Villa Duchesne/Oak Hill School

"What is the good of teaching various subjects, of wasting time in learning them, if at the same time we cannot teach children the words of life and touch their hearts and their consciences?"
St. Madeleine Sophie Barat

At Villa Duchesne/Oak Hill School, a Sacred Heart education introduces pre-kindergarten boys and girls to discovering the world around them and leads twelfth grade young women to discover themselves. We who educate students must be very sensitive to their unique developmental needs at each stage of their learning. It is for this reason that Villa Duchesne/Oak Hill School, while maintaining a cohesive curriculum and united community, has been divided into two independent learning communities; Oak Hill (JK-6) and Villa Duchesne (7-12). Each of these schools has been created to be responsive to the particular needs of students at the important and formative stages in their lives.

Each school has much of its own facilities and its own faculty which is specialized in meeting the needs of the students at that particular developmental stage. Each is guided by the Sacred Heart Goals and Criteria, and each focuses on a special time in a child's development. Our Lower School builds the scaffold for a lifetime love of learning and independent thinking while learning to be caring members of a community. Our Upper School students pursue a rigorous college preparatory curriculum within a carefully designed context to gain the academic and social skills they need for adulthood with service learning as a critical element.

As a School of the Sacred Heart, we attempt to successfully live and teach our Goals and Criteria.
• a personal and active faith in God,
• a deep respect for intellectual values,
• a social awareness which impels to action,
• the building of community as a Christian value, and
• personal growth in an atmosphere of wise freedom.

No one Goal is more important than another. Each performs an important role in teaching the Sacred Heart student to become a responsible and caring individual. Many of our students come to us from other schools at various points in their academic careers. These students discover that they will quickly absorb the benefits of a Sacred Heart education with Villa Duchesne/Oak Hill.

Recognizing that our responsibility is to prepare students to live effectively in a technologically rich global community, Villa Duchesne/Oak Hill School is firmly committed to integrating technology into the curriculum. Students enjoy technology and computer science classes within all levels. Our curriculum infuses desktops, laptops, projectors, interactive whiteboards, the Internet, a few pieces of software, and a robust Tablet PC 1:1 computing initiative. Every student from ninth grade on works with her personal laptop, students in grades 2-8 apply their studies with laptop carts, and JK-1 students use classroom stations of desktop computers. Seen as the student's learning tool, the personal computer provides students with excellent support.

To educate to live effectively in an ever-changing world