The 2019 school year has just begun and Noozhawk’s Private & Independent School Guide is sure to make things easy when planning for your child’s education! Our school guide provides you and your child with all the necessary information about private schools in Santa Barbara County.
To give parents the tools to help make informed decisions about which school is the best fit for their kids in Santa Barbara, Noozhawk has conducted a series of interviews with representatives of local private & independent schools for this year’s school guide.
In this interview, Noozhawk spoke with Molly Seguel, Director of Admissions at Marymount of Santa Barbara to learn more about what they offer at their school.
Marymount of Santa Barbara
Question: What is the mission or vision for your school?
Answer: Marymount offers a challenging academic curriculum balanced with social, emotional, and ethical dimensions of learning. Our students thrive in an open, respectful and supportive environment, which allows them to individually and collectively discover and celebrate the similarities and differences of all. A Marymount education fosters their intellectual curiosity and shapes them into responsible, compassionate, intelligent leaders preparing them for the next phase of their journey in a diverse and complex world. Marymount invites all families seeking a quality, high school-preparatory education for their child.
Q: How is your school operated or governed?
A: Marymount is governed by a Board of Trustees who maintain the fiduciary management of the school and entrust the leadership and daily operations to the Head of School and Administrative team. Marymount Trustees are enthusiastically represented by Marymount alumni, alumni parents, community and educational philanthropists and current parents. They generously contribute their time, thought and energy, as well as financial resources, to support the viability and continued growth of Marymount.
Q: What curriculum is available and taught at your school?
A: At Marymount, students can begin at four years old in our Junior Kindergarten program and enter the Lower School Division in Kindergarten with the primary goal of supporting the educational development of the whole child. Marymount students develop a solid foundation in a diverse array of subject areas including Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies, Spanish, World Religions, Visual & Performing Arts, Media Literacy & Technology, and Physical Education. Our emphasis on an integrated approach to Social and Emotional Learning provides a safe learning environment for all learners. We partner with families to share their journey, watching each student grow intellectually, socially, emotionally, and physically.
As students move through the Middle School years, they are empowered to gain confidence in opportunities that blend core content with project-based learning, allowing for real-world applications and cross-curricular programming. As students graduate 8th grade and prepare to enter High School, they leave Marymount with the following skills: critical thinking and problem solving, flexible thinking, college readiness, ethical responsibility, social confidence, self advocacy and interpersonal skills. With courses such as Ethics, Service Learning and Comparative Religions, students go beyond the rigorous academics at Marymount. They thrive in accepting challenges and demonstrating ethical collaboration.
Our engaging, innovative and hands-on curriculum encourages students to become lifelong learners and leaders among their peers. Each content area is taught by experienced, professional faculty with advanced degrees who know how to inspire a thirst for knowledge and a growth mindset in every child.
Q: What extracurricular activities does your school offer?
A: Marymount provides every student with the opportunity for new and enriching extra-curricular programming designed to engage and explore a student’s evolving interests and talents. We offer overnight class trips beginning in 4th grade that provide team building opportunities and science and outdoor education programming. During the school day, students engage in robotics, programming and design thinking in our Center for Engineering and Design, service learning, swimming, surfing, gardening, cooking, media literacy, and visual and performing arts. After school, students participate in our robust interscholastic athletics and enrichment programs.
Marymount offers a variety of summer camps for our students and to the greater community. Some of the summer camp opportunities include performing arts, sports, cooking and STEAM.
Q: Describe the typical day in the life of a student at your school.
A: A day in the life of a Marymount student means explorations through technology, real-world simulations, discussions, experimentation, small group work, design thinking, theater arts, and public speaking encouraging interest in our local community, authentic problems and issues, and an awareness as global citizens. Beginning in Junior Kindergarten, our youngest learners explore the parts of a native tree in the sensory table, harvest vegetables in their very own garden or become a veterinarian, chef, or architect through dramatic play and dress up. In the Lower School grades, a student would begin their day greeting each other in morning meeting. Literacy and math would follow during the morning hours. This includes time reading just right books, engaging in discussions about character traits in a class novel or conferring with their teacher about their latest writing assignment. Math time might start with an exploration and group work and would lead to presenting different strategies to solve real world problems. A short recess break might follow and then time spent in art, music, Spanish or media literacy classrooms. In the afternoon, students participate in our swim program, engage in hands on experimentation in the science lab or reflect on the hardships of the life of a colonist. At the end of the day, students prepare to participate in after school sports or enrichment classes.
