Excellence through Virtue
Saint Ann School provides a quality education based on a curriculum developed in keeping with our strategic plan, under the guidance of the Diocese of Birmingham, and in a manner cognizant of the standards of the State of Alabama. Saint Ann’s seeks to meet students where they are and bring them to state of preparedness for ongoing education in middle and high school. Most importantly it seeks to guide them to wisdom as understood in the catholic tradition.
Academic excellence is an outgrowth of Saint Ann’s focus on the development of the whole in virtue. We seek first to form the mind, body, and spirit in habits that order the life of the child, fundamentally, toward seeing what is true with eye and intellect, desiring what is good with appetite and will, and relishing what is beautiful in all they encounter. As the child’s habits become well-ordered, the child increases in wisdom and understanding.
Saint Ann Catholic School Academic Programs begin at age three (3) and continue through the 6th grade. Each phase of their academic education is specifically designed to prepare students for the next level in their education.
The academics at Saint Ann’s are classical. This means that they look back, for their model, to the catholic traditions of education that preceded the modern ones of today. Modern education, speaking broadly, was conceived as a project for the formation of workers for industry. Classical was, and is, a program of education for the formation of clear thinking, virtuous humans to know, to love, and to serve God and their fellow man. Read more about the curriculum here.
Pre-K Program is designed to introduce children ages 3 through 5 to the structure of a school environment while focusing on fundamental lessons in good manners, simple piety, moral basics, and early learning for language and number in a rich multi-sensory context.
Kindergarten students are introduced to core academic subjects. Fundamentals are reinforced and more time is given to language and number learning. There is a continued emphasis on the virtues, piety, school manners, and fostering each child’s curiosity and love of learning.
Elementary students (Grades 1-6) continue to build upon the foundation of the core academic programs. Students are exposed to a rich and rigorous curriculum. Emphasis increases upon virtue and spiritual development.
Technology alone is not enough…it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing. ~ Steve Jobs