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Virtual SCM HS Open House October 2021
Added Oct 22, 2021
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all right it's starting to record Isabella here now not yet will let people in now hi good evening welcome Nelson strickler's in to get in here but we thank you guys for coming this evening to our virtual High School open can get started here in just a minute and I'll allow the last-minute stragglers to come in and get audio setup alright thank you guys for coming out welcome this is our annual High School open house and unfortunately this year we are doing a virtually again hopefully she will be able to see you smiling faces here in our classroom so that we can show off everything that we have beer that makes our program unique in our environment unique or excited that you are able to join us tonight everybody is healthy and happy, and we're looking forward to sharing with you what we have in store at what why we think our program is the best the most unique absolute greatest environment for any students to learn what they need to I mean we couldn't do that without our high-school guys in our teams and then we're going to introduce everybody here in a minute before I get started when there's going to be a lot of information being coming at you please utilize the digital packet that you guys got through the email please if there's a conclusion of the evening if there's still any lingering question do you have Miss Lindsey and I are always willing to answer any questions that you might have please feel free to send us an email get us on the phone we are excited to talk about our program with anybody and gets there any questions you might have and like I said we are a team here we work collaboratively and so we as guides work together to successfully make collaborative efforts and integrated and so this is our team we have Miss Lindsey she is kind of in charge of the ELA vanities efforts I'm mr. Tucker and over Math Science and Technology we have dr. Novo Eve is our theology guide and then senorita I know Fray is our Spanish guide and again like I said we work collaboratively together we're constantly talking in working out at the sink seamlessly together we also have two student on a support guides that help us we have Miss Lewis she's our daughter College counseling and she's going to be talking about all of the college efforts that we have going on here in a little bit later and then Miss Snow is overseeing all of our creative expression my Pursuits that we have so we couldn't do it without all of this team and we're excited that we all work together so seamlessly into and so now I want to use all of the students and so students you guys are going to introduce yourselves and say your name your year so feel free to unmute yourself Isabella you'll start us off if you would please alright I'm here already at my name is Isabella Godfrey and I am a senior this year hi everyone my name is Julia Louis and I'm also a senior hi my name is Emma and I'm also a senior hi my name is Mariano in Amazon born hi my name's Owen and I'm a junior hi my name is Tasha and I'm also a senior awesome I'm into Jasmine is another sophomore and she was unable to make it out tonight this makes up are really small awesome powerful group of students who helped collaborate and facilitate discussions everyday and challenge us as guys make us stronger so thank you guys for being taking some time out this evening to be with us we also have three special gas our sem alumni so alumni if you would please unmute yourself and introduce yourself tell us what college you're at and what you're studying hello everyone my name is Rich Churchill I go to the Whitman College and met a sophomore this year and I still haven't declared yet but I'm going to have to soon and I'm leaning towards major in film and media studies as a minor in German hi I'm Jacob Blackmon I'm a freshman at UT this year and I'm studying anthropology hi everyone I'm Sophia Devereaux I am at right never stayed with sophomore and I am majoring in art history and anthropology thanks for being here alone tonight or excited to hear your you put just a little bit I'm so this point I'm going to turn it over to miss Lindsay that's going to kind of talk to us a little bit about the Montessori High School and what it looks like all right thank you Brian and thank you students in Al Sniper being here as well as all the parents and prospective students in the audience were so excited to have this many people at a high school open house it just really speaks to the way that our program is building so one question that we often get whenever it comes to our Montessori High School is what is a Montessori High School and how is a Montessori High School different from what you might get at a public or more Traditional School and so I'm I want to start by saying this picture answer for what we are doing here is preparing the environment to suit the development of the older adolescents our students who are 15 to 18 years old and so if you've been in Montessori for a while this should be a familiar idea because it's really the same thing that every Montessori level is trying to do so what are the unique mean of students who are 15 to 18 years old will develop mentally they are looking to find their role in society they are obviously getting ready to move on to college Adult World so they need to be prepared for adulthood and they need meaningful engaging work to make their work feel authentic rather than just like they're going through the motions if you are an adolescent parent this Probably sounds a little bit similar to what you're already Hearing in the AC but some key differences between the younger adolescents and the older high school life adolescents are that at this stage you know the the rapid development that you see in early adolescence has slowed down a bit the the students are rather less intense and emotional than the 12 to 15 year olds are they're ready for more rigorous academic work and are ready for a lot of discipline to work with abstract Concepts the community bonds are still really important at this but at the same time students are increasingly ready to be expanding their Horizons beyond our community and finding Partnerships and outside the school and out in the world so the bottom line of what we're doing is preparing this environment for our 15 to 18 year old so what does that look like like what how do we do that and we have several components of our program that help us do that and so the first one that I wanted to talk about is offering