Voices of Villa

Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat believed deeply in the sacred dignity of every child. She understood that education is not merely the transfer of knowledge but a profound act of relationship built on respect, love, and compassion, where children are seen, heard, and valued. She knew that when we honor the dignity of each child, we create the conditions for them to grow into their full potential and recognize their own worth as human beings.

Yesterday, I stepped into a second-grade classroom just as the students were beginning their day, and my heart was filled with gratitude and awe. What I witnessed was a living example of Sophie’s vision: children who were not only learning but thriving in an environment of calm, safety, and belonging. It was clear from the moment I walked in, the gentle way the teacher spoke to the students, the kindness they showed one another, and the quiet sense of stability that grounded the room.

Each morning, these students are welcomed with a thoughtful message on the board. Yesterday’s message invited them to reflect on a time when they were brave. After settling in, the class gathered on the rug for their morning meeting. Forming a circle, where every child could see and be seen, the meeting began with a joyful "welcome chant." One by one, each child was celebrated by name, standing to wave, smile, or dance to their own rhythm as their classmates and teacher cheered them on. It was a simple yet powerful ritual of belonging.

The dignity in that room was palpable. Every child was acknowledged. Every voice mattered. Vulnerability was met with support. When it came time to share their stories of bravery, whether it was overcoming a fear of dogs, riding a roller coaster, or learning how to swim, each student spoke without interruption, and every story was met with listening ears, eye contact, and silent gestures of connection. Together, they built trust. They practiced empathy. They honored one another’s experiences.

Before wrapping up, the teacher thanked them for their courage and their care, recognizing the gift of their vulnerability and the respect they showed each other. What I witnessed was far more than a morning routine. It was the active, daily work of affirming each child’s worth.

When we meet children with dignity, when we honor their voices, when we create spaces where they are safe to be seen and heard, we are not just teaching them—we are forming them. We are helping them discover who they are and what they are capable of, and we are showing them, every day, that they are deeply valued.

Cor Unum, With one heart,
Christine Phillips
Lower School Principal

“Let us respect childhood; let us honor the soul of that small creature of God who can already make choices of the best if we take the time to awaken her reason and make her use her judgment.”     Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat

This week, Villa College Counselors Kristi Morris and Colleen Murray share a bit about what the junior year experience looks like from a college counseling perspective. Each year, our juniors participate in a quarter-long College Counseling class to give our students close attention and dedicated time to prepare for success in the college application process.

One of our areas of focus is preparing the juniors for our in-house ACT. We offer the ACT (which often feels high stakes to our students and families) at Villa because of the many advantages that come from taking this test in a place that feels familiar. To ensure our students are equipped for success, we’ve partnered with Dr. Brett Kleitz from the Kleitz Education Group to work on ACT strategy. During these classes, Dr. Kleitz works with the students on:

• Time Management: Techniques to handle the fast-paced nature of the ACT.
• Section-Specific Strategies: Practical approaches tailored to the English, Math, Reading, and Science sections.
• Test-Taking Mindset: Tools to approach the ACT with focus and reduced fatigue.

As we transition to the next phase of our curriculum, juniors focus on the college exploration and reflection process. Over the next several weeks, students begin:

• Taking an Interest Inventory to explore career paths and align students' interests with potential majors.
• Resumé Writing to document their activities, achievements, and leadership experiences.
• Starting their Personal Statement to brainstorm and craft essay drafts that reflect their unique stories.
• Completing Portions of the Common Application to familiarize students with the platform and reduce stress when applications open in the Fall.

This comprehensive approach ensures our juniors are prepared not just for the ACT but for the entire college search and application journey. Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Murray are always happy to share more about our approach to College Counseling at Villa and the many ways we support our students and families through this process. 

We are always looking for ways to support our Villa Alumnae after they graduate, and one of the most successful programs we have is the Stubblefield Alumnae Internship. We just completed our eleventh summer of welcoming interns to campus to work side-by-side with a variety of administrators and staff, completing work that helps Villa advance our Sacred Heart Mission and provides invaluable experience for the next step in their careers.

To date, 34 Villa Alumnae have served as interns through this program. Because of the donor’s generosity, our interns have an exceptional, professional work experience with feedback and support for their next move. We always watch with excitement the career trajectories of these ambitious and talented young women. They are working in a variety of fields and continuing their education (we have interns in medical school and in law school!). They are truly reaching for the stars and hitting the mark! Employers of past Villa interns include:

• Moneta Group
• Enterprise Mobility
• Goldman Sachs
• TKO Miller
• UBS Financial Services
• Proctor & Gamble
• Villa Duchesne
• Wal Mart
• KPMG
• Boston Common Asset Management
• Compass Health
• The Gersh Agency
• Jacobs

Each year, we release the Stubblefield Internship Application in the early spring. Contact Alumni Manager Rachel Drone Gehm ’88 for more information.

