At the Junior School, nurturing faculty create an educational environment that promotes active and inquiry-based learning.

Junior School

JS Teacher and StudentShady Side Academy Junior School in Point Breeze serves a coed population of nearly 300 elementary school students in pre-kindergarten (age 3) through grade 5. Our spacious seven-acre campus is located in Pittsburgh's East End adjacent to beautiful Frick Park.

The Junior School academic program is based on educational best practices rooted in child development research. We strive to create an environment where children are respected as individuals while also learning to be part of a team.

Joyful Learning

Our faculty is composed of loving teachers who model learning each day. Inquiry is abundant in our interactive and dynamic classroom environments. From harvesting vegetables on our campus farm to publishing their own books, students embrace a curriculum that involves them fully in their learning, presents opportunities for purposeful play and instills a positive attitude toward school.

Individual Attention

Starting with our youngest students, we instill our Guiding Principles of honesty, kindness, respect, responsibility and safety. With these values as our road map, we are joined in a partnership based upon the individual educational journey of our children. We establish individual goals for our students, ensure that we know the whole child and strive to help students feel safe taking healthy risks among their peers.

We support our students, challenge them to stretch themselves, find joy in the learning process, and strive to foster honest and regular communication with our parent body. Together, we work to help our youngest citizens live, learn and give in “The Shady Side Way.”

Visit us and see for yourself the unique and exciting educational journey that occurs within Shady Side Academy’s Junior School.

A Day in the Life of the Junior School

Junior School Photo Tour

HOW WE BUILD

Our Singapore Math curriculum introduces concepts using a concrete-to-pictorial-to-abstract learning progression, anchoring students’ learning in real-world, hands-on experiences and building a deeper understanding of the fundamentals.