Blog: A Faith-based Perspective on Preparing Students for College and Life

By Paul Davis ’81
President, Father Ryan High School

On May 17, 2025, we celebrated the 99^th graduating class of Father Ryan High School. I am humbled and honored to share just a few of the accomplishments of this remarkable group of young men and women:

• They will attend 66 different colleges and universities this fall, including Emerson College, Northwestern University, Spelman College, the U.S. Naval Academy, the University of Notre Dame, Vanderbilt University, and Villanova University.
• They were offered more than $38 million in college scholarships.
• Over the course of their Father Ryan tenure, they completed 15,900+ community service hours in Nashville and the nation.

Seeing the joy on their faces as they cross the stage with their diploma remains one of my favorite moments of every school year. You can see the pride in their smiles for what they have achieved and the compassion and support they have for each other.

These inspiring moments encapsulate each graduate’s story and are a significant reason why I have served as a teacher and administrator at Father Ryan for the past 39 years. It is a privilege to witness our students reach their spiritual, academic, and personal potential, ready for the road that lies ahead.

How Father Ryan High School Prepares Students for College Success

Preparing students to confidently embrace their path and focus on success is the goal of every high school. This is especially true for our nation’s most recent high school graduates. The Class of 2025 is the most diverse and largest in recent U.S. history. They navigated one of the most challenging and competitive college admissions seasons and are learning, like the rest of us, how to navigate AI and other new technologies. They will also face social, financial, and career-entry complexities that are far different from earlier generations.

How we guide students to manage and master challenges, known and unknown, has never been more critical. At Father Ryan, our approach is rooted in our Catholic mission.

Our students become servant leaders, people for others. They become better friends, better sons and daughters, and better colleagues because of their faith-based experience at Father Ryan.

The best preparation, regardless of a student’s choice of path, centers on values. We want our graduates to be kind, caring, and empathetic. We want them to have humility, understanding that God is present in their lives and that their role in current and future relationships comes with the responsibility to be good colleagues, community members, and family members through the lens of the faith.

Faith-Based Education Builds Character and Purpose

The emphasis on faith and spiritual development is our priority. Every Father Ryan student, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, takes a yearly theology class. Each grade attends Class Retreats led by Campus Ministry, and every House Mentor Group has a peer-elected Chaplain. Students have access to the sacraments through daily Mass, All-School Mass, penance services, and confession, with opportunities for further faith formation through prayer services, faith retreats, and adoration.

Every senior takes a semester-long class, Jesus Christ’s Mission Continues in the Church, which teaches them to defend their faith. This gives our graduates practice in what is another essential skill to prepare them for life today: the ability to engage in respectful, thoughtful conversations with others about Catholicism and why their faith – Catholic or otherwise – is important to them. They learn to be leaders who lean into uncomfortable conversations and engage with civility and empathy when encountering those with different perspectives.

How our students live their faith speaks to the value of faith formation as preparation for success after high school. Our graduates carry on the idea of being people for others, of understanding with a humble perspective that God's presence is very important, and they must care for others in significant ways.

Real-World Skills Start with Academic Rigor and Teacher Support

Academic preparation is paramount to our mission and to what each graduate needs to have a rewarding career and life. Our goal is to prepare every student at Father Ryan for college.

Our personalized learning program allows each student to customize his or her academic journey and explore intellectual passions, much like the choices they have in college. Our High Honors, AP classes, and Hayes Scholars Program provide exceptional rigor, and our new Dual Enrollment Program offers college-credit courses, beyond AP courses, taught by Father Ryan faculty.

Our Educational Support Programs do a remarkable job preparing students who need more academic support for our higher-level electives. Our learning specialists work with them to ensure that they have the skills and self-sufficiency needed to manage their learning, time, and projects, while developing the confidence to challenge themselves. The independence that comes from the support we offer allows our students to pursue their academic dreams and passions. 

We have intentionally strengthened our rigor and realigned our curriculum, based in part on feedback from our alumni, so our students are best prepared to face the challenges they experience at college. Our move to a block schedule in 2009 was done so that Father Ryan schedules mirror a college schedule. 

