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Head of School Welcome
Meaningful, exciting engagement and rigorous, thorough preparation: if you are like me, (and I am a parent of a St. Gregory sixth grader), these are qualities you seek for your children in their middle and high school years.
St. Gregory engages. You want your children to love school, feel connected to their teachers and classmates, and participate fully in sports, arts, clubs, and travel. If they raise their hand in class, you want them to be called on, and if they want to discuss things further with their teacher after class, you want that to be possible. You want your children to feel that the school-work they are doing is meaningful, and that they are getting valuable feedback on that work. Leadership opportunities should be plentiful. Here these things happen.
St. Gregory prepares our students for success in college and in life. We know what is required for college, and we carefully examine the success of our graduates after they leave us. Our past parents tell us regularly the great value a St. Gregory education offered their children. So committed are we to rigorous and thorough preparation that we are the only school in Arizona using a new national test called the College and Work Readiness Assessment to ensure that we are providing our students the thinking and communication skills they need for success.
St. Gregory is a forward-looking school, ensuring our graduates will lead, innovate, and thrive in the fast-changing world of the twenty-first century. This is the schooling I want for my sons, and if this is the kind of investment you wish to make in your children’s future, I invite you to visit our campus and enjoy a personal tour where you can see for yourself the most engaging and best preparatory program in our region.
- B.A., Harvard University, 1988
- M.A. University of San Francisco-School of Education/Private School Administration, 2000
Jonathan Martin was appointed as the fifth St. Gregory Head of School after an extensive national search conducted by a Boston-based school leadership search firm. Mr. Martin previously headed two independent schools in California, Saklan Valley School and Maybeck High School. Over the course of his nine year headship at Saklan, the school enjoyed enrollment growth of fifty percent, was awarded re-accreditation with a maximum-length term, purchased its long-rented campus, and greatly expanded its academic and enrichment curriculum.
Mr. Martin is himself the product of independent school educational excellence as a graduate of Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C. (Sidwell is known as the "school of Presidents' children") and having been a middle school student at Milton Academy in Massachusetts.
In 2008, Mr. Martin had the honor of being a Visiting Fellow at the Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University, where he mentored aspiring school-leaders and conducted research on the topic of school leaders facilitating curricular innovation by teachers.
Mr. Martin has been recognized as an educational leader in California and nationally, and has written extensively on education issues. You can find samples of his writing and his educational vision at his blog www.21k12blog.net and at his professional website, www.21k12.net.
