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Where Belonging Begins

12/15/2025

by Lisa Kaminski

How DSHA’s new Salvatorian Family House System helps Dashers find community, purpose, and sisterhood.

It’s October 1, and the bleachers in the Chris & John McDermott Gymnasium are packed with Dashers cheering on the Varsity Volleyball team. Students are on their feet and roaring with every point gained. It’s not championship game, though, it’s the first-ever after-school event for House points—points that could earn students the coveted House Cup.

“I’ve never seen a crowd like that on a Wednesday night mid-season,” said Principal Dan Quesnell.

Attendance and energy like this are precisely what Dan and his colleagues hoped for when establishing the new Salvatorian Family House System this school year.

The Foundation of School Spirit & Belonging

This newly established system is a way to organize student life and create a sense of belonging for all Dashers.

This is done by sorting each student into one of five houses: Caritas, Lumen, Dignitas, Sono, and Illustratae. These houses are made up of students across grade levels and are sorted randomly, allowing girls to get to know others whom they may not have met at school otherwise.

Each house includes a suite of leaders, including a Penny to cheer their House on. These Houses are each assigned a host of events to plan throughout the year, including blood drives, dances, the talent show, and student auction. In this way, the Houses come together to work as a kind of student council.

The real foundation, though, lies in DSHA’s Salvatorian roots. “We’re trying to create a Salvatorian family here,” said Dan, referencing the network of Salvatorian sisters, brothers, priests, and lay people.

As such, the Houses have close ties to the mission of the Sisters of the Divine Savior: to make known the goodness and kindness of Jesus. To further inspire students, each House has a patron saint, assigned quality of a DSHA graduate, and House mantra (a quote from their patroness).

“We have these values that are true to us religiously, academically, and emotionally,” explained Academic Dean Erin Housiaux. “I think the House System does a really good job on drawing upon those.”

A Spark of Inspiration

Dean of Students Rachel Fredricks explained that for several years, she and her colleagues had been searching for a way to create a sense of belonging for students. “We were looking for a way to engage all of our students and increase school spirit,” she said.

Dan shared that he initially stumbled across the House model while doing some research and quickly discovered that many Catholic schools have made use of it to organize campus life. From there, he visited Ursuline Academy, an all-girls Catholic school in St. Louis, to see how its house system operates. Dan learned that this school had very similar motivations to DSHA for creating their system. Later, Rachel and a handful of DSHA faculty attended House System Institute symposiums to inform the implementation of a system here.

At these meetings, Rachel learned about the core components of any house system: “All students are sorted, there’s a homeroom of sorts, and there’s competition.” The rest of the organization is up

to the individual school.

The First Semester

With these basic elements in mind, DSHA kicked off the semester by sorting all students, faculty, and staff into the five Houses. At the first all-school assembly of the year, Dashers cracked a glowstick in the dark Robert & Marie Hansen Family Fine Arts Theatre to reveal their House’s signature color.

From there, it didn’t take long for girls to get into the House spirit. Students were charged with raising funds for Dash-A-Thon by House rather than by grade level, and by the end of August, there was already friendly competition afoot. Students monitored their House’s totals carefully, all hoping to earn the coveted prize for the winning House: a week out of uniform. Caritas came out on top, though all Houses met their goals and made this year a record-breaking Dash-A-Thon.

Since that early win for school spirit, Dan said, “We’re really starting to see girls show up for House competitions and school events.” This is evident as students come together for everything from decorating the halls for Halloween to supporting regular food drives to attending a Friday night performance of Hadestown: Teen Edition.

“It’s given girls a sense of belonging beyond the academic realm and beyond the athletic realm,” said Erin.

It’s also brought a lot of joy. “We’ve seen a lot of excitement,” said Erin. “When the girls come together as whole houses, like for field day or Mass or Dash-A-Thon, they’re clearly having a lot of fun and having a lot of fun making connections."

This fun is critical to the success of the Salvatorian Family House System. “There’s a lot of heavy stuff in the world and their lives. The fun we’re breathing into school with the Houses is a way of saying leave space for that,” said Dan. “Go giggle.”

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