Community Offers Warm Welcome - The Plote Family
Community Offers Warm Welcome
The Plote Family
We are the Plote Family: Jesse, Kelly, Madeline, Alexander, and Anderson. Jesse (Dad) is a teacher, Kelly (Mom) is a dentist, and our children all attend Stella Maris Academy: Madeline (Grade 5), Alexander (Grade 3), and Anderson (Grade 2). Our family is new to the Duluth community, and we are so thankful to call Duluth home. After moving many times, we finally feel like we are in our forever city. We love Duluth, the outdoor playland that surrounds us, changing seasons, cultural events, and best of all, lots of good people. As we planned our move to the area, integrating our children into a new school environment was forefront in our minds. Pursuing Catholic education was something we wanted, Kelly attended Catholic schooling throughout her childhood, both Jesse and Kelly attended a Jesuit University, and our children had attended Catholic schools in two other cities. The Jesuit ideal of cura personalis, education of the whole person, is something we strove to find in an educational setting. As we researched the area, we were thankful to find a Catholic community and schools close to our home. The four foundational pillars that guide the Stella Maris Academy Formational Model of Education: human formation, spiritual formation, intellectual formation, and stewardship formation, aligned with our educational goals. We reached out to Stella Maris Academy and were immediately welcomed. Our children were invited to shadow in their classrooms for a day before we moved, and that was just the start they needed to feel part of a new community. They came home gushing about the amazing lunch menu and all of the new friends they met. Our decision to enroll our children was easy as we all experienced a sense of belonging from our first encounters with the school community. We were excited to start the school year in a new city, new home, new Catholic School. The transition seemed seamless. We were welcomed by teachers, staff, and other families. The strong academic curriculum of Stella Maris Academy challenges our kids, and is balanced with faith education and character development. The addition of foreign language education for our eldest, and the music and art curriculum for all of our children, is outstanding. In addition, there are endless extra-curricular opportunities for students, from sports to drama, that engage students with varying interests. We are thankful for the teachers who are extremely dedicated to their students. We have witnessed the collaboration between students, between student and teacher, and with our family and the school. All of the teachers we have this year have gone above and beyond to help our children adapt, grow, and thrive in a new place. With individualized learning plans to challenge one of our children, to help develop the intrinsic motivation for another one of our children, we could not be more appreciative for teachers who truly know their students, who motivate them, and help them blossom into the people God created them to be. Stella Maris Academy is a place where Catholic education is just that, faith and knowledge brought together in what feels like an effortless manner. As parents, we could not ask for any more from a school community.