Editor’s note: To read profiles of all 2015-2016 Blackboard Awards honorees, click HERE!
Pine Street School
Founder: Jennifer Jones
Director: Eileen Baker
Preschool – Grade 3 (soon to be through Grade 4 in 2016-2017)
25 Pine Street
Award: New & Noteworthy School
Describe your school’s core educational philosophy.
Pine Street School’s core philosophy is international education that stimulates critical thinking and encourages creative discovery. As a member of the world’s most prestigious network of schools—the International Baccalaureate—we promote academic rigor, integrity of character, and global community service in every aspect of our curriculum. Students are engaged in hands-on problem solving and encouraged to see the world through multiple lenses from as early as age 3. To further support that global perspective, we offer Mandarin and Spanish dual language immersion programs, and teach sophisticated strategies for cross-culture collaboration and thought leadership.
Tell us about a few of the school’s achievements or distinguishing programs.
During our International Baccalaureate authorization visit, the inspector said she would recommend us as a model of IB education for others in the network… We are also proud to be adding Mandarin in 2016 as a second track in our dual language immersion programming and to be building a strong language fluency component across every age group. With over 20 nationalities and 15 languages represented in our current student body, supporting ongoing native language learning and cultural immersion for all our students and families is logistically tricky but ideologically important in our mission.
What’s new?
We have added a STEM lab—our Design Technology Lab—in which students support their daily curriculum learning and utilize the latest technology in developing their projects. A big part of IB is demonstrating what you’ve learned through assessments. Incorporating 3D printing, laser cutting, stop-motion animation, coding and programming, electronics and circuitry, robotics, and maker tools has resulted in some truly magical presentations already this year.
What do you love about your school?
As the founder, what I love is the warmth and sense of community we have shaped in our school’s parent body. We sit in one of the world’s most diverse neighborhoods where families arrive, just as they once did in the original New York, from everywhere across the globe. Our school was founded to embrace that diversity and celebrate the new, modern way of learning and communicating across boundaries. When you celebrate diversity in your school, children learn to focus on what matters most: The human connection.
