Middle School Preview Book 2019-2020

POWER and POTENTIAL Middle School at Stone Ridge

Confidence. Excellence. Sisterhood.

Experience where these come to life every day in Stone Ridge’s vibrant Sacred Heart community — offering first-rate academic, art, athletic, and service programs.

At Stone Ridge, we encourage our girls to set high goals, and we provide the skills and support to advance them.

The girls gain confidence through steadfast effort, with faith—in God, self, and community—at the core of it all.

This is the magic of the five Goals of Sacred Heart education,

put into action.

Five Goals of Sacred Heart Education Goal I · A PERSONAL AND ACTIVE FAITH IN GOD Goal II · A DEEP RESPECT FOR INTELLECTUAL VALUES Goal III · A SOCIAL AWARENESS WHICH IMPELS TO ACTION Goal IV · THE BUILDING OF COMMUNITY AS A CHRISTIAN VALUE Goal V · PERSONAL GROWTH IN AN ATMOSPHERE OF WISE FREEDOM

Our Sacred Heart

Network of Sacred Heart

Family

Founded in 1923 by the Society of the Sacred Heart, Stone Ridge is a member of the International Network of Sacred Heart Schools, with 24 schools and affiliates in the United States/Canada, and over 150 schools in 41 countries worldwide.

This sense of belonging to a worldwide network and mission is a richly powerful aspect of our identity.

The Goals and Criteria of Sacred Heart education defines the mission of Sacred Heart schools as part of the Society’s educational mission in the Catholic Church. This mission finds its source in the vision of Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat who began her work as an educator in 1800 when she founded the Society in France.

A Global

Education

Stone Ridge attracts and reflects a dynamic international community, as a school that serves a diverse student body. Representing many cultures and ethnic groups from around the world, our students benefit from a global education first and foremost in the friendships they make while here.

In addition, our dynamic curriculum opens our students up to the world at large, preparing them for a world without borders. Our International Network of Sacred Heart Schools also allows Upper School students the chance to study at one of our sister schools on exchange.

BC

AB

WA MT

OR CA

ID

WY

NV UT

NM AZ Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart Bellevue, WA Schools of the Sacred Heart San Francisco, CA Sacred Heart Schools Atherton, C Duchesne Academy Omaha, NE Duchesne Academy Houston, TX The Regis School Houston, TXA

Schools in the United States and Canada Sacred Heart School of Montreal Montreal

SK

MB

NB

WI

SD

MI

IA

NE CO

IL

MO

KS

OH

IN

TX

LA

MS

AL

PA

WV VA

NH VT MA RI

CT NJ DE MD

NC

TN

AR

ME NY

KY OK

QC

ON

MN

ND

SC GA

Barat Academy Dardenne Prairie, MO Academy of the Sacred Heart St. Charles, MO Villa Duchesne/Oak Hill School St. Louis, MO Academy of the Sacred Heart New Orleans, LA Academy of the Sacred Heart Grand Coteau, LA

Sacred Heart School of Halifax Halifax

NS

Academy of the Sacred Heart Bloomfield Hills, MI Newton Country Day School Newton, MA Convent of the Sacred Heart Greenwich, CT Sprout Creek Farm Poughkeepsie, NY Convent of the Sacred Heart New York City, NY Stuart Country Day School Princeton, NJ Princeton Academy Princeton, NJ

Country Day School of the Sacred Heart Bryn Mawr, PA Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart Bethesda, MD

FL

Josephinum Academy Chicago, IL Sacred Heart Schools Chicago, IL Woodlands Academy Lake Forest, IL Carrolton School of the Sacred Heart Miami, FL Network Schools Provisional Member Associated with the Network

The Middle School celebrates Sacred Heart Goal Days on 12 Wednesdays throughout the school year. These special Wednesdays provide each grade a chance to engage in specific grade-level programming or as an entire Middle School community. In advance of each Goal Day, the students discuss the overview of the events and the Goal of Sacred Heart education associated with that day’s planned events.

Goal Days consist of special retreats, liturgies with parents, field trips to enhance a certain part of the curriculum, leadership training, team-building activities, and challenge courses through a series of balance activities, ropes course segments, and group problem-solving.