integrated subject matter so I think adults can all appreciate that out in the world knowledge is necessarily siloed into discrete objects the way it is usually in Traditional School and so when we approach the subject you look at it from different angles and different kinds of academic disciplines to that can you get a better feel for her call Knowledge exchange an inspiration works in the real world and additionally allowed them to go deeper into material so that they're getting the same kind of Concepts in a variety contacts not just one we also have a student-centered classroom we really strive to hear our student voices and get their feedback work with them on things like project choices and setting deadlines we are also thinking about just like it every other Montessori level what are what is a particular group of students interest and what did these individuals I want to learn about and to take that into account when we're designing projects and planning for the year additionally we offer advisories which is another thing that if in the community you're accustomed to so we do the same kind of things again we're looking at our students as whole people not just as academic students and so advisories give us the opportunity to talk more informal way we offer guidance on time management Stress Management we talked about social lies sometimes it's Grace and courtesy issues and sometimes whatever the students feel like talking about that day I'm looking at Jacob cuz we had we were I was his advisor for a lot of years and we had a lot of long and various topics over the year addition to that we offer authentic work experiences and that oftentimes comes in the form of internships and so I actually went to take a second and give some of our students a chance to talk about some of the internships that they've done in the past so Julia would you mind telling us a little bit about an internship one of your internships that you've done in the yeah so I'm at the opportunity to do several different internship during my time in the high school but my favorite one so far took place in the spring of last year so it was virtual because of Toby spot I work for 5 months as a climate policy intern or the nonprofit climate cabinet I was part of a project to create climate score cards for State legislatures all our legislatures all around the United States to kind of a theft current State climate Chelsea and so I was in charge of finding processing in analyzing climate policy information across 10 different state and it was really cool because I got to learn a lot about kind of the intricacies of climate policy and the legislative vote process and the research that I did is now being used by people all around the country which is really cool so it was just a really amazing experience and I learned a lot from it and I think now I'm passing it on to Isabella to talk about one of her internship so I've also done multiple internships during my time in the high school but the one I wanted to talk about today is an internship that I'm actually still doing with windhover so for the past three years I have had the opportunity to be an intern with windhover and work on various software development projects which has been something that's been really interesting for me because I'm interested in pursuing an engineering after my time in high school so it's been a really great experience for me to get some of that that type of hands on it grants that you don't necessarily get within within the high school without having to look for places outside of it so it's been a really great way for me to look for places to practice what I'm interested in outside of school and I've also really like that I've had the support of the guides and of the ice to be able to continue working on this with these people and all these projects for three years now so I wasn't able to build on the skills that I flirted with my time with them and continue working so that's been a really really big part of the high school for me thank you Isabella and Julia and yeah and so the internships are providing students an opportunity to go pursue something that they're especially interested in them and could maybe see themselves looking into further as they purr collagen and their careers and it also gives them a chance to interact with other adults we're trying to expose them to as many different kinds of adults and adult roles as possible that kind of leads into our next feature which is VIs professional so as often as possible we're trying to have people come into that are experts in their field to give us some additional guidance on either topics we might be studying in a class or projects the next kind of component of our environment is prepped and we're to be talking about that a little bit more later so I'm going to go ahead and Skip to community meeting which is another feature that will be familiar to adolescent parents we do the same kind of thing in here where once a week we get together we sit at the table we have an agenda that guides our students can put items on and we we want that to be a place where we can hash out whatever you no business keeping or issues with that we need to discuss as a community in one recent example that seniors this year have brought as they would like to figure out a way to do off campus lunch is on occasion so we've had several discussions were working towards how can we create a policy where that might be able to happen we also offer self-expression as part of our program not as an extra-curricular so we do creative expression which is when we've done the Africa work in the past and then we also have physical expression which vote our original group of students really requested because they enjoyed that kind of pee time are time to like move their bodies after all of the sitting down and studying that we do and I got his taken on a variety of different forms ever since you know we first started implementing but those are some of the big pieces of our classroom environment and I think at this point we're talking about our program people pretty excited about it but they also kind of want to know a little bit more about what our curriculum is and how people are learning science writing all day horses and credits that we all associate with our high school experiences and and that are there requirements of high school as well so we're going to talk about next where I jump to that I wanted to give Sophia a chance to kind of tell us about what she appreciated as far as our classroom environment and what she kind of got out of the Montessori environment that has helped