Our Curriculum

The education of Our Lady of Champion Academy is guided, in Content, Skills, and Pedagogy, by the recommendations of St. Patrick Curriculum.

The Content of Our Lady of Champion’s curriculum flows from the story of mankind’s Salvation History, as told in and by the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Catholic Church, the Bible, secular history, the stories of the Saints. Salvation History is the lodestone and polestar of what is taught at Our Lady of Champion Academy. The St. Patrick Curriculum names Salvation History its spine.

In addition to Salvation History, the Content of Our Lady of Champion Academy emphasizes the teaching of the Catechism. In the year 1859 Our Lady told Adele Brise, “Gather the children of this wild country and teach them what they need to know for salvation.” Adele asked Our Lady how she was to do this. Our Lady answered, “Teach them the sign of the Cross, how to approach the Sacraments, and the Catechism.” How can we, who have taken Our Lady of Champion as our patroness, and taken upon ourselves the mission she gave Adele, do less?

The education of Our Lady of Champion Academy emphasizes committing the Catechism to memory. Memory is the faculty that re-members, “puts together again”, our identities: created and loved by God, made children of God in Baptism, Catholics, called into a relationship with Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Mystical Body, the Catholic Church, and finally with the World. In Charity we are called to carry, to transmit, the truths of our faith to all who have ears to hear, and therefore we are called to know our faith, to make it part of our identity, to commit to it within our memories. The Catechism memorized builds a storehouse of truths which lasts a lifetime. When we are old we might not remember our name, but we remember, “God made me.”

The Skills of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic free us to articulate ourselves in the language of words and numbers, and are taught at Our Lady of Champion following a natural “ladder” of learning. In Grades K–5 the Skills taught and practiced emphasize the age appropriate mastery of Reading, Handwriting, Arithmetic, Memorization, Oral Narration, and finally Writing, the application and natural extension of speaking.

The Class Day Pedagogy of Our Lady of Champion Academy stresses the relational nature of Teacher and Student and the centrality of storytelling as the most natural means to move the human heart and mind to seek and recognize what is good, true, and beautiful, ultimately met in the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Incarnational Word of God.

Our Lady of Champion, in teaching the Story of Salvation, follows the chronological order and themes for each grade recommended by the St. Patrick Curriculum.