• ABOUT US
• ADMISSIONS
• ACADEMICS
• STUDENT LIFE
• ATHLETICS
• The ARTS
• COLLEGE
• MEDIA
• EVENTS
• GIVING

In the Lower School, children receive the kind of nurturing that makes them feel at home, comfortable enough to ask questions, explore, and create. It’s a remarkable age! At Staten Island Academy, we put children at the center of their education. We believe that by building our programs around students (as opposed to building students around our programs), learning can be long-lasting, meaningful, and fun. Our Pre-K and Kindergarten programs are emotionally nurturing, intellectually rigorous, and unique on
Staten Island.

OUR EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
We believe that learning is not sequential or linear. Rather, it is divergent, must be constructed by the learner, and celebrates growth and joy. Learners must be engaged, which means that our teaching is interactive. Learners must have time to investigate their understanding with others, which means our classrooms are centers for cooperative learning, literature circles, collaborative problem-solving and share sessions. Conversations dig deep, scaffolding children to an area of critical thinking that creates lasting learning. Learn more about our guiding principles by clicking here.

OUR MOST SUCCESSFUL STUDENTS
All types of children can benefit from the Lower School program. Children who are most successful at the Academy are curious about the world and why things work, are independent and internally motivated, understand the importance of reading, and are actively involved in literacy, enjoy collaborative effort, never tire at looking more deeply at a subject, favor interpretation over rote memorization, and wake up in the morning and can’t wait to ask the next “Why?”