Community Life

The Santa Catalina community is the place where we demonstrate our care for one another. Every experience at school is a reminder of this. Santa Catalina students and faculty contribute to our community in the classroom and the playground, the dining hall and dorms, upon the stage, and on the playing field. And in our Rosary Chapel, our sense of that community is reinforced. Community, therefore, informs daily campus life as upper school young women and lower school boys and girls explore and develop their identity as individuals and as citizens of the wider world. Our community is one of confirming and challenging one another, of giving and receiving so that we might learn from one another. It is a place of spiritual growth, for community helps us recognize our responsibility to one another.

Upper and lower school student activities are both numerous and varied. A lower school student might receive personal instruction on the tennis court or performance stage, while an upper school student may dedicate time to refining her basketball game, exploring a new team sport such as lacrosse or water polo, or receiving ballet instruction in our dance studio. Some students may prefer white-water rafting, others may want to participate in a faculty-led field trip to Elkhorn Slough, and still others may be interested in computer animation or solar-powered model cars. Though our community embraces team effort, it encourages students to achieve individual standards of excellence as well. Our community is a place where we help each other grow.

Community life in both schools is enhanced by our various student organizations. In the upper school, groups such as Ecco, an a capella group established in 1996, and Accents, a modern dance troupe that has performed outside our peninsula city, are popular with both students and audiences. Publications such as Mosaic, The Lamplighter , and the Catalinan in the upper school, as well as corresponding lower school literary magazines and yearbooks, let students express themselves creatively and journalistically. Student government gives students another kind of voice, one of active, serious participation in the events of their school lives. The Santa Catalina community encourages students to discover their potential and enhance their talents while expanding their horizons.

Importantly, our community extends beyond our 36-acre campus. By reaching out through volunteer agencies including Habitat for Humanity, the Boys and Girls Club, the Salvation Army, and the Monterey County SPCA, by offering service and by supporting the Catalina Children's Fund, Santa Catalina students contribute to the wider Monterey community. Our upper school Peace and Justice club focuses on the needs of an even wider community and teaches our students of the priviledge and gift it truly is to help serve others. We are also reminded of our membership in a global community. The Santa Catalina community is a place where we learn to respect the dignity and worth of others. Our students are encouraged to develop an active role in shaping and sustaining the world and to make it a better place in which we live.

On campus and off, our sense of community is the heart of each endeavor. Santa Catalina offers students a stimulating and supportive environment in which to learn and grow. Our community is a place where we listen to one another in a spirit of trust, for it is ultimately an environment in which all our students discover a place for themselves. The Santa Catalina community helps each of us, students and faculty alike, become the persons we are meant to be.