Stella Maris Academy Pastor and Principal
“We are blessed to be a part of something new and exciting happening here in San Francisco”
…the revitalization of our 111 year old elementary school as a Catholic classical academy with an integrated academic program.
What distinguishes us from other private and parochial schools in the area? Integrated Catholic education cultivates the full intellectual, moral, and spiritual development of young people as whole persons to appreciate beauty, goodness, and truth and to act with integrity in life.
While some aspects of our curriculum will be found in other excellent schools across the country, including a joyful, faith-filled, academically rigorous environment, our approach to instruction and student formation follows an integrated model based upon the natural development of the human person. In school, we may have studied each subject separately from the others, including reading, literature, mathematics, science, social studies, theology, and the arts. As adults in the workplace and the world, we realize that the most important questions and challenges in life cut across different fields of study. We need to understand how the different things we know connect and fit together to form a coherent and ordered whole in order to make wise choices. The natural experience of children is the same. Moral questions arise through the study of history and literature, mathematics is the language of scientific inquiry, and questions about the goodness and beauty of creation arise in science classes, to name just a few examples.
In early childhood, students rely on the help of their teachers to experience how their world is connected. In the intermediate years, they begin to ask critical questions about how things fit together. As they reach young adulthood they begin to synthesize their understanding of the whole that will sustain them throughout life. In all things, they need a joyful encounter with God through prayer and the sacraments. Our integrated curriculum supports this natural development of each child and it is excellent preparation for future careers in every field, including the sciences, engineering, medicine, law, business, and so many more.
Come visit us in person or through a virtual information session in order to experience the joyful spirit that permeates our campus.
Guided by the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the Seat of Wisdom and Star of the Sea, the mission of Stella Maris Academy at Star of the Sea is to collaborate with parents to form young minds and hearts for the journey of life. By cultivating the love of Wisdom and the capacity to seek truth, goodness, and beauty in all things, we form young people to exercise their freedom wisely in order to excel in life by seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven. Through our commitment to provide a rigorous, integrated, and authentic Catholic liberal education that embraces the richness of tradition and the promise of innovative advances in knowledge, we aim to prepare students who will be the Christian servant leaders of tomorrow in every field of human endeavor.
The purpose of classical education is to foster the full intellectual, moral and spiritual development of persons to appreciate truth, beauty, and goodness, and to act with integrity in life. As Catholics we understand that whole persons live well and know truth and beauty in the fullest sense through life in Christ. Tus, while classical education embraces all of the liberal arts and sciences, it understands theology as an integrating principle and the life of faith as what animates our love of learning. While the purpose of classical education differs from the contemporary “pragmatic” model, which proposes to cultivate skills students need for college and career readiness, it is no less practical.
By focusing upon the development of the memory and imagination, multiple languages, mathematical intelligence, logical and rhetorical ability, art and music, among many other things, students learn to form and ask the right questions, read thoughtfully, write eloquently, calculate effectively, and to represent their ideas to others. By paying careful attention to the development of the virtues, classically formed students learn to seek the good, tolerate frustration, be courageous, act with justice, and work cooperatively with others.
Contemporary culture understands these as skills of “emotional intelligence.” A classically trained student has the right balance of resilience, creativity, critical analytical ability, and the entrepreneurial spirit needed to excel in any field, as well as academic excellence that will compete effectively with any contemporary measure of student achievement.
