Welcome, Principal Walker!

We are excited to welcome Mr. Dan Walker as new principal of SMPREP. Find his letter below.

Dear Saint Monica Preparatory Community,

As I enter what will be my 30th year in education, I can't thank you enough for the generous welcome you have given my family and me since we arrived at the end of June. When Dr. Luby graciously extended an offer to me to become Saint Monica Preparatory's first TK-12 Principal, I accepted with excitement and with great humility, knowing that I was entering into a vibrant parish and a school reshaping itself based on the best practices of innovative, student-centered education.

As I have mentioned to my faculty and staff colleagues, it was also a decision based on my personal belief that Catholic schools are the best places for students to wrestle with the most important issues of our time, requiring their campus communities to not only focus intellectually on discipline-specific teaching and learning, but to focus viscerally on how to use subject-area content to help change the world, always grounding ourselves in the Gospel and the principles of Catholic social teaching.

This spirit was imbued in me by my exceptional PK-12 teachers at both St. John the Baptist School and Bishop Fenwick High School in Peabody, MA, where I grew up. Studying abroad in Spain while a student at Dartmouth College allowed me to see how my study of the Spanish language enabled me to be in the Spanish-speaking world, as opp osed to apart from it. Graduate studies in Spanish literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder allowed me to deepen this knowledge and also meet my wife, who is from northern Spain.

Coming to SMPREP represents a homecoming in many ways. First of all, it represents a return to teaching in Catholic schools. Long before I served as the World Language Department Chair and Director of Global Studies at Windward School (Los Angeles) and, more recently, the Dean of Faculty at The Hun School of Princeton (NJ), I started my teaching career at St. Mary's Academy, an independent K-12 Sisters of Loretto school in Denver, CO, where I taught Spanish and served as the Language Department Chair. Second, it represents a return to the St. Monica Catholic Community, as my wife María, my daughter Nora, and I were parishioners here during my tenure at Windward. Then, as now, we felt the warm embrace of the community, and we are thrilled to be members of it once again.

My range of educational experiences in a variety of school environments has prepared me well to help shepherd SMPREP into the future. Working hand in hand with Dr. Luby, we know we have an extremely solid foundation on which to build a curriculum and a culture grounded in the best practices of student-centered education, always keeping the whole child in mind. This is a journey many of you have seen through SMPREP's recent focus on Project-Based Learning in the Upper School, and we will continue to look at ways to increase students' investment in their own learning as we enact our school mission "to encourage and develop innovative thinkers who become value-led leaders who advocate for a socially just and inclusive society."

I am so happy to be at Saint Monica Preparatory, and I am so grateful for the trust you have put in me. I look forward to meeting you soon.

God bless,

Daniel R. Walker
Principal

If you are interested in exploring a Saint Monica Preparatory education for your children,
visit saintmonicaprep.org/admission today!