Alternating A and B Day schedules allow for 85-minute classes, a change we made in 2009 from the previous 55-minute classes. This allows our students and faculty the time to work through lessons and labs. Teachers now have time to ensure that each student is mastering the subject.

To further develop support systems for students, we launched our House System in 2020, modifying our schedule to include a 20-minute small Mentor Group meeting each day. This allows for peer-mentoring and deeper friendships across the four grades, which helps us make a larger school smaller.

Father Ryan’s Century-long Mission: Educating the Whole Person

At the heart of our preparation is the relationship between our teachers and students. This is where our promise of “You Will Be Known. You Will Be Loved.” originates. I saw it in my former teachers when I returned to teach at Father Ryan in 1985. I recall an early-1990s professional development session where a presenter said, “They don't care what you teach until they know that you care.”

That stuck with me. I used that phrase when I taught English, and I use it now when I teach the Transfer Seminar each fall. Our culture is one where our teachers genuinely care about each student. In turn, this allows our students to build relationships with each other and find success in and beyond the classroom.

Several of my former students had little interest in my British Literature class, yet because of the genuine opportunity we had to get to know each other, they say to me to this day, “I still remember when we learned about Beowulf or when you did that unit on Pink Floyd’s The Wall.” 

When teachers care deeply and want students to achieve at a high level, students excel. I was known and loved when I was a student here. I was also pushed by teachers who saw my potential. My love for service began through the SEARCH retreat program and the Youth Leadership Workshop program, to which Father Ryan provided access. I learned to care for others and develop confidence through those programs. It is amazing to witness these programs continue to positively impact the lives of our students today.

While these programs develop students’ confidence, we teach our students that learning from failure is just as essential to future success. At Father Ryan, developing grit and driving through adversity are the result of our faculty asking higher-order questions, raising the bar of expectations, and helping students discern next steps after failure. 

The Preparation Necessary for High School Students to Excel Today

A key part of preparation for life after high school is the ability to work with and respect all types of people. Our graduates know they are ready for college and the workforce. They have experience in collaborative group projects and know how to share their ideas. Our House System has been instrumental in providing those leadership opportunities in a significant way.

As Nashville’s largest private high school and as a Catholic school, it is inherent in our mission that we make Catholic education available to whomever seeks it. We are a school with National Merit Finalists and students who need academic support. Our student body includes outgoing extroverts and those who may not feel comfortable socially.

This wonderful mix allows Father Ryan graduates the opportunity to interact with every type of student, and this allows them to be accepting of all people, no matter their social status, no matter their ACT or SAT score.

It goes back to kindness and remembering that we are all children of God. Our focus is on helping students to understand that they are part of a bigger picture and can – and will – make a significant difference in the lives of those around them.

Additionally, we are preparing Father Ryan students for technological advances, some that already exist, and those not yet created. While it may be enticing to use AI to complete schoolwork, Father Ryan takes a more ethical approach to incorporating AI into our students’ lives. We challenge our students to find ways for it to benefit the world. The goal is to lead our students to the understanding that they have a responsibility to do so from a faith-based perspective and from an ethical perspective.

Through next spring, we are celebrating 100 Years of Father Ryan. Our mission statement was not present in the early years, but it was created based on what we know of the people who came before us: To be an experience of the living Gospel while challenging students to reach their spiritual, academic, and personal potential.

We have maintained the founding vision of high expectations. We know that the best preparation for our students in order for them to be well-rounded scholars is to encounter rigor through their academics so that they understand they can and should reach their potential.

Here’s to the Class of 2025. May your preparation inspire your path and purpose.

Read additional Irish Insights posts on Father Ryan’s program:

The Timeless Value of a Catholic Education by Francisco M. Espinosa, Jr., Principal

From Leadership Roles to My Future Career Path: How Father Ryan Shaped My Goals by Jessie Henry ‘25

How Father Ryan’s Four Levels of Learning Help Every Student Achieve by the Academic Leadership Staff