Academics Overview
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
Our Pre-K Program is designed to prepare children ages 3 through 5 to enter Kindergarten. The program allows parents and children to begin the process of introducing the child to a structured environment while learning entry-level fundamentals.
A combination of stimulating books, letters, colors, puzzles, numbers are used to teach children to love learning. Prayer and playtime are also integrated into the program in order to allow children to learn to care and share with others.
For three (3) and four (4) year old students, we offer Monday-Friday, excluding holidays and other scheduled off days. Options to allow students to attend three days a week are available. Partial day attendance is not currently available.
Saint Ann wants to assist our parents to foster a positive self image of the child so that they can appreciate the unique person that God created. By appealing to the child’s sense of wonder and joy of learning we will share Jesus’ love on a daily basis and begin building the foundation for both academic excellence and a lifetime of faith.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten students are introduced early (unlike many programs) to core academic subjects. Our students are welcomed each day into a structured and nurturing environment that is designed to stimulate a desire for learning and to prepare them for elementary school.
Saint Ann wants to assist our parents to foster an awareness in each child that they are a unique, wonderful, creation of God. By appealing to the child’s sense of wonder and joy of learning we will share Jesus’ love on a daily basis and begin building the foundation for both academic excellence and a lifetime of faith. Gaudium in Veritate! Joy in Truth!
Elementary (Grades 1-6)
As they are formed in virtue, our elementary students (Grades 1-6) continue to build upon the foundation of the core academic programs that will prepare them for middle school. In first grade they begin the historical sequence outlined in the curriculum overview that sets them on their path through our whole program.
Elementary school witnesses an evolution in the child’s abilities with a growing awareness of the presence of Christ in the Sacraments that they are preparing to receive in 2nd grade. Children begin to learn greater autonomy and experience satisfaction in their own accomplishments. By the 3rd grade, your child is no longer learning to read but reading to learn–an important transition. Students are more responsible for their actions and academic achievements as they ascend toward middle school.