Academics

In many ways, the classroom experience at St. Xavier is similar to the classroom experience at other college preparatory schools.  Teachers challenge students to work hard and learn deeply.  Students, too, push each other to work hard and learn deeply because that is the norm -- that is what everyone else does.  In a college prep school, it is "cool" to work hard and learn deeply.  At graduation, seniors cheer long and hard for their classmate who has earned the highest average.

Yet the classroom experience at St. Xavier -- and at the 50 other Jesuit high schools in the U.S. -- is distinctive among college preparatory schools.   Teachers guide students beyond hard work and deep learning to a metanoia, a deep change of heart, a conversion inspired by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.  From the first days of freshman year, students are challenged to undergo a conversion to try to find God in all things, including their daily study.  The challenge is to move from experiencing daily study as tedious and dry to experiencing it as a search for the wondrous footprints that God has left behind in Creation.  From their first days, freshmen are also challenged to undergo a conversion from being boys preoccupied with their own comfort to becoming Men for Others.  They are challenged to learn as well as they can so that they will have the best possible preparation to build God's Kingdom: to do whatever they can to fight injustice, to live according to the Gospel, to serve others.

St. Xavier, like other Jesuit schools, pushes students beyond academic excellence to the habit of using the fruits of academic excellence to build God's Kingdom.