What We Believe

Faith is Woven into the Fabric of our School

At St. Giles School, our Roman Catholic faith is omnipresent in every aspect of what it means to be a St. Giles student from the curriculum to the community, the classroom to the athletics court.

Starting in preschool, we help to build a foundation for a strong and vibrant faith life through daily formation, such as beginning and ending the day with prayer, celebrating weekly Mass and our liturgical calendar, preparing for Sacraments and exploring our call to serve. Each grade level focuses on faith in ways that are age-appropriate and offer students a role to actively engage and participate.

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A Student Community of Believers

Students attend weekly Mass with their unit. Preschool attends Mass monthly. We encourage student participation every week and offer opportunities to take on deeper roles in the liturgy as readers, altar servers and in the student choir. Students also volunteer as altar servers at weekly Masses.

Primary grades also take turns hosting weekly prayer services with prayer and song, bringing students together to celebrate their faith in a way that’s approachable for their development.

CELEBRATING THE SACRAMENTS

Deepening our Faith

Our second-grade and eighth-grade Lions prepare for Holy Sacraments as part of their religious education experience at St. Giles School. In religion class, students and their teachers discuss key tenets of our faith including belonging to a Christian community, listening to the Word of God through Bible stories and living a Christian life through the Sacraments.

Reconciliation and First Communion

For second graders, we believe that parental engagement is a critical component of Sacramental preparation which further demonstrates that our faith life is a community experience. We offer parent-child retreats in the fall and spring in conjunction with the parish community to encourage and enable meaningful conversations. Students celebrate Reconciliation in January and their First Holy Communion in the spring.

Confirmation

The Sacrament of Confirmation completes the initiation in the Holy Catholic Church. Beginning the spring of their seventh grade year, St. Giles School Confirmation candidates begin their preparation program, focusing on the person of Jesus Christ and His mission for them. Working with their chosen Sponsor, over the next year eighth graders work on individual reflection projects, as well as develop habits of prayer and service to others, attend weekly Mass and participate in small group retreats.

My kids talk about kindness, respecting others and living like God wants us to. They’re learning about that every day, not just at home and not just in a religion class, but throughout their curriculum. I love the kind of people that St. Giles is helping them become.

– Sarah Y., mother of two St. Giles students, Class of '27 and Class of '30

Service

Lions Answer the Call to Serve

We cultivate a long-term commitment to community—a core value of our faith, parish and school—from the earliest grades through graduation by giving students ways to give back and encouraging development of their own ideas to help others.

Last year, student community service projects included food drives, letter writing to seniors, candy collection for the troops, a coat drive and outdoor space clean-up.