Divine Child High School, commonly known as Divine Child (DC), is a private,

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college-preparatory A college-preparatory school (usually shortened to preparatory school or prep school) is a type of secondary school. The term refers to public, private independent or parochial schools primarily designed to prepare students for higher educatio ...

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high school in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. Divine Child is ranked among the top 15 percent of private high schools in Michigan, is the seventh-largest overall, and is the largest co-ed Catholic high school. Divine Child Catholic Schools together have nearly 1,400 students enrolled K-12, making it the fourth largest private school community in the State. Over 11,000 students have graduated from Divine Child High School. The school is located on a 20-acre campus that includes a new athletic complex and fitness center, which was financed through an ongoing capital campaign that has raised five million in capital to date.

Overview

Divine Child Catholic Schools and Church

Divine Child High School is a highly rated,

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high school located in Dearborn, Michigan. Divine Child is ranked among the top 15% of private high schools in the State of Michigan as of the 2021–2022 school year. It is the State's largest Catholic co-ed high school, enrolling over 870 students from 55 different zip codes; minority enrollment at the school is 18.6 percent, and the student-teacher ratio is 12:1. The school follows an all school uniform policy, with boys wearing khaki slacks and an

Oxford shirt A dress shirt, button shirt, button-front, button-front shirt, or button-up shirt, is a garment with a collar and a full-length opening at the front, which is fastened using buttons or shirt studs. A button-down or button-down shirt is a dress ...

and tie, and girls may either wear a kilt or slacks, along with an button-up shirt, with both wearing blazers. As of 2022, Divine Child Catholic Schools had an estimated financial endowment of twelve million dollars.

History

Divine Child High School was founded in September 1958 by

Monsignor Monsignor (; it, monsignore ) is an honorific form of address or title for certain male clergy members, usually members of the Roman Catholic Church. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian ''monsignore'', meaning "my lord". "Monsignor" ca ...

Herbert Weier. Initially, it consisted of 84 freshmen, two Bernardine Sisters of St. Francis, and an athletic department. The Class of 1962, the first graduating class, consisted of 69 students. The original building consisted of of space including ten classrooms, two science labs, a small library, a typing and office machines room, and a study hall room. Since then, eleven additions have significantly increased the size and facilities of the school.

Demographics

The demographic breakdown of the 878 students enrolled at Divine Child in 2018 was: Native American/Alaskan - 1.0%; Asian/Pacific islanders - 4.8%; Black - 2.3%; Hispanic - 4.3%; White - 81.4%; Multiracial - 6.2%

Academics

Divine Child offers 20 honors and 19 Advanced Placement courses that can be taken for college credit that include: American Government, American History, Art History, Calculus AB, Chemistry, Computer Science, Computer Science Principles, English Language & Composition, English Literature & Composition, Environmental Science, Spanish, Latin, Music Theory, Physics 1, Physics 2, Statistics, World History, Seminar, and Research. The average ACT score for the school is 28 and has an average

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score of 1250. The school also offers an Instructional Support Program (ISP) that provides academic support to students with specific learning differences at tiered levels of intervention, which is unique among

private schools An independent school is independent in its finances and governance. Also known as private schools, non-governmental, privately funded, or non-state schools, they are not administered by local, state or national governments. In British Eng ...

Bands

The school has four bands which are present:

marching band A marching band is a group of musical instrument, instrumental musicians who perform while marching, often for entertainment or competition. Instrumentation typically includes brass instrument, brass, woodwind instrument, woodwind, and percus ...

pep band A pep band is an ensemble of instrumentalists who play at events, usually athletic, with the purpose of entertaining and creating enthusiasm in a crowd. Often members of a pep band are a subset of people from a larger ensemble such as a marchi ...

symphonic band A concert band, also called a wind band, wind ensemble, wind symphony, wind orchestra, symphonic band, the symphonic winds, or symphonic wind ensemble, is a performing ensemble consisting of members of the woodwind, brass, and percussion fami ...

, and jazz band.

Athletics

The Divine Child Falcons are members of the

Catholic High School League The Catholic High School League (CHSL) is a school athletic conference based in Detroit, Michigan, led by director Victor Michaels. Most member schools are also members of the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA), the governing body fo ...

, and has the largest athletic program in the league with over fifty teams. Divine Child is ranked among the top five percent of high schools in the United States for athletics. The school colors are red and grey. The following MHSAA sanctioned sports are offered: *Baseball (boys) **State champions - 1992, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010 *Basketball (girls and boys) **Boys state champions - 1973, 1977 **Girls state champions - 1986, 1989, 1993, 1994, 2011 *Bowling (girls and boys) **Boys State Champions 2021 *Competitive cheer (girls) *Cross country (girls and boys) *Football (boys) **State championships - 1975, 1985 *Golf (girls and boys) *Ice hockey (boys) **State champions - 2002 *Lacrosse (girls and boys) *Soccer (girls and boys) *Softball (girls) **State champions - 1975 *Swimming and diving (girls) *Tennis (girls and boys) *Track and field (girls and boys) **Girls state champions - 2010, 2012, 2013 *Volleyball (girls) *Wrestling (boys)