her in her college career say hi everyone as far as the aspects from high school that were particularly meaningful to me I'd say that the three that come to mind right away or the engine class size the frequency of visits from guest speakers like massaging mentioned and then the trip so I'll kind of delve into each one of those and why does were particularly meaningful to me and why those translated really well into my years in college class sizes in the high school really led to a personalized learning experience we had the opportunity to split up and explore areas that excited us as individuals or smaller groups and then also continue exploring together as a larger group the learning was so much more valuable it felt like what we were learning was really coming to life we could bounce ideas off of each other off of our guides and it was frankly a lot easier to stay engaged in the smaller class there's there was more frequent audience participation in a student participation and this really gave me a really solid foundation in college both in my smaller discussion pocus focus classes where it's clear that small high school would lend itself and it would translate really nicely into the smaller class in college but then also has really helped me in my larger more lecture-style classes in the larger ones Saint Catherine's High School really gave me the tools to know how to stay engaged when I'm in a room where I'm practically Incognito in the professor doesn't know my name I'm at doesn't know if I've shown up to class or not being in the sem High School in that small environment really gave me the tools to know how to keep myself focused on how to raise my Dino raising my hand to ask questions approaching the professor after class all those things that felt like second nature to me because of all those years in the high school translated really nicely both in my smaller classes and then in the larger classes as far as guest speakers and visiting professionals there were so many people that were just absolutely fascinating two that come to mind right away and then I still think about where Melissa Lopez she actually works at St Catherine and she has a ba in music history and she came and talked to us about music history starting likes I think from Gregorian chants and it was just a fascinating talk and then also doctor Rio Costello actually professor in the rice art history Department he focuses on 18th and 19th century European art so he came and talked to us from Italy and really made everything come to life I'm in May that are that we saw on our trip much more those are just two examples of the many people who came in to speak with us and really what made those guest speaker so valuable was the fact that we were in an intimate setting where we could ask questions and engage weather through something as simple as just I contact you no engaging do I contact nodding at each other or actually having a full-on conversation during or after so intimate High School setting really made it how much more valuable and so much more meaningful and then finally as far as tricks everyone loves the church we all talked about the trips we all whenever we get together or whenever I see someone from high school or even send me a see one of the things we talk about is a trip and how amazing they were and how much fun we had and we also talked about all the work we did leading up to the trips and how rewarding that was both during and during the trip and then before the trip obviously after a lifelong lesson and so that work leading up to the trips that we do in all classes we were studying Greek mathematicians in math prior to our trip to Greece we were studying obviously in language arts and humanities and so the fact that we had two speakers coming in to talk to him specifically about what we are going to see and the fact that we were in small classes again made us really motivated to learn and super excited to actually be most places and then obviously traveling they're really just imprinted those studies and Ice it's so meaningful to see the Parthenon in person as opposed to seeing it you know in a picture right you can see it three-dimensional you can walk around it you can talk to greet people about it I'm so on and so forth so also on the trips it wasn't like we got there and it was just like a time to have fun you know it was super fun but the learning didn't stop you know once we were there we continued visiting with experts we would have chores to do as much as we could and then even the sooner we wouldn't go to like you know what chain restaurant whether it was an Italian chain restaurant or an American when we would go to but that's kind of a window into why are pictures these three aspects I just thought I School generally thank you Sophia and actually before I start on the academic curriculum I'm going to invite Ruth to go ahead and also tell us a little bit about her experience and how she felt prepared for her classes in the college environment because I know some of our alumni have to log off a little bit earlier so I'm Ruth. want to go ahead and speak to your experience I'm sure yeah one thing I'll say is I definitely have felt very prepared for all of my classes so far all the ones I've taken I have not felt like I've been lacking any skills specific example of that would be in a film class that I'm taking right now a lot of what it is it's discussion-based over like watching movies and we're talkin about them so we're talkin like label narrators Etc those are very similar things to what we discussed in literature seminar which was one of my favorite classes and that class really helps prepare me to be able to articulate my thoughts and really liked form arguments about what I thought about that sing about different stories and so I found those skills to be very useful it's also like confidence-building if you can talk in like a group of your peers and like start like feeling more confident expressing those ideas it's easier and a bit bigger Brown and same as I could Sophia said it also makes me more constantly going up to talk to your professors afterwards because I've always felt very comfortable with my guys and like the AC and through the high school since I've been trying to kind of continued his relationships with my professors here all I can say is it's going really well and I feel super prepared for everything I've done okay thank you so much Rick and so yeah I just want to piggyback on what he said to talk about how our curriculum is it is preparing students for the next step and what we are studying isn't really as mysterious or