City as Our Campus

City as Our Campus℠ amplifies student learning by providing unique educational opportunities with leaders from the academic, cultural, scientific, non-profit, and business community in Pittsburgh. City as Our Campus is an extension of Winchester Thurston’s core private elementary school curriculum and augments it by providing meaningful, real-world experiences. By working with diverse members of the community – and with a range of resources, tools, and materials – lower school students don’t just gain understanding of the community’s most pressing issues, they work to solve them.

In Lower School, students and teachers are working together to investigate the history, function, and issues of our community. Students in our Pittsburgh private elementary school learn from, and engage with the community - including exploring the community through systems thinking, tackling environmental issues in our region, learning from local experts, and gaining access to world renowned museums and theater companies. As part of our Lower School curriculum, students engage with the community through relevant, impactful learning experiences. Explore some examples of City as Our Campus initiatives.

Playground Accessibility Project
Design accessible playgrounds = action. 

Study of Pittsburgh
Learning about the history of Pittsburgh through the lens of ingenuity leads third graders to a deeper understanding of our city today. The students visit cultural and historical sites and delve into some of the issues and problems in our city. Throughout this work, students are considering their role within the larger system and how they might take action to innovate in ways that will improve our city for its residents. They culminate the unit by working with local non-profit leaders to develop their own non-profit that meets a local need. 

From There to Here
Pittsburgh is a city with increasing diversity from immigration. To better understand the impacts of immigration, fifth grade students capture oral histories of people who immigrated to Pittsburgh. A partnership with SLB Radio Productions teaches students interviewing skills, then tasks them with conducting and editing the interviews to create an interactive archive of the immigration stories. This project honors these people and their stories while encouraging our students to consider the various experiences and motivations of all people. They walk away from the project with a deeper understanding of who lives in Pittsburgh and how they got there.