If you could design the best possible high school education for your child, what would it look like? St. Jerome Institute takes this question literally. We designed our curriculum, our culture, and our plan for integration with faith and community from the ground up to be uniquely tailored to this moment in the development of young men and women.
Our faculty work collegially across disciplines to engage students and model virtuous scholarship. We dare each other to ask the most meaningful and fundamental questions, and together unpack the bold, beautiful, and courageous answers that are our children’s birthright as intellectual heirs to the West.
Everything a school does teaches something. From the choice and sequence of readings to the field work to the artwork on the walls, everything at SJI is lovingly crafted to provide an excellent formation for young men and women.
Respectful dialogue, collegial scholarship, and a dose of friendly competition are the foundations of SJI’s healthy peer culture. Modeled and shaped by the collaboration among our faculty, students are led into lasting friendships.
At SJI, religion is not merely one class among many. Our Catholic faith informs everything we do, as a necessary first principle without which the rest cannot be properly understood, and as the guiding principle of our relationship with the world.
Everything a school does teaches something. From the choice and sequence of readings to the field work to the artwork on the walls, everything at SJI is lovingly crafted to provide an excellent formation for young men and women.
Respectful dialogue, collegial scholarship, and a dose of friendly competition are the foundations of SJI’s healthy peer culture. Modeled and shaped by the collaboration among our faculty, students are led into lasting friendships.
At SJI, religion is not merely one class among many. Our Catholic faith informs everything we do, as a necessary first principle without which the rest cannot be properly understood, and as the guiding principle of our relationship with the world.
When we stand in the presence of a powerful sculpture or gaze through the eyepiece of a telescope and see a distant nebula, there is an extended moment of awe when we are transfixed with wonder. The desire to understand what we see, to know its story, prompts us to ask questions and seek answers. At SJI, we strive to recreate this moment, to ask these questions, and to know these stories in every subject we teach. From the epic tales of Odysseus and Beowulf to the quiet heroism of Walter Ciszek in Soviet Russia, from the deceptive simplicity of counting to the surprising complexity of the natural logarithm, SJI presents the inspiring beauty of our world in ways that lead students to deeper understanding and lifelong mastery.
When we stand in the presence of a powerful sculpture or gaze through the eyepiece of a telescope and see a distant nebula, there is an extended moment of awe when we are transfixed with wonder. The desire to understand what we see, to know its story, prompts us to ask questions and seek answers. At SJI, we strive to recreate this moment, to ask these questions, and to know these stories in every subject we teach. From the epic tales of Odysseus and Beowulf to the quiet heroism of Walter Ciszek in Soviet Russia, from the deceptive simplicity of counting to the surprising complexity of the natural logarithm, SJI presents the inspiring beauty of our world in ways that lead students to deeper understanding and lifelong mastery.
We absolutely adore this place of study for our 15 year old daughter! She has grown and blossomed. The faculty are outstanding in every way.
A passion for quality instruction and character formation! Concerned with a cultivating excellence and an appreciation for beauty.
Small classes, caring, high-quality teachers. SJI is focused on developing the whole person. Teachers are excellent mentors and instructors. Classroom instruction fosters lively discussion; writing assignments challenge students to go deeper.
In 2010, a small group of parishioners and friends worked together at the request of the principal of St. Jerome school, a diocesan K-8 program, to re-imagine Catholic education for its students. The result was the now nationally recognized Educational Plan of St. Jerome Academy (link to http://stjeromes.org/education/parish-school/curriculum). Three years later, with increasing enrollment and graduating students looking to their high school options, some of those same parents and friends, joined by new colleagues, came together to ask, What next?
None of the many excellent educational institutions in the Washington metro area, took the approach that SJA students were rapidly becoming accustomed to. Although SJA graduates were overwhelmingly successful in whichever schools they attended, there was an increasing interest from SJA families to see an option that carried on the intellectual and cultural values begun at the Academy. The St. Jerome Institute was born.
Over the following five years, the new curriculum committee drafted the high school section of the Educational Plan and began searching for funding, facilities, and staff to make the school a reality. In 2018, Peter Crawford was hired as the founding Headmaster. With the enthusiastic support of friends and donors in Washington, Maryland, and Virginia, the school opened its doors in Northeast DC in the fall of 2019 to an inaugural class of 15 students. St. Jerome Institute currently operates as a private, independent high school in Washington, DC.
Mr. Crawford meticulously prepared every aspect of the school and carefully selected faculty and staff who embodied the virtues of faith, scholarship, and collegiality, and whose love for students makes SJI unique.
In 2010, a small group of parishioners and friends worked together at the request of the principal of St. Jerome school, a diocesan K-8 program, to re-imagine Catholic education for its students. The result was the now nationally recognized Educational Plan of St. Jerome Academy (link to http://stjeromes.org/education/parish-school/curriculum). Three years later, with increasing enrollment and graduating students looking to their high school options, some of those same parents and friends, joined by new colleagues, came together to ask, What next?
