Woodside Priory School

Boarding

Greetings! Welcome to the Residential Life Community here at Woodside Priory. Our boarding program is designed to promote personal and academic growth based on the Benedictine values of Spirituality, Hospitality, Integrity, Individuality, and Community. Our goal is to help our students develop independence and personal responsibility while providing the individual attention and support necessary to do so.

Priory boarding students join a tradition that goes back to our school's founding in 1957. Today, about 20% of our high school students board. We draw local students from around the Bay Area and beyond as well as international students from all over the globe. In recent years, we have had students from Austria, Bulgaria, China, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and more. Living here on campus, boarding students are also a part of our larger on-campus community that includes the monks, faculty, staff and their families.

One big difference between us and many other boarding schools is our Residential Faculty. Many schools ask teachers to do “dorm duty” in the evenings after they’re exhausted from teaching a full day and coaching after school. At Priory, we have a full-time Residential Faculty; they may teach one or two classes during the day, but that’s it. They’re main responsibility is after the school day ends. This way, they have the energy to be an active presence every evening in our boarding students’ lives. Combined with our small size, this means that students get a lot of personal attention and form very strong relationships with the faculty. Parents constantly tell us that they love how well we know and understand their children.

Please explore our website to learn more about our Residential Life Program. You can click through the links and hear directly from our students themselves. If you have further questions, please contact me. I look forward to talking with you.

Matthew Lai
Dean of Residential Life
Woodside Priory School
mlai@prioryca.org
650-851-6170

Conversation with Matthew Lai, Dean of Residential Life