WT Smart Facts

The School
Established in 1887. Private, nationally recognized independent, coeducational, college preparatory day school in Pittsburgh.

Winchester Thurston leads the way in educational innovation, rigorous academics, scholarly standards, and a learning environment that better prepares students for the challenges of a changing world. Nationally recognized for work with gifted and talented students, distinctive campuses, and innovative programs, WT is a school in which students achieve at the highest levels.

Mission
Winchester Thurston School actively engages each student in a challenging and inspiring learning process that develops the mind, motivates the passion to achieve, and cultivates the character to serve.

Core Values
Critical thinking; integrity; empathy; community; diversity.

Grades 
Pre-Kindergarten through grade 12.

Enrollment Facts

661 -- the highest enrollment in the school's 126-year history

Lower School North (Allison Park): 81
Lower School City (Shadyside): 190
Middle School (Shadyside): 137
Upper School (Shadyside): 242

More than 28% of students are students of color
Students come from 66 zip codes and 44 school districts

More than $2.3 million offered in Financial Aid annually

We offer nine named scholarships for students entering grades 6-12
 

Faculty

90 faculty members

Two Campuses

City Campus, Shadyside (PK - 12)

• Upper School, opened in 2006
• Main Building, with dedicated Lower and Middle School learning communities
• All-weather turf Garland Field
• Falk Auditorium
• Hilda Willis Room
• Dorrance Library (Upper School)
• Finkel Library (Middle School)
• Houston Library (Lower School)
• Art Gallery
• Gymnasium
• Solarium
• Learning garden
• Dance studio
• Hillman Dining Hall
• Lower, Middle, and Upper School Science Labs
• Four stationary computer labs, and a Lower School workshop dedicated to "S.T.E.A.M." activities (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math)
• Five mobile computer labs
• Laptops available for checkout in the Upper School
• Bring Your Own Device initiative, providing wireless network capability to all students who bring their own devices to school
• Interactive White Boards, including SMART Boards and Mimeos
• Document Cameras, including Elmos
• Dedicated Digital Projection devices in nearly every classroom
• High definition video conferencing

North Hills Campus, Allison Park (PK - 5)

• Classroom Building
• Campus Center
• Spring-fed pond with dock and Pond House
• Fifth Grade Farm House
• Multipurpose room/Gymnasium
• Art Studio that overlooks the pond
  
• Music Room
• Library and Technology Center
  
• Natural woodlands with natural playground
• Butterfly and Learning gardens
• Hoop house (self sustaining green house)
• Two mobile computer labs
• Bring Your Own Device initiative, providing wireless network capability to all students who wish to bring their own devices to school
• Interactive White Boards, including SMART Boards and Mimeos
• Document Cameras, including Elmos
• Dedicated Digital Projection devices in nearly every classroom
• High definition video conferencing
• Outdoor science center

The School Day
School begins at 8:15 a.m. and concludes at 3:15 p.m. for grades K - 12.

Pre-Kindergarten begins at 8:15 a.m. concludes at 2:30 p.m., with options for half days available. 

We offer extended day from 7:30 a.m. until 8:15 a.m. and from 2:30 p.m. until 6:00 p.m.

We offer enrichment programs for children in grades Pre-K - grade 5 through WT After 3.