different how we are studying it so we are accredited through the Catholic schools we do consult the state Creek ulam and the teks that's our Baseline expectation for what we would want students learning here every student is on the hook for earning the graduation required credits through the state of Texas we offer for particular areas of study AP course work we also offer dual credit course work with the University of Saint Thomas we provide opportunities for students to do Independence and you do internships 4 in areas that are of high interest to them rigor is available in any horse that were offering here and students have some freedom to choose the level of rigor that they would like to pursue and it's meaningful to them so the students wants to go really deeply want to go more deeply into some areas than others that's okay I mean that's what we want as long as everybody's meeting the requirements that they they need to come out with so how we study is what is you know a little bit different in Montessori so we have our three-year cycle just like all the other levels and that continued something that works really well at this level Mariano are you there I was wondering if Mariano who is one of our in coming sophomores this year and you to the school wouldn't mind reflecting a little bit about how the three years like for the three-year age difference has been in the classroom for me the three-year cycle has been very welcoming and in trouble. The classmates and I can feel like even though I'm very I'm a sophomore and the rest of them are older than me and my I can definitely still feel a classmate trust and intimacy like like the class and yeah it's been very reliable Auto my older classmate Juniors and seniors very enjoyable thank you Mariano so yeah so the idea what that is you know our oldest you can serve as mentors and a lot of weight to our incoming sophomores and then fry younger students they're having the opportunity each year they come back they're learning their learning different aspects in different classes at the same time they are revisiting certain kinds of material that they can see and we can see the way that they develop over the course of three years rather than one year and so we offer a lot of seminar-style classes like Ruth and Sophia have already kind of talked about where we're discussing what we're working on rather than just a top-down approach with the guys lecture we offer students the opportunity to do sustained research projects so students can spend a longer time looking at something that they're really interested in to or that they have some choice about some examples of that are Once In Math there was a really cool functions project where students look for examples of functions in the real world and then use that as a way to go deep into understanding them at the functions we want time did a we chose current topics that we're kind of in the news that could be debated and we researched those topics in depth and then held a debate in class to be kind of combination of that research with the students really seem to enjoy that and then we've done even longer term project climate change Symposium that Sony may remember from a few years ago or longer research projects and then there's different kinds of ways that student can show us Mastery of what they're learning on it could be presentations it can be creative demonstrations of knowledge it doesn't just have to be papers test and presentation but we also do some papers Captain presentation so that students are prepared for doing all of that stuff at the next level no cash if she will speak choose some work that she is the word she's most excited about now or having completed in the past oh yeah muskrat Spy Games spy school the closest community in the concert like 101 time out of my guys helped me tremendously. improve my writing skills and skills overall and I can physically see that grows through myself and got assessments that we get every single year and with every single assessment improvements and it makes me happy that it like able to physically see my growth which in turn like makes me more willing to talk and communicate with my guys to further improve the skills and that applies to all my subjects to manly and my writing probably the subject I've grown the most in over the course I'm in high school which I'm really happy about thank you Josh I think the beginning you were having a little bit of technical difficulty but I think we got most of most of what you said at the end okay next thing that actually we had planned to talk about was trips and I feel like the students and alumni have already kind of talk to the so we do travel is part of our program the students are involved in choosing destination based upon our Collective goals for Sunday so we're trying to integrate work in history geography current events environmental science Making all this work tangible not just abstract it it all just becomes much more meaningful when you get to see the Parthenon. and so in addition to deepening the curricular studies the students are thrown into the real world kind of problems of keeping up with your passport and booking Hotel and how to catch a bus in Athens when you don't speak the language time changes budgeting and just trying to accommodate everyone's needs over you know an extended when we're all together 24 hours a day so there's a lot of community bonding of us happens on the trip and there's also a lot of age appropriate Independence which again like the closer things are getting too I am moving off and living on their own the more important it is that we're supporting that need to do things independently Julia did you want to tell us a little bit about some memories that you have from trips at Saint Catherine's one of my favorite parts of my AC and high school experiences have been the trip when I was in seventh grade we took a trip across the United states to study peace and social justice in a really cool part of this project was it was almost completely researched and planned by the students so we took what we were learning in our different Humanities classes and we found locations that we thought we really get to visit the kind of expand on what we were already learning and then we found the restaurants in the hotels and we booked the reservations and all that so we learned a lot in the process and then just had an amazing time on the trip and all the trips that I've been on have been so fun and so cool and they always have a connection to what we're learning in class so for example when I was in 9th grade we were learning about the