not be considered for, that is really big for them.”
Fields did not want to stop at that, but he also placed a focus on helping students learn healthier habits after he noticed students were either not eating at all or leaving campus for lunch.
Thanks in part through a grant received from the Oak Park and River Forest Community Foundation, Fields was able to close down the lunch period on Fridays and provide healthy meals to students while they also learned more about food deserts and environmental justice around food access.
“At first the kids didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but now they are interested in eating healthy,” Fields said. “Once a student said she had never had a smoothie before.”
The mind, body, and soul approach seem to be working and giving students the confidence to participate in other programs, including the newly formed Student Council Club, which was created a little more than a week ago and has five students participating.
While five might not seem like a very big number, it is important to note that Cornerstone has 20 students enrolled across the high school grade levels.
While many students who transferred into Cornerstone come from larger schools that had an active student council, the majority had never participated in school activities before.
“We are introducing them to different clubs and organizations and it is about relationships really,” Fields said. “They don’t have strong relationships: it is about being around people, how do you talk to people, how do you show interest in people, how do you ask them a question. We have to model a lot of that to the students.”
As Cornerstone and Fields work to bring these opportunities to students, he hopes to turn them into “givers” to the community and help serve the needs of others.
The changes the students that attend Cornerstone are making can be life altering.
“They are looking to belong somewhere and because we are small, everything is more family oriented. We eat lunch together, we have family meetings together, they have a voice,” Fields said. “When at their old school they hung out in the bathroom all day.”
The student body at Cornerstone is unique, Fields said, and it is his mission to make sure they find a safe, small environment where they can finally find that sense of belonging, just like he did years ago with the help of his own mentor.