Goal 5

The Power of All-Girls

Stone Ridge girls collaborate, lead, mentor, and learn from each other. A Middle School girl occupies every role: classroom leader, actor on stage, speaker at Assembly, Advisory representative, soloist in the choir, elected office holder, and team captain. These avenues for self-exploration and development empower our students to become self-assured, independent thinkers and leaders.

Each girl’s unique gifts are recognized and celebrated by peers and faculty.

In our nurturing and joyful environment, students are encouraged to:

• be courageous and confident • know her potential • be fully self-aware • advocate for herself • be a lifelong friend

A commitment to a personal and active faith in God is made possible through the girls’ involvement in planning and participating in liturgies and prayer services, retreat programming, sacramental life, and the development of self through contemplative practices.

The Middle School’s religion curriculum engages the girls in active learning through critical discussion, personal conversations, prayer, reading, research, and presentation of learning.

Goal I • Faith

Through the education of young women, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat and the Religious of the Sacred Heart set out to make known the love of God revealed in the Heart of Christ. Our philosophy is to serve each child individually and personally, helping her use her talents and gifts to fulfill the role God intended for her.

A commitment to a deep respect for intellectual values is evidenced by the nurturing and committed faculty, along with a robust curricula based on how girls learn best.

The schedule allows for five, 60-minute class periods each day, with study hall time built in to create balance and opportunities for one-on-one teacher engagement or small group project work.

Goal II • Intellect

In the classroom, our students distinguish themselves not only as great critical thinkers and skilled learners in a dynamic academic landscape, but also as young women with a conscience and a will to serve. It is evident to all of our students that our mission, as a school of the Sacred Heart, is to empower them with knowledge and skills in order to create a productive life for themselves and become lifelong learners. We also prepare them to become leaders and agents of change.

Middle School students gain a social awareness through their participation in several community projects involving all four grades or the grade or advisory. Our girls commit each year to supporting breast cancer research and education, an area food pantry, our Sacred Heart sister school in Uganda, and other underserved populations in our country.

Additionally, our students lead groups that prepare them to be stewards of the earth’s resources.

Goal III • Service

St. Madeleine Sophie Barat knew that when a child knows that she is loved by God she can transform the world. Every part of our Social Action program is rooted in this fundamental insight. Stone Ridge students recognize their capacity to transform, to become powerful agents of God’s love and compassion.

Goal IV • Community

Stone Ridge creates a family environment where we build a collective, group experience, yet also continually focus on and celebrate the needs and gifts of each person. Our students have plenty of common ground in the form of traditions, values, skills, and knowledge, and yet they have a remarkable sense of and appreciation for personal identity.

The result: the development of strong, confident, competent, service-oriented leaders.

The School commits to the building of community as a Christian value by offering opportunities for girls to grow relationships. A typical day opens with a community assembly. Regular advisory meetings build community by allowing small groups to focus on social-emotional and academic development.

Stone Ridge provides a space for girls’ voices to be heard.

Not only are our girls able to speak their thoughts, but they also can become leaders through that process.

Goal V • Growth

At Stone Ridge, we provide opportunities for our girls to understand their gifts and talents and to develop the habits of mind and body that will allow those gifts to flourish. It is an essential ingredient in the formation of strong leadership qualities that we see consistently in our Stone Ridge girls and alumnae. Stone Ridge promotes leadership, self-acceptance, self-confidence, pushing limitations and risk-taking, respect for self and others, self-discipline, and personal responsibility.

Join the Team

Athletics are an extension of Stone Ridge’s educational mission. We aspire to develop Champions for Life by providing young women with an intentional and physically challenging athletic experience, inspiring not only competitive grace, but also lifelong healthy habits and a physical awareness of oneself. Through our whole child approach to coaching and teaching which complements the five Goals of Sacred Heart education, we guide each girl to be the best version of themselves through sport.

Opportunities abound for students to display their spirit: Blue Gold Induction and Team Challenges, Gator Game Day, CongĂŠs, Father Daughter Field Day, ...and more!

ATHLETIC OFFERINGS

Basketball Cross Country Equestrian Field Hockey Golf Ice Hockey Lacrosse Soccer Softball Swimming Tennis Track & Field Volleyball

Creative Expression and Innovation

The Arts teach our girls how to communicate across cultures and generations as expressive members of a global society. Our programs allow the girls to gradually develop technical and conceptual skills for critical thinking, risk-taking, decisionmaking, and problem solving.