Texas government and so we took a trip to Austin and we actually got to Lobby our state representatives for causes that were important to us and then my sophomore year we were planning to go to Hawaii and so we spent the year learning about Hawaiian culture and wine history and then of course we weren't able to end up going because of the pandemic but learning process behind it was so relieved and so this year we're studying world history and usually during this year in the cycle we would be traveling internationally but because of covid-19 to be able to do that so we're planning a trip to New York City for this December we thought it would be a really good place to go that would still be connected to a lot of the things we're learning and we also be able to make connections to some of the things that we've learned over the past two years with American history and American government and so it should be really really fun and overall the trip has been one of the most incredible part of my high school experience awesome thank you Julia and so QuikTrips we now turn to the never so fun aspect of high school with this grade assessment and so that is what I will chat with you about right now and so the first thing I want to talk about it it's kind of Montessori philosophy as we know about a story was very big on not using extrinsic rewards to motivate learn and Grace would be an extrinsic reward thinking about the high school it was very kind of tumultuous for us to think about adding grades as part of our program that's we did more research into post High School institutions colleges universities program they were all asking for grades and trips and how do we get that so we did a deep dive into the research on transcript and that the difference between a narrative transcript Progressive transcript traditional transcript and so we after long research and long debate and discussion we basically created our own type of transcripts and with that we created our own bottle or assessment that focuses on holistic Braiding on Mastery learning where students are given an opportunity to show that they understand what they're supposed to learn it's not going to be an a Rich of assignments that are in a great but it's going to be looking at the five different domains that we've identified as super important for students to learn graduate and have these skills moving forward so the domains are halogen skills preparedness presentation case I always would forget the one engagement thank you and so with those five. Google Tess the students through basically a rubric system where students actually create their own self assessment first the students will look at each class and they'll reflect the learning that they were engaged in and come up with a grade for themselves at the same time Guide dark Reading Guide assessments using the same rubric coming up with the same approach and then together the student in the guy are engaged in conversation about those grades and so not only is the student receiving a gray either actively involved in the process which is totally something different you would never see it a traditional or public school and it's something that the students in and really I as a guide value in the process because we don't want it the grade to Define you in any way you want the grade to kind of help you guide you in the right and so with our grades we also have what's called a weighted GPA and for us in our school that's means we have pluses and minuses so I'm an A plus is giving a GPA score of 4.33 and then we also have a name if we give you a 3.67 and so that is how we use a weighted GPA to come up with a transcript because we do want to honor those students did you go above and beyond and Achieve that a plus standard so that gives us a whole opportunity to see the student again in a holistic way using Mastery learning as opposed to you just to have it I was silenced so this time I'm going to throw it over to Emma Emma tell us a little bit from the student perspective about the grading process what do you like what do you not like give us a little detail all right well I personally really like the grading process just because you kind of explained the process of it but it's a really personal and feel unique I'm at really is unlike anything you're going to find like a public school and like often times in a public school forgiving like a letter grade and you don't really have like that kind of exclamation behind it and it can be like confusing on like what areas they want you to improve it and stuff and so I really like the we have self-assessment first of all because it gives us a chance to kind of advocate for ourselves and to kind of it gives us a chance to evaluate our work and how we feel like we've been doing in each class and then we can also like explain why we believe we deserve a certain grade and then kind of give an explanation as to why we think we deserve that and so after we completely self-assessments and stuff obviously then the guides will review them and they can I take that into consideration when they are grading us themselves and so then we kind of have like a sit down together like this meeting where we kind of decide and go over what our final grades will be whether this is like for progress reports or like final grades and saw them during this meeting students are encouraged to my voice any concerns or like questions that I may have about any of any grades they receive until it came back kind of by having this chance like sit down with the guy that's very one-on-one and personal and it allows us to kind of understand how they're viewing our work but also allows them to understand how we feel like we've been doing and it kind of helps us understand what areas we've been like on a flourishing and then where we could improve if we want to raise our grade or places where we need to put in more work perhaps and so this process like allows the students to have a chance to have a one-on-one to kind of be plain why we think we deserve we deserve and it leaves the students feeling really confident about their grades and with a really good understanding of why we received a certain grade or certain review my teacher quit Emma thank you so much and I did want to point out that there is a sample transcript in the digital packets or if you wanted to look at how our transcript is organized and noticed that there's a narrative piece at the top so we do want the first thing review skip to see The Narrative of the student not the grades assigned to that student and then you'll also notice like this unless he was talking about some of the