Shady Hill School is an independent, co-educational day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1915, Shady Hill serves students in pre-kindergarten (called 'Beginners' by the school) through 8th grade.[1] The school has an enrollment of approximately 500 students.
Mark Stanek became the school's sixth director in 2010; he was a math teacher and a former Head of School at Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York. Former director Bruce Shaw stepped down in June 2010.[2]
History
Shady Hill was founded in 1915 by a group of Cambridge families, including John Hubbard Sturgis Jr., Agnes Boyle O'Reilly, and her husband William Ernest Hocking. The school was first held on the "back porch" of the Hockings' house on Quincy Street in Cambridge.[3] The school enrollment quickly outgrew the Hocking home, and the Cooperative Open Air School (as it was originally known) moved to the Charles Eliot Norton estate at the corner of Scott and Holden Streets in Cambridge. The school took its current name from this location, Shady Hill Square, before moving to the school's current location on Coolidge Hill, also in Cambridge.
Campus
The Shady Hill School campus features eleven acres of tree-lined paths, wetlands, and ample grassy areas for play and team sports. The campus includes nineteen buildings: an art, woodshop, and music center; library; gymnasium; science laboratories; a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) building known as the "Hub" which includes a makerspace; an assembly hall; and a number of child-scaled classroom buildings. The Hub is connected to the gym.
Athletics
Shady Hill's athletic program includes "movement education" for Beginners through second grade and physical education for third grade through fifth, as well as a broad variety of intramural and interscholastic team sports for students in grades 6-8. A gymnasium that housed three full-sized basketball courts opened in February 2009; in 2016 Shady Hill took out one of the basketball courts and replaced it with the Hub.
Teacher Training Center (TTC)
Shady Hill offers a one-year teacher preparation and graduation program in which 16 to 18 apprentice teachers are mentored by certified master teachers in classrooms at the school. Apprentices have the opportunity through the Teacher Training Center (TTC) to spend the spring semester in local public schools. Many apprentices also participate in a master's program at either Lesley University or Tufts University.