We celebrated two incredible students, leaders, and athletes as they signed their letters of intent to play their sports at the collegiate level! Congratulations to Katie Crump ’25, who will play Division 1 field hockey at Ohio State University, and Heidi Fesler ’25, who will play soccer at Washington University. Both Heidi and Katie are multi-sport athletes with impressive accolades and honors.

From Katie’s Coach, Kate Graft:
“There is never a practice where Katie’s focus and intensity are anything but top-notch. She raises the bar and has helped set a standard of excellence within our Field Hockey team at Villa...Katie has helped lead the team to three conference championships and three state championships, during her freshman, sophomore, and senior seasons...What I appreciate most about Katie is that she is a great teammate, and she knows the value of having strong players around her. She would credit her teammates for helping her be the player that she is, and that’s what makes her an unselfish leader. She celebrates the successes of her teammates.”

From Heidi’s Coach, Steve Stoll:
“Through three years of varsity soccer, countless trainings and games, and an unimaginable amount of hours of independent work, Heidi has exemplified exactly what it takes to reach these goals. In three seasons, Heidi has recorded 45 goals and 26 assists, totaling 116 points. Heidi is only seven goals away from breaking the all-time Villa scoring record of 51 goals. My hope is that these strong examples of commitment, passion, and perseverance can be seen and appreciated by all of the younger players in our program. This is just another example of how Heidi has left an incredible mark on Villa’s soccer culture.”

We are so proud of you, Katie and Heidi!

Go, Saints!

Let’s think about the idea of innate trust—the idea that trust isn’t earned, but rather that your inherent goodness is known and honored. How might hearing the words, “I have faith in you,” impact your decision-making? Or the words, “I have confidence in you”? Or “I trust your judgment”? How might these words affirm you? Would they be a grounding reminder of your inherent goodness and give you a sense of reassurance? Would you feel wholly seen and supported? Perhaps those words and that idea would encourage you to take healthy risks or to believe in yourself just a little more. When trust is given freely, it has the power to shape not only our choices but also our sense of self-worth and potential.

On Sunday, at our Lower School Open House, I found myself in deep conversations with prospective families, sharing about all the freedoms our children have as they roam our large campus, play in the Epic Woods, or make visits to a neighboring teacher in another pod. I shared that these moments of independence are not just privileges but reflections of the deep trust we have in our students. When children grow up knowing they are trusted—trusted to explore, to make wise choices—they internalize a profound sense of confidence. They begin to trust themselves, to listen to their instincts, and to embrace challenges with a sense of courage rather than hesitation.

This is the heart of Goal 5: cultivating personal growth in an atmosphere of wise freedom. At Villa, we don’t shape children by controlling their every step; we empower them by fostering self-discipline, responsibility, and deep self-reflection. Wise freedom is not simply about granting choices; it’s about nurturing the confidence to make decisions and the resilience to learn from them. Mistakes will happen. Children will sometimes falter, making choices that do not reflect their best selves. But in those moments, imagine the transformative power of hearing, “I still believe in you.”

This is the power of a Sacred Heart education. In a world that often demands children to prove their worth, we choose instead to affirm it, simply and consistently. Imagine the profound impact of a child growing up knowing, without question, that their community sees their inherent goodness not as something to be earned, but as something intrinsic to who they are. This unwavering trust becomes the foundation upon which they build their identity, their self-worth, their curiosity, and an enduring sense of self. In this environment, one that nurtures both confidence and character, their potential is truly limitless.

Cor Unum, With one heart,
Christine Phillips
Lower School Principal

Every now and then it’s fun to share some of the inner workings at Villa and to shed light on the innovation that takes place week to week orchestrated by a group of faculty so inspired by our mission. I continue to be awed by the unwavering dedication and creativity of our Lower School teachers. Over just a few days, I’ve heard from countless teachers brimming with fresh ideas and innovative projects for their classrooms. Their passion for shaping meaningful learning experiences is remarkable. Our exceptional teachers and staff are relentlessly pushing boundaries, fostering a deep love of learning, and creating exciting new opportunities for our students to grow and thrive.

Here are just a few highlights recently shared with me:

Cultivating a Love of Reading
This year our teachers throughout the Lower School have created and participated in creative reading contests, finding fun and innovative ways to inspire a lifelong love of reading in our students.

Exciting and innovative Cross-Curricular Projects
Students are diving into hands-on, interdisciplinary projects, such as:

• Third Grade National Parks Project: This year our third grade students will be researching a National Park, learning about its history and unique habitat, and will present their findings to our community.
• First Grade Haiti Project: Later this year, our first graders will be exploring life in Haiti and engaging in a service-learning project to support Zanmi Beni, a non-profit organization in Haiti.