unique names that we give our course at so we are using integrated Humanity for using integrated Integrated Science but also on the transcript to help those transcript reviewers see those courses in more of a conventional setting we also put the conventional course name that would be associated with those is as well so that document a really good document to look at the kind of see the structure of our transcript and the other document want to point out that signore digital packet is the guide assessment so you can actually see the rubric I'm see how they're scaled out and how you guys can earn an a + a + b Etc and so with that said I want to move to another aspect of our curriculum which I think is the most fun the creative and physical expression pieces so as part of our school day this is an extra outside of the school day we want students to be able to express themselves creatively and physically so the main example that I can think of are there are two plays at the high school is put on last year we are the students read the play Clue and then they actually performed it as a movie I'm in a year for that they read the play our town on the perform it live in front of an audience at the HBU theater in both cases students were able to engage in the literature understanding character development any character clock and then having to act and the difference between our town and clue which was super convenient and a benefit I think of the covid pandemic was that we had to do it as a film I'm instead of alive going and so students actually had to learn how to act as if they were filming a film so in a live play we go from seeing one to the end of the the play but when you film a film you do every scene at in this area first so we could be jumping starting at seeing 7 at jump to seeing 32 and it come back to see me before and then having the students understand what's happening throughout the play in a different level is what clue gave us last year so awesome experience in both of those cases physical expression we have physical expression built-in to our weekly schedule once a week we work with Coach Sam I'm already the coaches on staff were students moving their bodies we also find ways to put physical expression into our lessons so we can see we have physics skydiving so we looked at the physics of skydiving indoor skydiving I fly we went out to Blackwood and we did a creative scavenger hunt and then they were enjoying the grounds there at Blackwood and running around getting their bodies moving so these are just some exam of how creative expression in physical special work in our community Isabella can you describe some of the benefits that you seen by having creative expression in physical expression as part of your porch light I think that created the opportunities that we get in the high school for Creative and physical expression are a really important and we learned a lot of really valuable skills from that whether it be getting to practice our public speaking skills by putting on shows us things or just general the community bonding it comes to doing this sort of thing one of my favorite experiences my sophomore year was that experience of putting on our production of our town I love how we were able to integrate what we were doing for the show across all of our classes and go and in such as that skin and look at the character development in and then be able to bring that knowledge of what we're learning in those to be able to better understand the characters that we're putting on another thing that happens the times is that those of us who are particularly interested in in Creative or physical expression opportunities that may not always be available in the high school just be based on limitations with the size of our current class is a lot of us will do outside of school on and pursue things along these lines is that something that's important to us and the guys are super supportive of those of us who want to do shows outside of school or who want to play on a club sports team will get all of the the support in the office she does things outside of school as we'd like them as well excellent you're absolutely right Isabella I forgot to mention that we have had students in the past use open work time during the week and go Adventure out so we had one student a couple years ago who was interested in kuk sool which is a form of martial arts and they went out and did that during the school day as part of their physical expression open work. He had another student who is very interested in doing sculpting they actually did a portfolio for the AP Studio art class in earned AP credit by doing that three her creative expression time as well so yes we are very supportive we wants to pursue everything they want it within limits and without our being so we encourage and welcome all ideas and to move to our next slide this is what we're here this is why were in high school we're here to improve ourselves and then hopefully graduate and be ready for college and so looking at College we offer some really unique things here the first thing is that we offer in the school ACT SAT and PSAT test so students do not have to go to their neighbor in high school or somewhere on the weekend we offer it here in cool once in the spring and once in the fall semester so once every semester students are able to take this test here in school without missing a beat we also have individualized college Council turn over here to Sarah Lewis in just a minute so explain a little bit more about that and then we also encourage students to do both dual-credit and AP course work so are dual-credit how we partner with University of st. Thomas downtown and they are able to accommodate a lot of students who had students who are interested in Greek and Latin in political science take courses through University of Saint Thomas the earning college credit right away from a renowned Catholic school and they're able to take those credits and move forward in the college process with them we also offer 7 AP courses right now throughout the figure cycle in other courses that Miss Lindsay your eye to red I teach within the three-year cycle and Miss Sanders I know if I also offering a Spanish class as well and so we also encourage students to if we don't offer AP course to encourage us to look into it. something that maybe Miss Lindsay or I could teach is it something that they could study on their own like Sarah with her AP Studio Art she was able to do her portfolio given the time and resources here and and a lot of time she did at home and she was able to submit a portfolio or her