Our academics are rigorous and our students achieve at the highest levels

• Four of the 54 students in the Class of 2013 have been named National Merit Semifinalists; 23% of the Class of 2012 was recognized by the College Board as National Merit Semifinalists, Commended students, and National Achievement Scholars for their performance on PSAT/NMSQT. Nationally, only 3% of students are recognized as Semifinalists.
• Students are accepted to the most well regarded colleges across the nation year after year...
• 93% of the Class of 2012 is attending “Very,” “Highly,” or “Most Competitive” schools. College List
• Students in the Class of 2012 were offered more than $1,000,000 in scholarships and grants.
• 62% of Upper School students who took AP exams in spring 2012 earned a 4 or 5; 85% scored a 3 or higher. Nationally, 57% of high school students scored 3 or higher on an AP exam.
• 52% of all WT students who took AP exams in 2012 have been named AP Scholars. Nationally, 2.1% of high school students were named AP Scholars in 2011.
• In 2012, WT’s Hometown High Q team won the championship for the second year in a row, beating independent schools and public high schools in the Pittsburgh area.
• In their 2011 debut at the National Academic Quiz Tournament (a head-to-head competition to answer questions about history, literature, science, fine arts, current events, sports, and popular culture) Upper School students competed against 21 other teams from the region and won first place, moving them on to the national competition.
• The city-wide Martin Luther King, Jr. Writing Awards sponsored by Carnegie Mellon calls for creative writing that reflects the legacy of Dr. King. WT students have participated in the contest since 2004, and each year WT students have been singled out for awards, including two first place prizes in 2011 for creative non-fiction and fiction.
• The Middle School MathCounts team won the Pennsylvania state championship in 2010.
• In 2009-2010, Middle School was one of only two PA schools named to Distinguished Schools Honor Roll for performance in the American Mathematics Competition.
• Students in Lower and Middle School have performed consistently above median on the ERB standardized tests compared with national Independent School norms.

AP and College Board Recognition, 2006-2012

 * 2012-2013 data available August 2013.

WT is Doing the Best with the Most: According to a 2011 study of performance of 30 independent schools in WT’s benchmarking group, WT students:

• ranked first in AP enrollment, with the highest number of students enrolled in AP classes.
• had the second highest highest overall AP performance, in the number of 4s and 5s on the AP exams.
• ranked first in overall performance on the AP English Language and Literature exam

• In its Post-AP curriculum, WT offers Advanced Topics in Mathematics for students who have completed Calculus; Urban Research and Design—a rigorous City as Our Campus course in the Upper School—which requires students to apply skills and knowledge to real world challenges; an upper-level independent study Research Science course, offering students a distinct learning opportunity emphasizing the nature of scientific research and the process of developing scientific knowledge, often in conjunction with City as Our Campus mentorship; and Advanced Computer Science Innovations, where students are involved in full-scale research projects to solve real world problems using computer science.
• The Middle School Leadership Academy teaches students the importance of civic engagement, develops civic literacy, and builds leadership and collaborative thinking skills.
• For two years, many students have conducted their Urban Research and Design research projects in Braddock, PA and developed a special relationship with local government and social service agencies, such as Community Heritage Initiative, in this distressed steel town city south of Pittsburgh through a number of intensive service learning projects. In 2011-2012, third grade faculty extended their Pittsburgh history unit into Braddock, creating a buddy program for third grade students and children attending Braddock’s 4Kids Learning Center.
• The Middle School Robotics team won first place for Software Development in the Sarah Heinz House May Madness Robotics Competition in the spring of 2011, and they took third place in Hardware design at the First Lego League competition at the National Robotics Engineering Consortium in winter 2011.  Teams are trained and taught in a combination of school day electives, as well as afterschool and weekend enrichment programs.

Our teaching is innovative.

