All girls, grades 1-12, Catholic, independent school with a co-ed early childhood program

Upper School

Cultivating an empowered leader.

In the Upper School, our girls master a rigorous curriculum and immerse themselves into a rich array of co-curricular and servant leadership experiences. At Stone Ridge, the girls go beyond academic learning to discover who they are as confident, self-aware leaders ready to make a difference in the world.

Committed to educating to a deep respect for intellectual values, the Upper School at Stone Ridge seeks to inspire students to a lifelong love of learning. Our academic program across all divisions is founded upon our mission: to inspire young women to lead and serve, through lives of purpose that integrate faith, intellect, community, social action, and personal growth in an atmosphere of wise freedom.

Our Upper School program is designed specifically to serve the needs of young women as they stretch themselves towards a greater sense of understanding of self and the world, and of purpose. Each student is known, loved, and celebrated. We offer an educational program in the Upper School that is designed to nurture and inspire young women to develop their gifts, to build empathy and compassion for their world, and to gain confidence in the knowledge that their lives have meaning, promise, and purpose.
#Goal3

 
Upper School girls working together

 

 

Social Action Bikes Around the World

 

Research tells us that young women thrive on engagement and connection; when learning is directly tied to the understanding of self and to increased knowledge of the world, girls learn best. Unique to the Upper School at Stone Ridge, the Social Action Program allows girls to build on their classroom learning outside of the School’s walls; to deepen their faith formation and to engage in reciprocal acts of justice, service, and connection.
#Goal4

Our relationship with the Network of Sacred Heart Schools and the Network Exchange Program cultivates community, perspective, and empathy as Upper School girls travel throughout the United States and abroad and often host girls from other Network schools. Likewise, our Upper School students and faculty participate in summer service projects with other Network schools. These programs highlight the engaged connection that is a hallmark of our Upper School experience, each founded in our mission and in the understanding of how young women learn best -- building connections with a larger sense of both purpose, place, and people.
#Goal5 and #Goal3

Exchange map

 

Speaker addresses a class

 

Our Upper School faculty believes that full engagement and thoughtful dialogue fosters lasting understanding and the transfer of knowledge. As such, our program uniquely serves young women with a curriculum founded on critical thinking and the cultivation of their God-given gifts as they navigate increasingly, and developmentally appropriate challenging landscapes of learning. Stone Ridge educates using Understanding by Design as its pedagogical approach for instruction and curriculum design. Each course is grounded in essential questions which allow the girls to engage in meaningful, open-ended questions designed to foster student interest, guide inquiry, stimulate discussion, and spark rethinking over time, pointing toward intra- and inter-disciplinary ideas. Students’ understanding of skills and knowledge is revealed through flexible performance. By anchoring our courses with Essential Questions, we guide students in uncovering and constructing meaning that they can flexibly transfer to new settings, issues, and problems. Learning, for our Upper School girls, becomes an exercise of purpose, of self-understanding, and of coming to know the world in which they will soon lead and serve as children of the Sacred Heart.
#Goal2 and #Goal5