AP work there so we encourage students to do all sorts of things in this regard Miss Lewis would you please a little bit about the College counseling that you offer and all the benefits that humans can get from your expertise yes I'm the lucky one that gets to work with your students on their college applications but it's so much more than just the applications itself it's really a process of research cuz we are Montessori school after all and we like to research and reflection throughout the three years School cycle and ultimately our goal of course is that comes spring of senior year they're going to have a list of schools to which they've been accepted and schools that are good fits for them I'm academically so play and very importantly financially as well and I want to give a little bit of reassurance because they're so much in the news that makes this process sounds so scary one of my favorite higher ed journalist and authors wrote a book about a year or so ago that made a big splash it's called who gets in and why and we're going to have a copy in the parent Library soon but my favorite quote from the book is quote is actually never been easier to get into college and he goes on to cite some statistics and I want to share those quickly but US Department of Education Tally's nearly four 1000 colleges in the United States the infamous US News & World Report ranking is only cover about 1,400 of those schools and of those schools only about 50 except fewer than 20% of their app the actual national average acceptance rate is 66% so it makes it sound like it's so hard to get into college but if you engage in this research and refer process that we do the goal is really we're going to come up with a good list and the process will not be at stressful so how do we get there in your digital package you'll see something called the college prep timeline and it goes over all the things that we do each year really sophomore year is kind of just dipping toes in meeting with college reps School attending college fairs and I send out notices of all those things so that everybody knows what's going on junior year I left the students to really focus on Research by the spring we'd like to have a really good list of where they want to apply and then Summer and the fall of senior year is the really intense actual application process if you have a 9th grader really the most important thing for them to do now is just focus on their work activities that they really enjoy doing and maybe kind of start reflecting on those and kind of keeping track of how much time they spend on them in a very general way but to that end in terms of what you should be doing and what colleges are looking for they are looking for academic success so the transcripts at mr. Tucker talked about is definitely something they look closely at but I have to say when College reps come to talk to our students they are so impressed by their level of Engagement their curiosity their ability to ask really good questions and think about what's right for them so really what colleges are looking for is just for your student to have an authentic story to tell and I don't think I can get much more authentic than a Saint Catherine's High School Story it's going to be different for every student depending on what courses they choose what internships they do when independent studies they do and that's going to shine through in the college applications that they've really each had unique path despite what you may hear colleges are not looking for a laundry list of clubs they are not looking for students to have 20 AP classes in fact there's an article in your digital package on 80 and the text Dad yes a small number can be helpful but a large number really isn't necessarily helpful and they're also not looking for hundreds and hundreds of hours of volunteer jobs over activities which a lot of schools require a number of years ago we had the retired admissions director from Rice University who was had been in the profession for many years it was highly respected and he said I really don't care but what students did in their hundred-year hundred hours of community service I want to know what they did in a half an hour 101 which wasn't required of so these I just there's so much anecdotal information about colleges biscuit all these applications and all of the kids have these huge list of things but they all pretty much look the same on paper and our our students do not look the same and because they've had this very personalized experience to me that's really the benefit of all of the Saint Catherine's High School from a college perspective is that it's very individualized it's very reflective it's very very personal and I can tell you I have no doubt you will never get a more personalized teacher letter of recommendation then you will at our high school and that is a very important part of the application process and next week in the globe I think there's going to be a follow-up article go to this meeting and I've added a list of recommended reading and websites and podcast and I'll continue to drop things in the globe here and there on college-related throughout the years at least keep an eye out for that and I love to talk about so you can call me or email me anytime awesome thanks so much they're for being part of our team and bringing your expertise about the college process to our students and that's a nice segue into Jacob and Jacob as an alumni tell us a little bit about the benefits that you saw and having that individualize College counseling yeah it was really amazing for me I was very very indecisive in my college search I ended up as a longhorn so Hook em Horns but that was a last-minute decision to even apply there and I don't think that's a decision you could have made as last-minute is I-10 and pretty much any other school it's just you know it's an undertaking but I was able to have that flexibility and it's worked out great for me so I don't know I I think this is one of the places where this program really really shines because it's just you cannot find this anywhere else like like that kind of personalized I mean influence like she wasn't even colleges all the time you know I would I would find colleges I told him to her but she's also showing them to me and that's not a usual you know experience to have someone who knows you so well that they can say hey here's calls that matches exactly where you are you know both interest wise in academics wise so you know obviously there's like a certain level of stress to the the college search experience but I think this is the most stress-free