Santa Catalina Lower School

Santa Catalina Lower School provides an educational program designed to encourage each boy and girl to work effectively, to communicate articulately, to approach life with a sense of purpose and competence, and to take responsibility for our gifts from God.

Our curriculum enables children to study the classic and the contemporary as they develop academic, artistic, and athletic skills and talents under the guidance of experienced teachers who take the time to know each child well. We are a close-knit, Christian community of students, teachers, and parents working together to nurture students' minds and hearts.

Our goal is that our graduates will be successful students in secondary schools and responsible, thoughtful citizens of the world. We believe that in the process of preparing and guiding young people toward intellectual growth and moral and spiritual awareness, the beginning is everything.

Our Expectations
All members of the Lower School community-students, parents, teachers, administrators, and staff-must believe in and demonstrate three essential qualities: respect, kindness, and spiritual awareness.

We respect each other by recognizing and appreciating our differences. While sharing a common purpose, each of us has attitudes and needs shaped by our own combination of personality, personal beliefs, and racial, cultural, economic, and social background. Because we value each other's individuality and the strengths each of us brings to our school community, we approach each other with trust and treat each other with kindness. Kindness arises from our belief in the virtue of Christian courtesy. We speak lovingly to and about the members of our community, and we treat others with consideration and fairness. Kindness compels us to interpret each other's behavior benignly, and it assumes the good will of all.

Spiritual awareness takes each of us beyond ourselves. Whatever our individual religious beliefs, we are all called to take responsibility for the human family. We seek to leave the world a better place by offering strength and comfort through service to our school, to our friends and families, and to our communities. While the qualities of respect, kindness, and spiritual awareness mature over a lifetime, we believe that they begin with the family and the school. They are basic to the daily life and purpose of Lower School, and we believe that all other attitudes and behaviors emerge from them.

"Educating the whole child means that you grow children from the inside out. It is about working with children with patience, acceptance, and trust. It is about maintaining a belief in the difference one child can make in the world. I am proud to be a parent at Santa Catalina. Through my involvement I, too, have grown to love this school from the inside out." -Parent