• Our partnerships with regionally respected organizations have generated new and cutting-edge learning opportunities for our students, such as:
• Lower School’s Immigrant Stories in conjunction with the Saturday Light Brigade radio show
• Fiber Art Tree, a project between the Middle School and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
• A Middle School Marine Biology Elective in conjunction with the PPG Aquarium
• Never Will We See Another Butterfly, the eighth grade Holocaust museum project in 2011-2012, in collaboration with Global Solutions Pittsburgh;
• Memes, Music, and Language, a new Upper School English elective, with Hip Hop On L.O.C.K.
• 3-D Animation for Upper School students working with Pittsburgh Filmmakers
• In the Middle School, student-developed electives have been incorporated into the curriculum. In 2011-2012, a group of students developed a course based on the popular online game Minecraft; another group developed and taught other students how to program using the Python Programming language.  In 2012-2013, several students will create an elective on the History of Video Gaming.
• In the Lower School, the Academic Enrichment and Challenge program differentiates and individualizes the curriculum, by offering accelerated instruction and enrichment in academic subjects.
• WT is one of only a handful of high schools nationwide to have performed Avenue Q (the school edition), winner of the Tony® “triple crown” for best musical, best score, and best book, Avenue Q.
• For their unprecedented work with Emmy winning Master Puppeteer Jim Martin, a veteran of Sesame Street, and his wife, Crystal, in the design, crafting, and manipulation of professional quality puppets for Avenue Q, WT took home a trophy for Best Costume in its budget category at the 22nd annual Gene Kelly Awards for Excellence in High School Musicals in 2012.
• In 2012, Dave Piemme and Kathryn Gaertner were jointly awarded the Mary Houston Griffin Award to develop a program entitled Enhancing Media Literacy in the Middle School, wherein media literacy will be taught across all disciplines, and they will develop the Bears Broadcasting Network, to showcase projects such as book trailers, Holocaust poetry videos, music curriculum, and Middle School Leadership Lab, motivating students to demonstrate their learning in authentic and public ways. 
• Kindergarten teacher Caitlin Evans was awarded the 2011 Mary Houston Griffin Award to develop an outdoor classroom for hands-on learning at the City Campus. Both our City and North Hills Campuses boast active learning gardens that students maintain and faculty integrate into curricula.
• WT has partnered with Pitt’s Asian Studies Center and Confucius Institute to offer a dynamic Asian Studies program including Mandarin, which is offered in grades PreK-12. In 2011, WT was named to a select network of Confucius Classroom schools worldwide by Hanban, the Chinese Ministry of Education, for our excellence in Chinese studies.

We’re leading the way in academic learning.

• WT was one of only four schools nationwide to receive the Edward E. Ford Foundation Leadership Grant in 2009.
• In 2007, WT was one of only three schools nationwide to receive a $2 million grant and be named a Malone Scholars School in recognition of our work with gifted and talented students.
• WT is the first of only two schools to have received both accolades.
• In Fall 2012, Independent School magazine published an article by Head of School Gary Niels about WT’s groundbreaking work in faculty formative development
• WT faculty members consistently attend prestigious professional development programs. Over the 2011-2012 academic year, and well into summer 2012:
• Jennifer Kraar, Lower School librarian, was selected by the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia to attend a residential program in China
• Sally Allan, Visual Arts Department Chair, studied “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” techniques and will train the Visual Arts department in this theory and methodology
• Performing Arts Teacher John Maione attended the Conducting Workshop for Music Educators at The Julliard School
• Patrice Alexander, English Teacher and Associate Director of College Counseling, participated in Bard College’s “Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn: Challenge of Teaching an American Classic”
• World Languages and Cultures Department teacher Alicia Sewald studied Teaching Foreign Language with Technology at Harvard
• Marie Forst, Pre-Kindergarten teacher at WT North attended the Sandbox Summit at MIT
• Kathryn Gaertner, Caitlin Evans, and Cindy Green attended the Readers and Writers Workshop at Columbia University’s Teachers College
• Judith Sanders, part-time English teacher in the Upper School, recently won the 37th annual Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Prize in a contest sponsored by Kent State University, and the 11th annual Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, one of the largest prizes in the world for humor poetry.
• Math Department Chair Stephen Miller was appointed to the American Statistical Association’s Committee on Outreach, and presented research and methodology on teaching Statistics to Upper School students at the 2012 National Council for Teachers of Math. 
• Upper School Biology teacher and Science Department Chair Jared Rashford was selected as a 2011 Siemens Teachers as Researcher Fellow, one of only 20 teachers selected nation-wide.
• In summer 2011, Lower School Mandarin teacher Shaloma Smith was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to China.
• In summer 2011, Lower School teacher Karen Gaul was selected as a Keynote speaker for the National Council for Teaching About Asia workshop.
• WT presented at the Hathaway Brown School’s national Education Innovation Summit in 2010.
• In 2010, Kathryn Gaertner, Denise Pollock, and Kira Senedak participated in Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Four Middle School faculty members were selected to present a workshop at the National Council for Social Studies annual conference in fall 2010 on their interdisciplinary City as Our Campus Holocaust Museum and Genocide Forum.