Marymount’s Middle School program beginning in 6th grade finds a deeply enriched academic program rooted thematically in history, literature, math and science. Middle School students may be constructing ROVs and piloting them in the school pool, problem solving, engaging in jigsaw activities, or collaborating with partners. Students might be interviewing a stuntman to gather information as they set out to build and 3D-print a fake bone that would be broken in a stunt. Students may be engaged in journaling or delivering carefully crafted persuasive speeches on hotly debated topics like gun rights, the women’s pay gap, or animal rights. Students in Spanish class would be practicing how to order a meal at a restaurant or exploring their emotions through written expression in English. Students would be using the design thinking cycle to create board games for children or selecting a local non-profit organization to adopt for the year as part of our curriculum of service learning.
Q: How does your school select/hire teachers?
A: Marymount seeks outstanding and well prepared educators to become part of our faculty. When a position opens, we undertake a comprehensive national and local search to identify the best candidate for the position. Faculty are required to come on campus for a multi-day visit during which they meet with all stakeholders including students and are asked to engage in a sample lesson. Interested faculty and staff seeking employment at Marymount are encouraged and empowered to use their creativity to engage with students and each other to enjoy an environment that promotes life-long learning for all.
Marymount is fully accredited by the California Association of Independent Schools, and a member in good standing with the National Association of Independent Schools, and Educational Records Bureau. Marymount also holds memberships with CSEE (Center for Spiritual & Ethical Education, AISAP (Association of Independent School Admissions Professionals) and The HEADS Network.
Q: What professional development opportunities do teachers have? In what ways do teachers collaborate?
A: Marymount provides on site and off campus professional development opportunities for teachers. Teachers have attended workshops and conferences that focus on research-based, best practices and educational innovation. Some of the conferences and learning opportunities that teachers have attended include the YOUCubed Mathematics Institute at Stanford University, the CUE Conference, Sparkfun Microcontrollers for Educators, the ISTE Conference, Lucy Calkins’ Reading and Writing Workshop Summer Institute at Columbia University, Google for Classrooms, Greater Good Science Center’s Summer Institute on Social and Emotional Learning at UC Berkeley, Facing History Middle School Educators Symposium, Learning and the Brain, and The Project Zero Classroom at Harvard University.
Throughout the school year, Marymount dedicates professional development days to the work done in our Teacher Learning Communities (TLC’s) that have targeted 21st-century methodologies and best practices including: Visible Thinking, Social Emotional Learning, Design Thinking, Technology Integration, Math and Literacy Instruction and Responsive Classroom. As TLCs are teacher-led, the buy-in has been very high from the teaching faculty. Teachers feel comfortable to reach out to teacher leaders to ask questions and come up with ideas to change or supplement a lesson with new material.
Collaboration happens across curricular areas and grade levels. Media literacy and technology are integrated into the core curricular areas at all grade levels. Departmental and vertical meetings allow teachers to share best practices and encourage discussion on how to best support student learning. Time is dedicated weekly for collaboration meetings.
Q: What metrics do you use to measure and track your student progress?
A: Marymount’s assessments of student learning are varied, show growth over time for an entire school year, demonstrate a growth mindset philosophy of learning, and are formative and summative in nature. Each teacher at each grade level and/or content area designs their own in-classroom assessments. These formal and informal assessments at times include pre- and post- assessments, as well as observations of student learning and end of unit presentations, projects and tests. Depending on the unit of study, students may also engage in self and peer assessments. For our youngest students, assessments are mostly formative and consist of observation throughout the day as well as student checklists and forms.
