Academics
Teaching and Learning in a Community Setting
At the core of Our Lady of Lourdes academic experience is the special relationship that exists between students — intelligent, well-prepared, imaginative, and motivated — and the faculty with whom they work in and out of the classroom. It’s enormously exhilarating to teach Lourdes students, who are uncommonly bright and willing to take chances and ask questions. And the High School’s small size and manageable student-faculty ratio make it an ideal setting for faculty to get to know students well and become their intellectual mentors.
Collectively our faculty is expert, stimulating, and diverse. Because we are uniquely an college prep institution, our remarkable faculty — thinkers and doers who infuse the curriculum with their rich histories, intellectual pursuits, and significant scholarly accomplishments — are passionate about teaching our students.
We look for very special people when we appoint new faculty. We are interested in individuals who will be outstanding teachers, deeply knowledgeable and eager to engage others in the practices of learning and critiquing their fields of expertise, and from that critique exploring further and developing new insights.
While we are concerned to teach certain basic fields of knowledge, we are even more interested in pushing boundaries: Lourdes is a place for innovation and interdisciplinary work. Our aim is to empower students to teach themselves new things and take on challenges throughout their lives, so we work to cultivate a range of skills that will equip them to do that. We want to foster students’ ability to read critically and analytically, to be numerate and scientifically literate, to be probing thinkers capable of keen analysis and nuanced understanding.
The result is a vibrant community of individuals eager and able to express themselves lucidly, both orally and in writing; to interact confidently and respectfully with others despite difference of opinion; and, ultimately, to become agents for positive change in whatever sector of society they find best fits their future talents, goals, and passions.