Our commitment to diversity is rooted in our foundress, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat's philosophy and Sacred Heart Schools' 200-year history of making education accessible to children of all backgrounds. Grounded in the Goals and Criteria, we believe that a Sacred Heart education inspires all members of our community to cultivate an understanding and respect for a variety of cultures, perspectives, religions and life experiences.
Sacred Heart Schools is committed to:
Welcoming, recruiting, admitting, educating and supporting children and families from a diversity of racial, ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds;
Welcoming, recruiting, hiring, and supporting faculty and staff from a diversity of racial, ethnic, religious, and economic backgrounds;
Providing a full range of curricular and co-curricular opportunities that engage our students, parents, teachers, and staff in learning about, experiencing, and valuing the widest possible range of cultural experiences and viewpoints.
FAST FACTS
Sacred Heart is a member of the Network of Sacred Heart Schools, with 21 schools in the United States and 130 schools in 36 countries worldwide. To see more information about our schools and teh rscj who work all over the world, please go to these websites:
www.sofie.org
www.rscjinternational.org
Sacred Heart is a Catholic school that welcomes children of all faiths. About 60% of our children are Catholic. 40% are from a wide variety of faith backgrounds, both Christian and non-Christian. All students attend weekly religion classes and regular religious services.
Students of color comprise about 20% of our student body. About 6% of our students are international, born outside of the United States.
About 8% of our students speak a language other than English at home. More than 20 languages are represented in Sacred Heart homes including Albanian, Amaharic, Bengali, Essan, Farsi, French, Hindi, Greek, Italian, Korean, Newari, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Telugu, Tibetan, Ukranian, Urdu and Vietnamese.
Past Events
All-School Third Annual International Dinner
INTERNATIONAL NIGHT 2007
On November 19, 2007, Sacred Heart welcomed over 600 people to celebrate International Night in the gymnasium. Families represented 38 countries. Adults and children came in traditional dress and the children had a “Parade of Nations” to show us their traditional dress and the flags of their heritage. The gymnasium was festive with decorations made by children in the weeks prior to the event. DJs J from Fig Media spun international music all night long. Guests brought and ate delicious food from around the world. Many thanks to the Diversity Committee, parents, alums, faculty and staff who made this event possible.
Speaker Kimmie Weeks & Youth Action International
On November 28, 2006 Kimmie Weeks, founder of Youth Action International, flew to Chicago to speak to the Lower and Middle School students, faculty and staff about his efforts in helping children in Africa this past year. This is Kimmie’s second visit to Sacred Heart. Kimmie does not normally grant a second visit to a school, but was so impressed by our student body and their efforts to raise funds and awareness that he decided to revisit us. He showed video clips of his work in Africa and did an exercise with the students asking them to think of a societal problem here in Chicago or anywhere in the world. The next step in the exercise was to find a solution that did not involve raising money. This was a challenge, but our students came up with creative ideas. A native of Liberia, 24 year-old Kimmie Weeks is a graduate of Amherst College (USA). Based upon his own childhood experiences, Kimmie now works on a variety of projects to empower children and youth trapped by war and poverty to improve their own lives. His organization ‘Youth Action International' is active in a number of countries (including Kimmie's native Liberia). Its objectives are to work with youth (rather than simply for youth ), to encourage youth to be advocates for themselves.
Too often the media is dominated by images of Africa which portray the continent and its people as helpless victims, in need of relief. The message of Kimmie Weeks is a necessary antidote to this – for his work is grounded in the firm conviction that youth can help themselves, given guidance and opportunity. It is a powerful, universal message.
