New Seattle Nativity School fosters positive environment, accelerated learning
SEATTLEBy Terry McGuire
Saundra Montgomery’s whole family was excited when her 11-year-old grandson, Siaire Washington, gained admittance to Seattle Nativity School after successfully completing its summer program.
“We have great feelings about this,” Montgomery said of Western Washington’s newest Catholic school, unlike any other in the archdiocese. The Jesuit-endorsed school has no tuition, an extended academic year and a special curriculum to help low-income students break the cycle of poverty through education.
The school welcomes boys and girls who are “clearly bright but in need of extra assistance to meet grade level performance,” said Jesuit Father Joseph Carver, the school’s president.
Seattle Nativity School opened Sept. 3 with 17 sixth-graders and three teachers, including one who is the executive director. Classes meet in leased space in the former Our Lady of Mount Virgin School in south Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood.
The school seeks to accelerate the learning process through small class size, a school day that runs from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (with free breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack) and a five-week summer program. “Many of these students are behind several grade levels,” Father Carver explained. “We need to help them really get up to grade level very quickly.”
Focusing on Jesuit qualities such as educational excellence and social justice, the school also seeks to affirm students by promoting positive behavior rather than “chasing bad behavior around the room,” he said.
Each day, students are asked to bring home “positives” to their families regarding their time at school. Recently, Washington’s list included his teachers, the tasty lunches and the chance to play football at recess. He also appreciates the benefits of a small school:
“We don’t have to remember our locker combinations or remember schedules of classes,” he said.
“Everything about the school is positive,” his grandmother noted. “I’m so grateful to the people that supported it financially and the one[s] that put this together. It’s just a blessing.”
Sponsors raised $1.5 million to get the school up and running. Instrumental in the effort, Father Carver said, was the Fulcrum Foundation, an independent organization founded in 2002 by then-Seattle Archbishop Alex J. Brunett to promote and support Western Washington’s Catholic schools. Seattle Nativity School has received “amazing” support from many individuals, businesses, foundations and community groups, Father Carver said.
Its inaugural year theme is “Open the Door” — to opportunity, education and a “new way of learning” through a STEM curriculum focusing on science, technology, engineering and math. “The idea is to prepare students for the jobs and the work that is available here,” Father Carver said, noting the Pacific Northwest is home to many technology and pharmaceutical firms.
Plans call for adding a grade to the school each year until grades 5-8 are complete. As students continue on to local Catholic high schools, a support program will help them continue to succeed.
Seattle Nativity School is one of more than 60 Jesuit-endorsed Nativity Schools around the country providing faith-based education to low-income students. Earlier this year, Archbishop J. Peter Sartain endorsed Seattle Nativity as a “Category II” school, the designation given to independent Catholic schools in the archdiocese. The collaboration between the archdiocese and the Jesuits’ Oregon Province is important, Father Carver said, because it “says that we know that in partnership, this school will be stronger.”
September 19, 2013