Graduate at Graduation

To guide every facet of curriculum development at St. Xavier, the faculty has produced this summary statement of the characteristics that the graduate will have acquired during his time at the school. Every course and every activity must work together toward fashioning a graduate with these characteristics. When St. Xavier is successful in its educational mission, therefore, its graduating student will have certain definite qualities. Such a graduate will be:

Open To Growth

The ideal St. Xavier student at the time of graduation has matured emotionally, intellectually, physically, socially, and religiously to a level that reflects some intentional responsibility for his own growth and actions (as opposed to a passive, drifting, laissez-faire attitude about growth). The graduate is at least beginning to reach out in his development, seeking opportunities to broaden his mind, academic skills, imagination, feelings, religious awareness, and social consciousness.

Intellectually Competent

By graduation the St. Xavier High School student should exhibit a mastery of those academic requirements for advanced forms of education. While these requirements are broken down into departmental subject-matter areas, the student will have developed many intellectual skills and understandings which cut across and go beyond the academic requirements for college entrance.

Religious

By graduation the St. Xavier High School student should have a basic knowledge of the major doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church. The graduate also will have examined his own religious feelings and beliefs with a view to choosing a fundamental orientation toward God and establishing a relationship with a religious tradition and/or community. What is said here, respectful of conscience and religious background of the individual, applies to the Catholic and non-Catholic graduate of St. Xavier High School.

Loving

By the time of graduation, the St. Xavier High School student is well on the way to establishing his own identity. The graduate is also on the threshold of being able to move beyond self-interest or self-centeredness in significant relationships with others. In other words, he is beginning to be able to risk some deeper levels of relationship in which one can disclose self and accept the mystery of another person and cherish the person. Nonetheless, the graduate's attempts at loving, while clearly beyond childhood, may not yet reflect the confidence and freedom of a mature person.

Committed To Doing Justice

Required Conferences Regarding The Graduate At Graduation

We at St. Xavier High School are committed to our Mission, "To assist young men in their formation as leaders and men for and with others through rigorous college preparation in the Jesuit tradition" and to its application in the characteristics of the Graduate at Graduation, Open to Growth, Intellectually Competent, Loving, Religious, Committed to Doing Justice. For these reasons we require that students and parents participate in a three-tiered developmental process for forming and evaluating the student's progress in light of this Mission and these characteristics.

The Required Conferences are:

Freshman Family Conference after acceptance and prior to entering St. Xavier (Spring: students and parents attend)
Junior Family Conference upon the completion of sophomore year (Summer: students and parents attend)
Senior Exit Interview in May of senior year (students participate)

Attendance at each of these conferences is mandatory. The school and the facilitators will make every attempt to schedule these in a timely and manageable way for you and your son. If a student or his parents fail to make good-faith efforts to schedule and attend these conferences, the student will be excluded from school and from all co-curriculars until the conference has been held.