The Performing Arts program awakens within our students their ability to create, perform, and respond through the vehicle of the practice and performance. The Visual Arts program presents our students with an understanding of historical and cultural context, in addition to traditions of visual expression.

The Arts blend with our STEAM programming throughout cross-curricular lessons and activities, that involve inquiry and design. The design process may take the form of an experimental design, an engineering project, or a work of art. Inquirybased learning and design thinking are woven through all levels of the curriculum to inspire students to think independently and to teach them to engage confidently with real-world problems.

Our annual STEAM Competition is a culmination of the many problem-solving skills the girls learn over the course of the year. The students apply their science, technology, and math skills to design, create and build, individually or in small groups, only during school hours. The following finished designs are a result of the girls creativity and skills: Electric Race Car, Rafts, Rubber Band Boats, Egg Catapult, Kites, and Gliders, and Toothpick Bridges.

A Portrait of a Graduate

A great Sacred Heart education is both timeless and timely—the skills and knowledge gained transcend time, and the values instilled at Stone Ridge are values that serve as a roadmap for life. We have consistently educated our graduates to be female leaders in their families, in their communities, in the Church, in their industries, and in our world.

As children of the Sacred Heart, we are each called to live not only for ourselves, but also to make the world a better place. The charism of the Sacred Heart is about bringing the heart of Christ into the world, and finding it in the world— finding it in the people we meet, the opportunities we have, and the beautiful world around us. It is not only our job to bring the heart of Christ into the world, but we must work to find it.

College Acceptances and Matriculations

Below is a list of college acceptances for the Class of 2019. Names in bold are schools attended by members of the Class of 2019.

American University

Georgetown University (5)

Pomona College

University of Arizona

Harvard University

Pratt Institute

Babson College

Haverford College

Princeton University

Barnard College

High Point University

Providence College

Universita Bocconi, Italy

College of the Holy Cross

Reed College

Boston College (6)

Howard University

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Boston University

Indiana University at Bloomington (2)

University of Richmond

University of British Columbia

James Madison University

Rochester Institute of Technology

Bucknell University

Johns Hopkins University

Saint Joseph’s University

University of California, Berkeley

Kühne Logistics University, Germany

Saint Michael’s College

University of California, Los Angeles

Lafayette College

University of San Diego

Carnegie Mellon University

Lehigh University

University of San Francisco

Case Western Reserve University

The London School of

Santa Clara University

Catholic University of America

Siena College

Chapman University

Loyola Marymount University

University of South Carolina

College of Charleston

Loyola University Chicago

University of Southern California

University of Chicago

Loyola University Maryland

Southern Methodist University

Christopher Newport University

Loyola University New Orleans

Spelman College (2)

Claremont McKenna College

Marist College

University of St Andrews

Clemson University

Marquette University

St. John’s University

Colby College

University of Maryland,

Stanford University

Colgate University

Swarthmore College

University of Colorado at Boulder

University of Maryland, College Park (4)

Syracuse University

Columbia University

University of Massachusetts, Boston

Towson University

Connecticut College

McGill University

Tufts University

Cornell University

University of Miami

Tulane University (4)

Culinary Institute of America

University of Michigan

University of Vermont

Dartmouth College

Middlebury College

Villanova University (3)

Davidson College

University of Mississippi (2)

Virginia Commonwealth University

University of Dayton

New York University

Virginia Tech (2)

University of Delaware

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

University of Virginia

Denison University

Northeastern University (2)

Wake Forest University

University of Denver

Northwestern University (2)

University of Washington

Dickinson College

University of Notre Dame (2)

Washington University in St. Louis

Drexel University

Oberlin College

College of William & Mary

Duke University

Pace University, New York City

Williams College

University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Pennsylvania State University

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Elon University (2)

University of Pennsylvania

Xavier University (2)

Emerson College

University of Pittsburgh

Yale University

Economics & Political Science

Baltimore County

Emory University Fairfield University Florida Institute of Technology Fordham University (2) Furman University George Washington University (2)

Once a child of the Sacred Heart, always a child of the Sacred Heart.

This home is our home, not just today but for our lifetime.

Let us respect childhood; let us honor the soul of that small creature of God who can already make choices of the best if we take the time to awaken her reason and make her use her judgment.

St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, Foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart

WWW.STONERIDGESCHOOL.ORG

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