None of the many excellent educational institutions in the Washington metro area, took the approach that SJA students were rapidly becoming accustomed to. Although SJA graduates were overwhelmingly successful in whichever schools they attended, there was an increasing interest from SJA families to see an option that carried on the intellectual and cultural values begun at the Academy. The St. Jerome Institute was born.
Over the following five years, the new curriculum committee drafted the high school section of the Educational Plan and began searching for funding, facilities, and staff to make the school a reality. In 2018, Peter Crawford was hired as the founding Headmaster. With the enthusiastic support of friends and donors in Washington, Maryland, and Virginia, the school opened its doors in Northeast DC in the fall of 2019 to an inaugural class of 15 students. St. Jerome Institute currently operates as a private, independent high school in Washington, DC.
Mr. Crawford meticulously prepared every aspect of the school and carefully selected faculty and staff who embodied the virtues of faith, scholarship, and collegiality, and whose love for students makes SJI unique.
A truly integrated curriculum has two important results. The first is that every subject is put into context as a response to important questions such as, How do we find our way? The answers to this question are not only literary and historical, but also mathematical and scientific. This context gives students motivation and intuition from which to begin exploring the abstraction and formalization of every field.
The second is the conscious cultivation of uniquely human attitudes and aptitudes in each student that make it possible for him or her to embrace truth in its unity and beauty. Only in this way can students make sense of disconnected facts and distant subjects and integrate them into a truly human education.
A unique challenge for students in the high school years is to take their first steps into an adult world. As they begin to imagine themselves as men and women, they start to wonder who they are and what their place in this world will be. SJI’s pedagogical approach and school culture aims to guide students to the self-understanding and self-mastery at the heart of human freedom, so that they are able to act wholeheartedly in accordance with what they know to be true and good. These virtues are embodied by our faculty and through the community we create, studied in classic works and natural philosophy, and applied through Practicum and charitable service.
Enriching students with a vibrant practice of the Catholic Faith is the most essential component of student life at St. Jerome Institute, and such liturgical and sacramental enrichment permeates life at the school.
Students and faculty attend a weekly school mass, and access to the Sacrament of Penance is available to students during visits by the school chaplains. Students and faculty likewise attend Eucharistic Adoration on a regular basis.
On mornings when we do not have Mass, the school community comes together prior to first period class to participate in the Liturgy of the Hours through Morning Prayer, or Lauds.
The young men and women at St. Jerome Institute come from a diverse array of family and educational backgrounds, and together they form a unique and thriving community of dynamic learners in pursuit of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
At the St. Jerome Institute, we believe that young people are significantly underestimated in today’s culture. We believe they are capable of doing great and difficult things, and we believe they can truly rise to St. John Paul II’s call to be saints. Therefore, we challenge them to grow by undertaking a four-year rigorous course of study in forming habits of moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical excellence.
A truly integrated curriculum has two important results. The first is that every subject is put into context as a response to important questions such as, How do we find our way home? The answers to this question are not only literary and historical, but also mathematical and scientific. This context gives students motivation and intuition from which to begin exploring the abstraction and formalization of every field.
The second is the conscious cultivation of uniquely human attitudes and aptitudes in each student that make it possible for him or her to embrace truth in its unity and beauty. Only in this way can students make sense of disconnected facts and distant subjects and integrate them into a truly human education.
A unique challenge for students in the high school years is to take their first steps into an adult world. As they begin to imagine themselves as men and women, they start to wonder who they are and what their place in this world will be. SJI’s pedagogical approach and school culture aims to guide students to the self-understanding and self-mastery at the heart of human freedom, so that they are able to act wholeheartedly in accordance with what they know to be true and good. These virtues are embodied by our faculty and through the community we create, studied in classic works and natural philosophy, and applied through Practicum and charitable service.
Enriching students with a vibrant practice of the Catholic Faith is the most essential component of student life at St. Jerome Institute, and such liturgical and sacramental enrichment permeates life at the school.
Students and faculty attend a weekly school mass, and access to the Sacrament of Penance is available to students during visits by the school chaplains. Students and faculty likewise attend Eucharistic Adoration on a regular basis.
On mornings when we do not have Mass, the school community comes together prior to first period class to participate in the Liturgy of the Hours through Morning Prayer, or Lauds.
The young men and women at St. Jerome Institute come from a diverse array of family and educational backgrounds, and together they form a unique and thriving community of dynamic learners in pursuit of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
At the St. Jerome Institute, we believe that young people are significantly underestimated in today’s culture. We believe they are capable of doing great and difficult things, and we believe they can truly rise to St. John Paul II’s call to be saints. Therefore, we challenge them to grow by undertaking a four-year rigorous course of study in forming habits of moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical excellence.
St. Jerome Institute is pursuing Accreditation as a member of the Cognia Network (formerly AdvanceEd). SJI is recognized by the Office of the State Secretary of Education (OSSE) of the District of Columbia as an independent high school.
