Virtually every aspect of life these days reminds us that our world is shrinking, and that our children’s competition is no longer local, regional, or national – it is global in nature. Our students must be prepared to seek out and to understand the international factors impacting their world and then to navigate freely and successfully in an increasingly complex living and working world in which they will find themselves.

At St. Richard’s, we actively structure learning opportunities for our students to prepare them for these life challenges. Our foreign language program begins instruction at the Pre-K3 level with fun and developmentally appropriate classes in French so that by the time our students graduate from Grade 8 they are essentially fluent in either French or Spanish (available in Grades 6-8), often entering their high school language classes at the 3rd or 4th year levels. Graduates also leave St. Richard’s Middle School (MS) with broad exposure to Latin, thus entering high school with a strong knowledge of 2 to 3 languages in addition to English. Most of our MS students score extremely well in the National and State French, Latin, and/or Spanish Exam Competitions, most placing in the top ten levels of these competitions.

Global Readiness is a thread of emphasis in many other ways at St. Richard’s School. Early Childhood children take a short “trip” (figuratively – in class) to the Caribbean in Pre-K4, and then they take a more extensive “trip” to South America in Kindergarten, transforming their classrooms and hallways into rainforests, savannahs, and more. Both of these “travel” opportunities allow the children to experience the climate, culture, and customs of these parts of the world in very realistic terms. The Lower School emphasizes the full-class study of specific countries and cultures (e.g. China in Grade 1) as well as opportunities for individual student research on countries and cultures of their choice around the world (e.g. the International Festival in Grade 3). Lower School students study geography, mapping skills, culture and customs from around the world, aspects of different government systems, and interpersonal/international cooperation techniques for global awareness and understanding. Perhaps the culminating event in Lower School is the French Back-to-Back Exchange Program in which our Grade 5 students host students from France for 2 weeks and then, in turn, travel to France themselves for 2 weeks to stay with their host families for an incredibly powerful cultural exchange and language development experience. The Middle School years continue global geographical, cultural, and even religious studies through western civilization social studies, formal current events classes, cultural components of foreign language instruction, exposure to world religions in divinity classes, opportunities for additional world travel to Italy, Greece, France, Canada, Mexico, and much, much, more.

By the time our students graduate from St. Richard’s School, they are indeed “globally ready” to meet the challenges of advanced studies and are able to navigate the world with confidence and cultural sensitivity. At the same time, they have enjoyed the incredible strength of an American, English-language-based curricular program second-to-none in Indianapolis. This is indeed the best of all worlds!