Woodside Priory School

Boarding

Greetings! Welcome to Woodside Priory, a day and boarding school in California located in the heart of Silicon Valley.  About 20% of our high school students live here on campus, and our Residential Life program is designed to promote personal and academic growth based on the Benedictine values of Individuality, Community, Hospitality, Integrity, and Spirituality. 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 our tradition as an international boarding school that goes back to our founding in 1957. Today, 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, Korea, Lithuania, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, South Africa, 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 or coach a sport, 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 and weekend 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.  I truly believe these relationships make Priory one of the best boarding schools in California.

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

 (This video is hosted on youtube. Any videos you see advertised after this video are not necessarily associated with the Priory)