Sacred Heart Pen Pals
This year, students in many of our classrooms have written notes to and formed relationships with Sacred Heart students around the globe, strengthening their writing schools and enhancing their understanding of our Sacred Heart connections.

Grants for Enhanced Programming
Three of our teachers successfully applied for and received grants this year. Two grants will enhance science education for our fifth and first graders, and one will expand our performing arts programming for all students at the Lower School, providing even more opportunities for our students to explore their talents and interests.

Cooking in French Class
Our Lower School students in certain grade levels are getting hands-on experiences cooking french delicacies like crepes and Bûche de Noël. 

Professional Development for Teachers
Just this past week a group of Lower School teachers sought out and participated in professional development focused on strategies that promote a strong and positive classroom culture. Allowing them to spend less time managing behavior and more time engaging in meaningful teaching and learning.

These initiatives are a testament to our teachers’ passion, their creativity and commitment to creating an innovative, engaging, and supportive learning environment for your children, and they give just a glimpse of the innovation taking place at the Lower School.

In partnership,
Christine Phillips
Lower School Principal

Years ago, I was taking a class with a historian who studied the lives of women in early modern France. She shared an illuminating insight with me: after the Enlightenment and waves of social change associated with the French Revolution, Catholic mothers in France began to reshape pious devotion in their country. 

Fascinatingly, female virginal saints, who had dominated the pantheon of accepted adoration, fell to the wayside in the 18th century. After the French Revolution and the focus on Republican motherhood, pious women in France shifted their religious and domestic attention to holy women who had been mothers. Suddenly, the work of Catholic mothers merited a lot of devotional attention–at least according to the Catholic women who were devoting their time to, well, devotion.

I think about this a lot! The people we emulate, idolize, and model our lives after do actually say something about us. How fascinating that our role models influence us as much as we allow them to tell the story of our particular moment in time.

St. Rose Philippine Duchesne was not, strictly speaking, a mother, but we nevertheless celebrate her life and her ambitions in the great narrative of Catholic sainthood as a mother to our Villa community. To be sure, she was, in many ways a mother to us all: the educators, students, alumni, and parents who are part of our Villa Duchesne community. 

I’ve always thought it was fitting that her pioneering spirit was celebrated in the month of November, the same month we celebrate our national Thanksgiving holiday and consider those whose sacrifices and vision have shaped our modern reality. After all, Philippine was a true daughter of the Sacred Heart, rising above adversity to reach the stars. 

Many years ago, when I first started teaching at Villa, I adopted a practice when I encountered something very difficult: I visited the image of Philippine Duchesne in the entrance to the Villa Chapel. A few minutes reflecting on the hardships of the Missouri frontier in the mid-1800s was usually enough to snap me out of whatever modern difficulty I seemed to be facing! Philippine has always been my “hardship” saint. The discomfort of her heavy habit, the isolation she must have felt in that remote outpost, the fact that she would never see her family again—these are the details that often serve to pull me out of the frustrations of modern life and return me to the present with renewed focus!

Philippine Duchesne was on the frontier of practically every aspect of her life. Her native Dauphiny region of France was a rugged frontier of the ancien régime, an outpost of resistance and flashpoint of initiative during the Revolution. She later became a pioneer in the young rscj order, signing up to travel to the very fringes of the American frontier for what she surely must have known would be decades of physical and emotional hardship. I’m skipping quickly over her arduous trip across the Atlantic aboard the Rebecca as a middle-aged woman, after which she landed in New Orleans (frankly, I would have called it a day and ended my time in that glorious Old World city!), and traveled upriver to the far reaches of the French Empire—in Philippine’s words, “the remotest village”—to begin the real work of educating young women.

Louise Callan, RSCJ summed up Philippine’s pioneering disposition for us in her book, Philippine Duchesne: Frontier Missionary of the Sacred Heart:

Her name has been associated through more than a century with strength, endurance, austerity, with a burning zeal for souls and patience under trial and failure… Yet in this apostle of the Sacred Heart there were sweetness and sympathy, as well as strength; and hand in hand with endurance went a sensitiveness that made it all the more heroic. 

If the saints are indeed reflections of the communities that venerate them, Philippine’s legacy offers a mirror to our own. In the Villa Duchesne community, we see a commitment to perseverance, a determination to confront challenges with grace and resolve, and a deep dedication to something greater than ourselves. As Tolstoy once wrote, “All people become closer, more or less, to one of two opposite limits: one is life only for oneself, and the other is life only for God.” Philippine, whose entire existence was consumed by a relentless devotion to God, is the epitome of this selflessness, and serves as a model for us all.

