Catholic Education Values

When parents in Tulsa ask what makes Monte Cassino different from other private schools, they usually get a tour of the campus, a look at the academics, and some impressive statistics. But the real answer lives somewhere harder to photograph.

It's the moment a sixth grader raises over $12,000 for the Salvation Army Angel Tree because her class decided to try. It's a third grader who tells her parent she was kind to someone today because "that's what we do here."

That's what Catholic education values look like in practice. Not on a poster — in the hallways.

The phrase gets used a lot. At its core, Catholic education values are about forming the whole person — intellectually, spiritually, and morally — so that students leave school knowing not just how to succeed, but why it matters and for whom.

At Monte Cassino Catholic School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, those values take a specific shape rooted in nearly 1,500 years of Benedictine tradition. The guiding principle is ora et labora — pray and work — a rhythm of reflection and action that Benedict of Nursia built into his Rule in the 6th century at the original Monte Cassino monastery in Italy. The idea is simple and enduring: no part of life is separate from faith. Study is a form of prayer. Service is a form of worship. Excellence matters because it honors something greater than a grade.

For a PreK through 8th grade school on South Lewis Avenue in Tulsa, that translates into something wonderfully concrete.

One of the most common misconceptions about Catholic education is that it's primarily about religion class. It isn't.

Catholic education values are woven through how teachers run a classroom, how students are expected to treat one another, and how conflicts get resolved. Students at Monte Cassino attend weekly Eucharist and have access to reconciliation — but equally important is what happens the other five days of the week, when Benedictine values like hospitality, humility, and respect quietly shape the culture of every grade.

The Rule of St. Benedict places a striking emphasis on hospitality — the idea that every person you encounter deserves to be received as if they matter completely. In a school community, that becomes a lens for how you welcome a new student, how you treat a classmate who's struggling, and how you carry yourself as an 8th grader around a kindergartner. These aren't lessons taught once. They're practiced daily, in small moments, across nine years of a child's formation.

The Benedictine Sisters who founded Monte Cassino in 1926 still live on campus at St. Joseph Monastery today. Their presence is a quiet but powerful reminder of what this school was built for — and what it has never stopped being.

Rigorous academics aren't separate from Catholic education values — they're an expression of them.

The Benedictine tradition has always viewed intellectual life as sacred. Monasteries were Europe's first centers of serious learning, and that same conviction — that the mind is worth developing fully — is alive and well at Monte Cassino. For Tulsa families, this means a school where faith and academic achievement aren't in tension. They're the same thing.

The results speak for themselves. 81% of last year's 8th graders were recognized as PreACT Rising Stars, with one in three placing in the top 15% of students nationally. Middle schoolers can take honors-level coursework and study world languages including Latin, Spanish, and French through the school's dedicated World Languages program. The new Benedictine Lead Institute adds a leadership development layer that few private schools in Tulsa can match.

And when it's time to leave, Monte Cassino graduates are accepted to their first-choice high school 100% of the time — a record that reflects not just academic preparation, but the character and confidence students build over nine years here.

With an 8:1 student-to-teacher ratio and an average class size of just 17, teachers know their students' names, learning styles, and what makes them come alive. That kind of relationship is what makes genuine academic formation possible.

One of the clearest expressions of Catholic education values is the conviction that every child deserves to be educated as an individual — not just the ones who learn quickly or test well.

Monte Cassino's REACH Program puts that conviction into practice across every grade level. Whether a student needs acceleration and enrichment, additional academic support, or something in between, REACH provides individualized coaching, mentoring, and evidence-based curriculum tailored to each learner's specific needs.

This isn't a pull-out program tucked away in a corner. It's a school-wide commitment to the idea that "meeting students where they are" is not a consolation — it's the standard. For Tulsa families with children who learn differently, or who are ready to move faster than a standard classroom allows, REACH is often the reason they choose Monte Cassino over other private schools.

If you want to know what a school actually values, watch what it asks students to do when there's no test attached.

At Monte Cassino, community service isn't an add-on to the academic year — it's woven into the rhythm of school life through the Monte Cares program, service days, food and diaper drives, and student-led fundraising throughout the Tulsa community.

That sixth-grade Angel Tree campaign raising over $12,000 wasn't assigned homework. It was an invitation — and the students ran with it entirely on their own, through acts of service, bake sales, face-painting booths, and handmade goods. 51 sixth-graders took a real goal, organized themselves, and delivered a real result for real Tulsa families in need.

That's the goal of service learning in a Catholic context: not to complete a requirement, but to develop the instinct that your time and energy belong partly to your neighbors. As the National Catholic Educational Association has long emphasized, forming students who understand that learning and serving are inseparable is at the very heart of what Catholic education is for.

Parents sometimes talk about wanting their kids to be "good people" as if that's softer or less important than good test scores. Catholic education values refuse that trade-off.

The Student Leadership program at Monte Cassino gives students real responsibility — organizing events, mentoring younger students, and serving as a bridge between the student body and faculty. Leadership at Monte Cassino isn't reserved for 8th grade. From the earliest years, students are taught to take responsibility for their actions, to consider how their choices affect others, and to understand that being part of a community means contributing to it.

The results of this formation show up in unexpected places. A Monte Cassino sixth-grader recently won first place in the Oklahoma Bar Association's statewide Law Day essay contest — a reflection of a student who has been thinking seriously about justice and responsibility since early elementary school. A seventh-grader represented Oklahoma at the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. Another student had a flag design formally proposed for adoption by the City of Owasso.

And looking further back: former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating graduated from Monte Cassino's middle school in 1958, shaped by the same Catholic education values that guide the school today.

None of this works without the people around the child.

One of the things Tulsa families consistently say about Monte Cassino is that it feels like a community, not just a school. The parent community is genuinely active. Teachers are genuinely invested. Students come from 40 different zip codes across the Tulsa metro and from five different religious backgrounds — united not by identical beliefs, but by shared commitment to the values that define this place.

The Benedictine value of stability — committing to a place and its people over time — shows up in low teacher turnover and multigenerational Tulsa families who keep coming back. Founded in 1926, Monte Cassino has been doing this for nearly a century. The mission hasn't drifted. The hallways look different, and the technology has changed, but the fundamental conviction — that a child is more than a test score, and that education is ultimately about forming a person of character — remains exactly what it was.

As Head of School Kevin Smith puts it: there really is no substitute for witnessing it yourself.

Catholic education values mean something different when they've been practiced daily for nearly 100 years, in a specific community, with real children and real Tulsa families. If you're exploring what that could look like for your child, we'd love to show you.

Schedule a campus tour and see what a school built on Catholic education values looks like up close — in the classrooms, on the field, and in the hallways where it matters most.

📍 2206 South Lewis Ave., Tulsa, OK 74114 📞 (918) 742-3364 🌐 montecassino.org/admissions/tour-campus