Our Lady of the Lake attributes record third Blue Ribbon to student engagement

Story and photos by Beth Donze, Clarion Herald

The U.S. Department of Education has named Our Lady of the Lake Elementary School in Mandeville a 2020 National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence, the highest honor given to the nation’s K-12 schools. The news, announced Sept. 24, marks the third time Our Lady of the Lake has received the accolade, making it the only elementary school in the state of Louisiana to be a three-time winner, said Frank Smith, Our Lady of the Lake’s principal since 2005.

“It’s wonderful to be recognized, and it is a fitting tribute to our outstanding faculty, staff, parents and students to receive this great honor,” said Smith, speaking after the announcement from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was livestreamed to all classrooms. “It solidifies OLL’s place among the 1% of all schools in the nation,” Smith added. “It is a great time to be (an Our Lady of the Lake) Cardinal!”

The selection puts the Mandeville school into an elite nationwide group of only 50 private schools to receive the Blue Ribbon in 2020. An additional 317 public schools earned the distinction this year.

Smith attributes much of Our Lady of Lake’s success to his faculty’s dedication to continuous improvement and building a school culture in which students of varying abilities, interests and learning styles can thrive and feel a daily sense of achievement.

“We never rely on what we’ve done before,” Smith said, pointing to recent additions of cross country, tennis and golf to the school’s sports offerings, a visual art elective that takes students beyond the school’s regular art classes, and a theater arts program that recently expanded to cover grades K-4.

“We saw students who (formerly) didn’t show any expression or were ‘quiet,’ just come out of themselves and often be the best person on the stage,” Smith said. “We like to provide as many outlets as possible. We believe that if a student can be successful in one field, he or she will get the confidence to be successful in other fields.”

All gifts recognized, honed

Our Lady of the Lake received its first Blue Ribbon in 2004, repeating the feat in 2014. Founded in 1890, it enrolls 670 students in pre-K3 through seventh grade, and also offers a Mothers’ Day Out for 2-year-olds.

Smith said his school’s unwavering commitment to student success is served by a campus-wide practice of differentiated instruction – or using a variety of teaching approaches to engage students and measure the progress of each. Our Lady of the Lake provides programs for the academically gifted, for those who need additional reading resources and recently expanded its special education program –  Resources for Exceptional Cardinals (REC) – to include students with moderate learning challenges.

Smith said one of the many benefits of REC: a kindergartner with autism who recited an entire nursery rhyme from memory in front of his class.

“The gift that gives to the rest of the kindergarten students – they see what unbelievable gifts that student has, whereas they would have only seen that student’s differences (before).”

Other recent enhancements to academics include expanding the STEM program to serve not only older students but also those in pre-kindergarten on up. Our Lady of the Lake was recently named a Project Lead the Way Distinguished School in both Launch (used by students in preK-5) and Gateway (grades 6-7). A current project in the Maker Space is challenging sixth and seventh graders to design therapeutic toys for children with cerebral palsy.

“We want to foster interest in fields like engineering, robotics and computer coding in our younger children – expose them to things they would not have been exposed to until later (in their school career), at a point where they might no longer be interested,” said Vita Dickens, assistant principal.

Smith agreed that early entry into the STEM fields enables children to “see themselves” in those fields, and not just assume “I can’t do math; I can’t do science.”

“It also helps a lot of students who might naturally be more mechanical – it gives them another avenue – and it just makes science fun,” Smith said. “At the end of the day, we ask the faculty, ‘Are the kids happy?’ That’s the bottom line; that’s how we gauge everything, because a happy kid is going to be a successful kid.”

The individualized attention is working. In recent years, Our Lady of the Lake alumni have been among the top graduates at St. Paul’s, St. Scholastica Academy, Archbishop Hannan and Jesuit high schools. Its students also consistently score in the top 10% in every elementary grade level that is tested, Smith said.

After the 2020 designation was announced by Secretary DeVos, Smith addressed his students in a live feed from the school’s Media Center, backed by blue streamers and letter-shaped balloons spelling out “#3peat.” Each student received a garland of blue beads, blue cookies and classroom visits from their school mascot, OLLie the Cardinal.

Our Lady of the Lake was one of four Louisiana non-public schools to receive the 2020 Blue Ribbon; the other three are located in Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

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