For standardized testing, Marymount relies on the ERB Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP online) and the ERB Writing Assessment Program (WrAP) which are given in 3rd through 8th grade. The Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP) is a rigorous assessment for high achieving students in areas such as reading, listening, vocabulary, writing, and mathematics. Verbal and quantitative reasoning subtests are part of the CTP beginning in 3rd grade. The CTP helps compare content specific, curriculum-based performance to the more conceptual knowledge base found in reasoning tests. The WrAP is a direct measure of student writing achievement and serves as a tool to help classroom teachers pinpoint specific strengths and weaknesses of their students’ written expression.
Q: How can parents get involved at your school?
A: We want parents to get involved in a meaningful way for them. The Marymount Parent Council (MPC) along with the Development Office coordinates multiple volunteer opportunities from classroom parties, chaperoning trips, supporting our golf tournament or pitching in to make our annual auction a success.
Q: What are your schools greatest accomplishments?
A: Marymount of Santa Barbara was recently awarded the highest level of re-accreditation, seven years, from the California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS). To achieve the honor, faculty and staff collaboratively completed a self-study report evaluating all aspects of their school based on CAIS’s 16 standards for excellence, which range from faculty and pedagogy, to climate and community.
Our Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Kaleidoscope Programs are two of our unique signature programs. For years, Marymount has valued the idea of educating the whole child by weaving in Social Emotional Learning throughout the curriculum from Junior Kindergarten through 8th grade. As Marymount students enter middle school, included in the curriculum is a modern day opportunity to study ethical philosophy, philanthropy and the study of morality and ethics through the culture and history of the world’s comparative religions.
Marymount ensures that all of our students benefit from these skills with our SEL curriculum and student wellness program. The Director of Counseling and Student Wellness, along with the full time licensed clinical social worker and JK-8 counselor are able to provide dedicated blocks of time for students to learn these critical skills through specific SEL classes, one-on-one time and small group sessions.
Our Kaleidoscope Program weaves together the study of world religions with moral values through literature and creative activities. We have a wonderful collection of children’s literature that focuses on various topics in religion and other values such as respect, honesty, hope, loyalty, courage, and of course, love.
Marymount students are given the unique opportunity—as the word Kaleidoscope suggests—to experience and study the culture, history, and values of World Religions through a global and unifying perspective. The Kaleidoscope Program begins in 2nd grade introducing the exploration of personal character, moral values, service learning, ethical behavior. As students enter the Middle School years they are invited to participate in our unique study of service learning, Ethics, and culminate with a comprehensive study of World Religions in the 8th grade.
Q: What challenges has your school faced or currently face? How did you overcome these?
A: Our greatest challenge is inviting the Santa Barbara community to get to know the Marymount school of today. Nestled in the hills of the Riviera, we are a small and inviting school for families of all backgrounds, cultures and origins seeking a school community that is inclusive, challenging and nurturing for their individual child. We celebrate and enrich our curriculum in the arts and sciences and aim to grow happy, confident and caring learners and leaders.
Q: How does your school support students who have academic, social, or emotional difficulties?
A: Individualized and personalized student instruction is at the forefront of a Marymount education. At Marymount we know that an independent school learning experience takes into consideration the diverse learning opportunities and academic needs of every student. Through small class sizes, low student to teacher ratio, and flexible learning environments, Marymount faculty are able to truly focus on the individual growth and educational progress of every student.
In addition to Marymount’s welcoming faculty and engaging classrooms, our uniquely designed Learning Support Program, supports any of our students with learning differences and accommodations needed for their individual growth and success.
The Learning Support Program led by our Learning Specialist and supported by the Director of Counseling and Student Wellness, also provides access to a Reading Specialist in the Lower School Division, as well as faculty in several grades with degrees and experience in Special Education. In the Middle School division, we also have specialized academic skills enhancement classes and continued support from the Learning Specialist.
Q: What is the cost or tuition to attend your school? Do you offer financial aid or scholarship programs?​
A: At Marymount, we understand the value of an independent school education and we strive to make our program affordable to all qualified students. Our 2019-20 tuition ranges from $17,250 for Junior Kindergarten to $27,270 for the middle school years.
At Marymount, tuition assistance is based solely upon demonstrated financial need. Tuition awards vary by grade level and situation and provide families from a range of socio-economic backgrounds access to affording a Marymount education. Currently, 40 percent of Marymount families receive tuition assistance.
Click here for more information about Marymount of Santa Barbara.