Admissions

Athena Building

Houses English, Math, History, and Spanish classrooms, the upper school office, and social spaces.

Through regular inquiry, our students develop deep understanding and exceptional critical-thinking skills. Through differentiation, we are able to understand the strengths and challenges of each student, discerning where and how they can grow both academically and emotionally. Through this partnership, students feel safe taking risks and practicing intellectual generosity.

The Q Lab: A Space for Science & Inquiry

Features include a fully-equipped maker space on the first floor and a traditional life sciences classroom on the second floor.

Our teachers create classroom environments where questions and strategies for understanding outweigh facts and answers. We cultivate our students’ natural curiosity, encouraging them to make careful observations, to ask thoughtful questions, and to make connections in their world. Students leverage their own developmental maturation with an intellectual and emotional growth that comes from being part of a safe, caring, and intelligent community of learners.

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Upper School Yard

Used for physical education classes and at recess for all manner of games including basketball, volleyball, and tetherball.

Facility for Arts & Drama (FAD)

Both a classroom for drama and music and a rehearsal and performance space for the BPC bands and orchestra. Student Town Hall meetings and Parent Education Events are also held here. We provide opportunities for students to discover and explore their own creative strengths through following a variety of paths of self-expression.

Our exceptional arts program is just one way that our students learn confidence, collaboration, and communication skills. By graduation, they have developed individual passions and have learned how to share that love with their communities. Students pursue mastery in the arts, in math, in our award-winning maker program, and in countless other areas that prepare them to enter high school with academic confidence and intellectual enthusiasm.

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Upper School Art Studio

Light-filled studio for 6-8 grade art classes. Our program is designed to create a safe space in which students are encouraged to explore, create, and experiment while learning how to communicate and collaborate effectively.

There are many opportunities for self-expression. Our exceptional arts program is just one of the many paths our students follow to discover and explore their own creative strengths.

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Climbing Wall

Used during physical education classes by all grades.

Garden & Outdoor Cafeteria

A range of multi-use spaces for recess, hot lunch, classes held outdoors, tending the chicken coop, and playing foosball.

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Addison Administration Building

Home to Black Pine Circle’s administrative team and head of school, this space allows our staff to collaborate while working in partnership with our families. Our experienced group of administrators share a commitment to BPC’s mission and core values of curiosity, community, inquiry, and voice.

Athletic Field

Used by all grades, K-8, for physical education classes and at recess for soccer and dodgeball games.

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Music Studio & Performing Space

A multi-purpose room where Performances of Understanding come to life, K-3 music fills the air, and our K-5 community comes together for Monday’s Community Gathering.

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Kindergarten & First Grade Classrooms

Enrolling in a K–8 school provides wonderful opportunities for students to expand their sense of family and feel connected to a variety of students of different ages, ethnicities, cultures, family structures, and personalities. In the Black Pine Circle School community, students learn to engage with diverse viewpoints from a place of humility and self-reflection. Cultivating empathy and active listening supports academic as well as social and emotional growth.

All facets of school life reflect our understanding that we are one interconnected family, and we succeed together. In a community that sees and values each individual, students build connections that last a lifetime. Academic excellence comes naturally to students who feel a sense of belonging in a joyful, safe, and engaging learning community.

Lower School Art Studio

Painting, sculpting, and creating take place in this beautifully lit studio for K-5 art classes. Our program is designed to create a safe space in which students are encouraged to explore, create, and experiment while learning how to communicate and collaborate effectively.

There are many opportunities for self-expression. Our exceptional arts program is just one of the many paths our students follow to discover and explore their own creative strengths.

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Second & Third Grade Classrooms

We nurture innate curiosity: Our most essential duty as educators is to protect, nurture, and inspire the curiosity that is inherent in young children. We do this by encouraging them to make careful observations, to ask thoughtful questions, and to make connections to their world.

Differentiated learning and Responsive Classroom practices are elements of this environment where a child’s natural drive to ask more and better questions is refined with the guidance of expert teachers who support and enhance each student’s sense of wonder. Curiosity and the willingness to try, fail,   and learn from mistakes is viewed as an essential starting point for learning.

Lower School Yard

Used for physical education classes and at recess for all manner of games including basketball, four square, kickball, and soccer. Lunch is eaten outside on picnic tables (weather permitting).

The Oasis

Includes a sandbox, turf area, and outdoor activity tables for kindergarten & 1st grade students. The Oasis is enjoyed by all of the lower school students.

Library Deck

A sunny spot where children in aftercare eat their snack under market umbrellas.

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Lower School Garden

Where students have lower school garden class and grow fruits and vegetables.

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Fourth & Fifth Grade Classrooms

What is Socratic Learning? As students analyze works together—such as books, paintings, songs, historical artifacts, or mathematical formulae—they improve their close reading, critical thinking, and oral communication skills. Because they are in a conversation, they practice civility and listen to diverse points of view. Even the kindergarten class engages in a way that acknowledges the richness of questions instead of quickly answering them.

As a facilitator and co-learner, teachers model genuine curiosity, ask clarifying questions, keep the discussion focused on the text, and ensure that all students have the opportunity to participate. A learning environment like this, in which scholarly conversation is central to the culture, nurtures both the intellectual as well as the social and emotional life of the child.

Library

Multi-purpose room with 6,000 volumes used for library lessons, author visits, Spanish classes, strings lessons, and Extended Daycare. Evening meetings and events are held here too.

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Play Structure

A popular spot at recess and also where many parents linger after dismissal.