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For over 50 years, Black Pine Circle School has enjoyed a unique niche in the East Bay as a school that combines academic excellence with a genuine love for and focus on the arts. We serve a wide range of students by emphasizing with our experienced and renowned faculty, intellectual and emotional differentiated instruction and meeting students in what Lev Vygotsky called, “The Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD).

Many of our students are working above grade-level, while others have their specific learning needs met in partnership with our strong learning services program. Additionally, our focus on Socratic Practice helps students develop a lifelong love of learning and discovery, which, in turn, helps to foster the critical thinking skills necessary for subject mastery and success. Perhaps most importantly, our students are known for their development of “voice.”

Our K–8 emphasis on the arts (drama, visual arts, and both choral and instrumental music) and the processes of dialog and inquiry empower students to be the authors of their own learning and growth for the future. Our graduates are noted for their well-rounded education and their appreciation for all life has to offer.

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If we want students to understand how to be critical thinkers and the many and various ways to learn outside the walls of a school, our duty as educators and parents is to teach them how to ask better and better questions. Socratic teaching involves student-centered analysis of texts—paintings, poems, chapters in a book, quotes, etc.—with gentle facilitation and probing by an expert teacher.

Socratic Seminars often take the shape of a circle, where intellectual authority is equally distributed among the students. Students discover the importance of listening, speaking, thinking, and sharing counter opinions, as the means to more fully understand the elements of an idea, theme, or concept. Socratic Seminars provide opportunities for the practice of inquiry and encourage empowered learning.

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Studies show conclusively that value of homework lies in the design and goals related to specific assignments. At Black Pine Circle School, we believe homework should serve the following purposes:

• It should help to develop what mathematicians call “automaticity.”
• Homework should encourage a lifelong love and practice of reading.
• Homework should allow families an inside view of what students are studying.
• Homework can and should help students understand the practice of time management.

Our school is academically rigorous, but never at the expense of students living a well-rounded life. Most of our students are engaged in after-school activities and we respect that they have outside interests, as well as the need for family time and relaxation. In the upper school, teachers coordinate their assignment schedules with one another so that there will not be an overload at any time. A general time guide is ten minutes “times” the grade level (3rd grade times ten minutes equals thirty minutes of homework).

Lower school students receive comprehensive report cards twice per year, detailing progress towards learning objectives without the use of letter grades. The classroom and specialist teachers work together to provide details about the curriculum, feedback on specific skills, and a narrative of the student’s strengths and challenges.

In the upper school, many teachers use letter grades in addition to comments/feedback on in-class and homework assignments. Students begin receiving grades on their report cards in the second semester of sixth grade as this helps prepared them for how they will be assessed in high school. Upper school students receive four report cards each year, at the middle and end of each semester.

See How We Integrate Arts & Academics

Every learner brings different competencies and challenges to school. Our small class size, additional support in the classrooms from teaching assistants, and our learning services team allow us to constantly assess each learner’s strengths and challenges. Our goal is to move each child into Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal Development.”

We ability-group rarely and only when appropriate. Our mission is to find that intellectual place where a child is both challenged academically and thriving. We believe that it is equally important for our students to reach the zone of proximal development emotionally as well as intellectually. At Black Pine Circle School, we KNOW your child.

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We foster the growth of the whole child by prioritizing social and emotional learning, kindergarten through eighth grade. Social and emotional literacy is important in developing empathy, resilience, and social and emotional competence. Studies also show that it has a very positive impact on academic performance.

In the Lower School, social and emotional learning emphasizes personal reflection, establishing the foundation for a child to develop skills for problem-solving, conflict resolution, and empathetic reasoning. The Responsive Classroom program is integrated at every grade level.

In the Upper School, our advisory program is central to teaching social and emotional lessons and also serves as support for social and emotional issues. Our advisory curriculum is pulled from the nonprofit organization, Smart-Girl, of Colorado, the Developmental Designs program of Origins, and from numerous other sources, including Council in Schools, a program of The Ojai Foundation of California.

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We have a diversity of learners, learning styles, and academic achievement at Black Pine Circle School. In each classroom, through differentiation, we strive to have each student work in their zone of proximal development—the territory between what a learner can do only with help and what they can do without help.

With just the right amount and kind of support and intervention, our faculty guide students forward in all areas of learning as they work towards subject mastery. This is an ever-changing process and our students make progress in ways much like their physical growth; at different rates, sometimes slowly and sometimes by leaps and bounds.

Students with learning differences have strengths and talents that we seek to nurture. Our student support services  works with students, teachers, and families to address a student’s individual learning needs.

Students with learning differences have strengths and talents that we seek to nurture. Our student support services  works with students, teachers, and families to address a student’s individual learning needs.

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We welcome family involvement! We encourage partnership between parents/guardians and our school, and there are many ways to participate in our wonderful community. Parents are encouraged to join one of our school committees such as our Community Matters Committee, to volunteer as a class representative, and to drive on field trips. In addition, we have several events throughout the school year that are successful because of volunteer efforts, such as the Back-to-School Social, the Soirée and Auction, and Science Week.

We also respect and appreciate that many families are working very long hours in order to pay for an independent school education. We work with each family to find ways they can contribute to our community at some point during their journey in our school.

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Our upper school students can choose to participate in after-school team sports throughout the school year. In the fall we offer a soccer program, in the winter a basketball program, and in the spring we offer volleyball. We play against other independent schools, as well as local and parochial schools. We also offer non-team sports such as martial arts, tennis, and running through our after-school clubs program.

More than half of each graduating class goes on to independent or parochial schools. Others choose public high school. All have choices!

Type of High School
(3 yr average, 2019-2021 graduating classes)