Saint Mary's College High School

Students and teachers took to the roads, skies, bike paths, waterways, and BART tracks in early March for Saint Mary’s tenth annual “Enrichment Week.” More than forty unique courses designed by faculty were available to students during a week in which the world literally became their campus. Experiences were shared at a special assembly on March 21. Designed to further the school’s Lasallian Catholic commitment to educate the whole person, Enrichment Week extends the school’s mission beyond the classroom and beyond the twelve-acre Peralta Park school site.

Students from every grade level mix with for courses ranging from the basics of cooking, shopping, and setting a table, biking and camping around the Bay Area, learning to fish at San Pablo Reservoir, exploring historical and cultural sites in San Francisco, and taking self-defense and driver education classes, to long-distance learning at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon and the Yosemite Institute in Washington State’s Olympic Park, improving French language skills in Montreal, and taking a close-up look at government in Washington, D.C. Members of the school’s dance troop traveled to Brazil to enjoy South American culture and share their talents with youngsters in impoverished areas. Families in Guatemala hosted students studying Spanish, and students traveling in rural El Salvador performed service projects in local communities. East Bay sites benefiting from student services during Enrichment Week included the Alameda County Food Bank and Saint Mary’s Center in Oakland, while art students spent the week painting a custom mural at Oakland’s St. Anthony’s School. Two favorite service immersion programs sent students and faculty to work with their Lasallian counterparts at the De La Salle Blackfeet Reservation School in Montana and in poor communities in Tijuana, Mexico