The small, close-knit, family-like community at The Patrick School defines student life. While a college of less than 200 students would feel constraining, this intimate environment of around 160 students works perfectly for the middle school and high school experience. This is the ideal environment for a student during his or her formative years. Being a teenager in the era is difficult, but that transitional period is so much more manageable as a student at The Patrick School. Students benefit from individual attention, the fact that they cannot get “lost in the shuffle” and the feeling of being closely connected to a strong community.

 

Think about a high school community as a standard size jigsaw puzzle and each student as one of the pieces. At a large high school, with a thousand “pieces to the puzzle”, it is harder to put each element together to build the larger picture. Also, each student makes up only a small part of the overall puzzle. At The Patrick School, all students seamlessly combine into the community, and each student is a large portion of the overall picture.

 

Students at TPS are not just passive elements in a larger community. The Patrick School has the responsibility of respecting each student’s unique personality and dignity. Moreover, the faculty and staff care about each student and strive to help them grow into educated, responsible, young adults prepared for life in college and beyond. If our TPS students were plants, the faculty provides the “light and water” needed for growth. Each “plant” has different needs, and it is much easier to tend to each individual in a “garden” of only 160 rather than 500 or 1000. Moreover, plants grow better when each has their own space to flourish rather than being cramped in an overcrowded patch of land.

 

Students at The Patrick School truly enjoy their time here. One of the most difficult challenges the administration faces at the school is getting students to leave on a Friday afternoon when the building must be locked up. Our students want to be here. On weekends, students look forward to Monday morning, when they can return to TPS to be a large “piece of The Patrick School puzzle” where they feel comfortable, accepted, cared for and nourished.