Emily Kaplan
Upper School Principal

Mary Emily “Mimi”  Webster Murphy, graduate of The Academy of the Sacred Heart, Rosary Campus, was named the Inaugural Duchesne Society Awardee. The Duchesne Society Award is given to a member of the Villa Duchesne community who embodies the mission of Sacred Heart education. This person embraces and lives the philosophy of the Sacred Heart through a generosity of heart, spirit, and mind, giving with intention and lasting impact, and altruistic acts of time, talent, and volunteerism. She is deeply connected to Villa Duchesne and the mission of Sacred Heart and is recognized for their accomplishments, achievements, and contributions.

Mimi Murphy graduated from The Rosary in 1964, Maryville College in 1968, and Washington University School of Law with a JD in 1971. Mimi was one of just five women in her law school class, and she practiced law from 1971 until January 2001. 

Mimi shares so much with our community, and her generosity is evident through years of dedicated service of time, talent, and treasure as the parent of alumni, a current grandparent, a former trustee, as well as a committed benefactor and long-standing friend of Villa Duchesne. Merci, Mimi! Our hearts are full of gratitude for you. 

Villa's Chemistry teacher, Mrs. Kirstin Blase, spent her summer working in the lab of Michael Vahey, a biomedical engineering professor at Washington University. The position was funded by the National Science Foundation. Before her career at Villa, Mrs. Blase worked in the Division of Radiological Sciences in the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Wash U's medical school, where she researched radioactive compounds used in positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. "As a scientist, I loved being in the lab and doing research," Blase said. "As a teacher, the idea of observing real-world research and incorporating it into my classroom sounded like fun!" Mrs. Blase is developing a curriculum inspired by the lab's work with fluorescent microscopy. "I interviewed each of the doctoral students to understand what their part of the research was and to build a knowledge base of antibody and virus interactions so I could incorporate that into my chemistry curriculum. In class, we'll talk about how vaccines are developed and how an antibody neutralizes a virus. I hope to connect those chemistry concepts to a real-world application," said Blase. Professor Vahey is excited about the outreach aspect of this program. "The National Science Foundation has always had STEM education as a central pillar of its mission. We need to expand the pipeline of trainees. By giving students early exposure to science and engineering [through their teacher], hopefully, they'll better understand this is a career option that's open to everyone." 

Read more on the Washington University McKelvey School of Engineering's website! Excerpt from an article written by Danielle Lacey, Integrated Marketing Manager, Washington University McKelvey School of Engineering.

Heidi Fesler ’25 is pictured with her painting of Booney, which was featured in the Young Artists’ Showcase at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild. Heidi said, “I decided to paint my childhood all-time favorite stuffed animal, Booney, for my second still life project of the year. The unique name stuck with me, and to this day, Booney is still special to me. Mrs. Sarra inspired me to be creative with this painting as she constantly pushed me to keep going even when I doubted myself. Without her, I would not have been able to get accepted into the St. Louis Artists’ Guild."
 

Everything we do at Villa is guided by the Goals and Criteria of Sacred Heart education. Our daily life animates the goals, and the goals inspire us to be the best possible school for our students. The Sacred Heart Goals Prayer simplifies the goals in a beautiful way:

Gracious God,

Instill in each of us a bold faith; A deep respect for intellectual values; A passionate desire to serve others, especially those most in need; An instinct for building community; And a profound and honest commitment to our personal growth. May we always act as persons of courage, confidence, compassion, and integrity.

Amen

All of the research related to outdoor education demonstrates that being outside benefits children in so many ways! Villa's lower school continually succeeds in building outdoor learning experiences into the curriculum and programming by using our expansive campus. Two full days each year, our lower school participates in Outdoor Classroom Day, a global movement to make time outdoors a part of every child's day. Our students have the most magical outdoor play environment, with two playgrounds, the Epic Woods (just ask to see it!), countless fields, Deer Creek, and our own nature trail!

"My Sacred Heart education at Villa was a life-changing experience. The relationships I formed when I was a student at Villa kept me connected to the school and my experience as a student. When I had the opportunity to come back to Villa as a summer intern, the choice was easy. I was inspired to return again to Villa to begin my teaching career because this place has been so meaningful to me. I love working with our bright, brilliant students. There is truly nowhere else I would rather be teaching! -Ms. Lily Carse '17, Middle School Faculty 

There is truly nothing like experiencing Congé at Villa! Congé (pronounced "con-jay") is a surprise day, set aside for all of our students to celebrate our school community. Students come to school in the morning thinking it's a normal day, only to discover it's going to be a day of fun, games, bonding, and special treats for everyone. The biggest question every year is, "When is Congé?"

"Villa's seventh grade is the most welcoming community I have ever been a part of. The bond is nearly instant, the teachers are caring, and the students have the freedom to find themselves while finding new friendships in their new home. I am blessed to teach seventh grade because this is an age in which abilities and knowledge grow by leaps and bounds; students can suddenly do so much more than they ever believed. I know that it is a special thing to be a part of." —Mrs. Danielle Thurm, Villa Middle School English Faculty