From its founding in 1953 by Dr. Edwin P. Heinrich, St. Johns Country Day School has always been a "college prep" school. Today, St. Johns redefines college prep by providing a future-facing curriculum that prepares students not just for college, but for life. St. Johns prides itself on providing small class sizes, a tailored academic experience, and encourages students to tackle new challenges with motivation and confidence. Read on to learn more!
St. Johns' Character Foundations program for students from age 3 through Grade 12 focuses on a different character trait each month, helping students master traits like wisdom, initiative, and contentment, which will contribute to a foundational culture of values at St. Johns and empower St. Johns students over the months and years ahead.
In 2021-2022, these traits include:
August - Wisdom - Finding out what you should do and doing it.
September - Initiative - Seeing what needs to be done and doing it
October - Individuality - Discovering who you are meant to be so you can make a difference.
November - Contentment - Deciding to be happy with what you have.
December - Service - Lending a hand to help someone else
January - Self-Control - Choosing to do what you should do even when you don’t want to.
February - Compassion - Caring enough to do something about someone else’s need.
March - Cooperation - Working together to do more than you can do alone.
April - Hope - Believing that something good can come out of something bad.
May - Perseverance - Refusing to give up when life gets hard.
Open to any Upper School student, the St. Johns Fellowship Program is an exciting path to help students shape their future. Our innovative academic Fellowships allow students to pursue their passion and curiosity in a chosen academic discipline.
St. Johns Country Day School is proud to be one of the few Northeast Florida providers of the AP Capstone Program -- a new offering from the College Board. AP Capstone is an innovative program that complements and enhances discipline-specific AP courses. Consisting of two new AP courses-- AP Seminar and AP Research-- AP Capstone will help St. Johns students develop the research, critical thinking, and communication skills that are essential to college readiness and lifelong success.
Incoming sophomores have the opportunity to enroll in the first of these new courses, AP Seminar, in lieu of modern World History or Honors Modern World History. This foundational course will provide students with opportunities to think critically, research, analyze, develop arguments, collaborate, and communicate using a variety of media. Then, in their junior years, students have the opportunity to take the AP Research course, which focuses on a yearlong research-based investigation of a selected topic.
These two courses, taken in conjunction with four additional AP courses throughout the high school career, provide students with eligibility to attain the AP Capstone Diploma in addition to the St. Johns Country Day School diploma.
A component of the St. Johns Fellowship Program, the Dr. Edwin P. Heinrich Fellowship offers our most academically talented and ambitious students opportunities to stretch and demonstrate content mastery even beyond Honors courses. Heinrich Fellows are self-motivated and think independently; they are driven to academic achievement. Throughout their Upper School careers, Heinrich Fellows complete a minimum of 20 course at the Honors level and above, and at least 6 of these must be Advanced Placement (AP) courses.
New to St. Johns, Head of School Valorie Baker introduces Winterim. Prior to St. Johns Country Day School, Valorie served the Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, where this unique program has served students for decades. The unique Winterim curriculum will enable students to deepen perspective of learning, independence of choice, and discipline in action and thought.
