Educational Covenant

We believe that, through friendship with Christ, a sacramental vision becomes the lens for all subjects to be studied.  Formal theology and the universal vocation to holiness (CCC, no. 1533) serve as the cornerstone for lessons and discussions, both within and beyond the classroom setting.  Mathematics, languages, music–in fact, all human and natural sciences–find their interpretative key in the question about the human person, which is fully illuminated by the revelation of God.  Whether imparted during School of Prayer, in the context of daily lessons, or in the practice of the Core and Grade level Virtues, this sacramental vision enables the St. Mary Catholic Virtue School student to recognize unity, dynamic order, and the great harmony of creation in everything to be learned.

We believe that each student is unique and unrepeatable, with his or her own talents and vocation to live out in the various stages of life, culminating in the happiness of Heaven. 

Given by God to their parents, our students are then entrusted by their parents to the clergy, faculty, and staff in the realm of the St. Mary Catholic Virtue School's specific mission. The Educational Covenant of the DCJM highlights the significance of these ordered relationships, fostering the collaboration integral to an authentic and fruitful learning experience.

We believe that it is especially through stories that a child comes to recognize the ideal of becoming a saint, genius, and hero, because life itself is a story of the exitus and redditus of our own creation and recreation in Christ.  A pedagogy which encourages pupils to become the protagonists of their own adventure revolves around nurturing the moral imagination by presenting inspiring examples–both fictional and non-fictional–of greatness demanded and rendered. 

By familiarizing our St. Mary Catholic Virtue School students not only with the outstanding figures of Western civilization, but also with the notable characters of our best novels, short stories, poems, and plays, we seek to help shape their own desires unto cruciformity itself.

We believe that life is to be navigated virtuously.  Every experience, every situation, every challenge presents an opportunity for the Christian disciple to encounter the will of God and to carry it out through dependence on His grace. St. Mary is a Catholic Virtue School because we teach the students–through the Polaris Project, through the School of Prayer, reception of the sacraments, devotional practices and catechetical instruction, through the themes of the "Way of Words" Anchor Texts, through the Catholic worldview that suffuses all subject areas, through the example and guidance of clergy, faculty, and staff, and through all other means available–to understand what the virtues are and what it means to put them into daily practice.

We believe that, because each student is unique and unrepeatable, it is intrinsic to the educational mission to discover, nurture, and maximize the interests and talents given by God.  Mastering the art of living is not limited to the robust intellectual engagement provided within the classroom, but extends beyond it into the ecclesial, social, and familial community of which the student is called to be a part .  At St. Mary Catholic Virtue School, flourishing means integrating all dimensions of the person so that everyone's temporal and eternal destiny may be fulfilled.