Headmaster's Welcome

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the St. Mary’s website. Located on a beautiful campus, we are a vibrant school community filled with bright, joyful, motivated young people, and talented and dedicated teachers. As our mission statement reads, 

“St. Mary’s is an International Baccalaureate® (IB) World School dedicated to inquiry-based academic excellence, developing well-rounded, confident children who flourish in a creative environment founded on Christian values"

We do all of this work in an environment with a spiritual focus that is expressed in thought, word and deed, and we inspire our students to become grounded, committed people of faith—spiritual, principled, and who possess unquestionable integrity. We believe that much of our role is to prepare our students for the eventual rigors of a challenging high school curriculum. Our students need to possess joy and enthusiasm for learning, must be literate and able to compute easily and accurately, and must possess the skills necessary to cope with the many demands that will be made upon them here at St. Mary’s and beyond. Globalization has made it abundantly clear that schools in the Twenty-First Century need to focus less on memorization of facts that are unconnected and more on studying information in ways that promote deeper critical thinking (analysis and synthesis) and creative, collaborative approaches to problem solving.

At St. Mary’s we work to accomplish our objectives in a number of different ways. We expose our students to a wide variety of inquiry based thinking methods, problem-solving and connection-making across the curriculum, utilizing the unique combination of the International Baccalaureate Programme and our core curriculum. It is readily evident that St. Mary’s will serve as a model for the global schoolhouse others will choose to emulate. We also provide opportunities for leadership in activities such as athletics, clubs, community service projects, Student Council, as well as a host of others. Additionally, we actively and joyfully solicit the involvement of parents in the learning process with frequent conferences and collaboration in the planning of social activities and other special events.

I welcome you to spend a few moments exploring our site to learn more about St. Mary’s and how we can help your children reach their true potential as students, as thinkers and as caring individuals. We hope that your visit to our website will inspire you to learn more about us. Come and experience St. Mary’s School, and get to know us even better. I look forward to welcoming you to our campus.

With warm regards,

John O’Brien