Notable Individuals

* Ryan Anderson, MLB pitcher * Mike Cervenak,

MLB Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

player * Jeff Chadwick, NFL receiver * Duncan Miller, Senior Guidance, Navigation and

Control Engineer Control engineering or control systems engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with control systems, applying control theory to design equipment and systems with desired behaviors in control environments. The discipline of controls o ...

at SpaceX. * Bob LaPointe, American college football head coach. *

Gary Danielson Gary Dennis Danielson (born September 10, 1951) is an American college football commentator and former professional American football player. Danielson was a quarterback in the National Football League (NFL). He played for the Detroit Lions from ...

, NFL

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

* Tom Dohring, NFL lineman * James Finn Garner,

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

bestselling author and satirist. Author of

Politically Correct Bedtime Stories ''My Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times'' is a 1994 book written by American writer James Finn Garner, in which Garner satirizes the trend toward political correctness and censorship of children's literature, with an ...

. * Dan Gheesling, American reality television personality, YouTube personality. Big Brother 10 winner, Big Brother 14 runner-up; first contestant to appear in the Final 2 twice. * Eric Haase, MLB Catcher *

Jim Herrmann James Herrmann (born December 8, 1960) is an American football coach and former player. He is currently the defensive coordinator for the San Antonio Brahmas of the XFL and was recently the defensive coordinator for the New York Guardians of ...

, NFL assistant football coach * Aidan Hutchinson, Michigan football, NFL player for the Detroit Lions. * Aria Hutchinson, Miss Michigan USA 2022;

Miss USA Miss USA is an American beauty pageant that has been held annually since 1952 to select the entrant from United States in the Miss Universe pageant. The Miss Universe Organization operated both pageants, as well as Miss Teen USA, until 2020, ...

2022 contestant. * Bryan Kosowski, Television director for

CBS Sports CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television network CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center on W ...

and

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Group. It ...

* Jordan Oesterle,

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

defenseman * Lauren Plawecki, Member of the Michigan House of Representatives from the 11th district. * Chris Rusin, MLB pitcher * Melissa Sinkevics, 1988

Miss Michigan Teen USA The Miss Michigan Teen USA competition is the pageant that selects the representative for the state of Michigan in the Miss Teen USA pageant and the name of the title held by that winner. This pageant is produced by Proctor Productions, includin ...

. * Pat Shurmur, NFL head coach *

Erin E. Stead Erin E. Stead (born December 27, 1982) is an American illustrator of children's books. She won the 2011 Caldecott Medal for the year's best-illustrated U.S. picture book, recognizing her first publication, ''A Sick Day for Amos McGee''. Biograph ...

, Author, illustrator of children's books. Winner of the

Caldecott Medal The Randolph Caldecott Medal, frequently shortened to just the Caldecott, annually recognizes the preceding year's "most distinguished American picture book for children". It is awarded to the illustrator by the Association for Library Servic ...

for the most distinguished American picture book for children, A Sick Day for Amos McGee. *

Ron Vanderlinden Ron Vanderlinden is a retired American college football coach. Vanderlinden was most recently the linebackers coach at Air Force. He served as the head football coach at the University of Maryland, College Park from 1997 to 2000. Vanderlinden i ...

, Linebackers coach at

Air Force Academy An air force academy or air academy is a national institution that provides initial officer training, possibly including undergraduate level education, to air force officer cadets who are preparing to be commissioned officers in a national air for ...

; Head football coach at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

. * Marjorie Haskell, Chief Safety & Mission Assurance Officer

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

- Goddard Space Flight Center,

Lucy (spacecraft) ''Lucy'' is a NASA space probe on a twelve-year journey to eight different asteroids, visiting a main belt asteroid as well as seven Jupiter trojans, asteroids which share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, orbiting either ahead of or behind th ...

. * Brian Zahra, Justice of the

Michigan Supreme Court The Michigan Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is Michigan's court of last resort and consists of seven justices. The Court is located in the Michigan Hall of Justice at 925 Ottawa Street in Lansing, the sta ...

Bill McCartney William Paul McCartney (born August 22, 1940) is a former American football player and coach and the founder of the Promise Keepers men's ministry. He was the head coach at the University of Colorado Boulder for thirteen seasons (1982–1994), ...

, college football coach and founder of

Promise Keepers Promise Keepers is an Evangelical Christian parachurch organization for men. It originated in the United States, but independent branches have also been established in Canada and New Zealand. Promise Keepers describes its goal as "to bring abo ...

, coached basketball and football at Divine Child early in his career

References

External links

{{authority control Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit Educational institutions established in 1958 Buildings with sculpture by Corrado Parducci Catholic secondary schools in Michigan Education in Dearborn, Michigan Schools in Wayne County, Michigan 1958 establishments in Michigan