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Academics
ACADEMICS: A LESSON IN ADAPTABILITY
A Notre Dame Prep education is a springboard to life-long learning for our students. They hone skills that prepare them to adapt to the ever-changing world. We believe that it is through intellect that students form an expanded worldview that puts the needs of others above the needs of self.
Our students have varying learning styles and each year we seek to offer programs that meet the educational needs of different types of learners.
NDP piloted the highly competitive St. Thomas Aquinas Scholars Program in 2019-20 to challenge students who learn at an accelerated
pace with a demanding course of study. More than 20 students benefitted from our St. Thomas Aquinas program last year.
For students who need extra time to master skills and assessments,
we continued to expand our St. Aloysius Gonzaga Program and Academic Center for Excellence (ACE). We know education is not a onesize-fits-all industry and we strive to deliver information in a way that learners of all types can and do succeed.
Electives were highlighted during the 2019-20 school year as we built the infrastructure to create educational pathways that enabled Notre Dame Prep students to tailor their high school education to allign with their ultimate career goals. Our educational pathways give students real-world experience and a leg up on their public-school counterparts. We provide opportunities in robotics, accounting, marketing, broadcast journalism, business and more.
NDP entrepreneurial students competed in the Seed Spot competition to showcase their business ideas. For the second year in a row, one of our teams earned a top place in the national Seed Spot Demo Day competition. Junior Bennett Curran and sophomore Lauren Skemp developed a mobile app called MyInk to help teens struggling with mental illness or thoughts of suicide find a network of help and crisis care. The two will have lifetime access to Seed Spot’s network of business professionals who can help them continue to develop and expand their app.
Notre Dame Prep students are guided through their high school years by our accomplished and dedicated faculty who understand that a vibrant intellectual environment is fostered by faith and reason. Our counseling staff provides academic guidance, class scheduling,
ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II
college and career planning and assistance for students who need help integrating socially.
Never before have our faculty, staff and counselors been tested more than during the COVID-19 crisis that profoundly changed the way we interacted with and taught our students during the final two months of the 2019-20 school year. We were fortunate that remote learning was not new to NDP due to our regularly scheduled “virtual days” when students participated in class remotely when the campus was used for teacher in-service, or our annual Eighth Grade Day. We were prepared to quickly adjust to remote teaching using the same methodology that we used for our virtual days.
There is no replacement for face-to-face instruction and the dynamic interaction that occurs when teachers and students engage in meaningful dialogue. However, many of our teachers found creative and interactive ways to keep the student-teacher relationship alive and kept our community together while apart during the COVID-19 quarantine.