I can't it just the amount of support really really really helps and it also helped me to you know in the end be entirely confident in my decision to have had all those Palmer stations not your senior year but I would say even starting sophomore year you know I was having conversations with Miss Lewis and the guide so by the time I actually made that in my parents are due by the time I actually made that decision there were no there is no worry that I had like messed up horribly are you know something had gone horribly awry like I was like yeah this is exactly where I want to be and where I want to spend my 4 years and that that certainty and support every step of the way is a huge like weight off your shoulders and so I a I think it's just amazing support that I received and I'm Gray go for it to this day and I think it's the reason I you know I'm sitting here now in my dorm okay thank you sir Jacob and thank you mrs. Lewis so the last thing that we kind of wanted to touch on this evening what is our theology so obviously we are a cat school and in our program in theology is a class with an academic class but at the same time it's not just a class it's also woven into the fabric of what we're doing is a community so I'm as far as the classwork we vary the subject matter in theology on a three-year cycle just like with all of the other classes I'm into some of the topics that come up are the mission in life of Christ Social Justice and discipleship history of the church and then world religion and alter the sacraments and so on this year right now the students are working on church history and that is for sure part and parcel of what we're doing but in addition to that we see it coming through in our mornings that begin prayer meditation and intentions the grace and courtesy that were actively trying to show each other and talk about within our day topics often come up in other classes director seminar is a big place where this happens and last year we read the brothers karamazov off and I think we talked about that book in both Theology and literature seminar like off and on the entire semester so it's not just part of the theology class we also do community service we're trying to serve we can find opportunities in the st. Catharines community and Beyond so we've had a several-year relationship now is Casa de Esperanza we've also done some work with the Houston Food Bank the Pekin homeless shelter and then students have done other kinds of projects like I think last year the Spanish students wrote letters to detainees were always looking for ways that we can help outside of what we're doing we also have a commune a student community service coordinator Emma Hughes has stepped up the last couple years to make sure that this continues to be a priority for us and kind of serves it but as the liaison between our class and some of the organizations that we are working thank you Emma and then Owen I was hoping that you could tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing in theology so the ology is I was thinking more important class in a Catholic School in is in a regular school so it's taken much more seriously I guess it's more integrated into the community it's kind of how a lot of our activities kind of can be tied back to theology in a way even if it's inexpensive way but right now in theology were talking about the early church so like the further early letters of the god of like John 1st John collisions all that stuff so we're talking about now and it's more personalized to how you view theology so how is blood howdy doody's letters of your research affect my relationship with God could I strengthen it more or does this conflict my view of him in the Fate does what does conflict definitely more of a analyzing your view on God or your connection with God in some ways to strengthen your connection with God and just met it looking anymore bounded together excellent thank you I went and we have one other aspect we have one alumni that cannot with us in person I'm however she did send us a video all the way from the United Kingdom so we are excited to hear from her and hopefully the sound work and you all can hear her message greetings from Nottingham England of Catherine's Montessori set design television have prepared to come all the way over, without Saint Catherine's I self-motivation and really prepared me for really understand before I came here I feel like I'm less than Catherine's of more confident person and because of that I feel I can succeed in future endeavors including this kind of scary. I miss it already all right thank you Sarah and so we want to leave you I'm going to conclude the presentation with one quote Montessori education must approve an individual in order to improve society and that is a mission that we as the high school guides want to instill in all of our our students and we thank you for coming we are going to break out into a question-and-answer sessions here in a minute but before we do that I want you to just say please feel free to reach out email questions if you have them do you know my email is on the web where are you I've been communicating with you regarding this event so if you want to send just reply to that to me I'm happy to forward that to the right person or answer it myself and so please thank you so much we hope that you have learned and I know that you guys probably have lots of questions and so what we've done is we're going to break out into three different question and answer sessions the first one will cover topics related to college I miss Lewis or I will be in that breakout session any questions along with Julia in the extracurricular and elective subtopic I'll be in there helping Mariano capture any questions and they miss Lindsay will be in the social life subtopic with Emma and I'm trying to remember who else I know it and so please feel free to drop into any of those in a minute a breakout session option will show up and you can choose the room that you want to break out into just hit the join button and then they will take me to another spot in Zoom to be able to answer any that you have please feel free even if it doesn't pertain to the actual breakout room please feel free to ask the question I mean if you have gotten everything that you need out of the event we thank you again for coming and we hope you have a great night so we won't be coming back to the main room so once you got all your questions done please feel free to log out and have a great night thank you so much and I'm opening up the breakout rooms
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