Mt. Pleasant Academy’s mission is to support students as they excel academically, act responsibly and expand their talents and social skills. We provide a wide variety of diverse learning opportunities to our 613 students in child development through fifth grade. Mt. Pleasant Academy (MPA) is a neighborhood school in the area of Charleston County east of the Cooper River in district two. MPA is the oldest elementary school in South Carolina and has a rich legacy of high academic achievement.
Students at Mt. Pleasant Academy (MPA) participate in a variety of classes and programs designed to target students’ talents beyond traditional academics. These classes include music, art, and physical education as well as Spanish and technology. Students also have weekly library visits to check out materials and learn important research skills. This year we also added daily technology exposure through one-to-one devices in all kindergarten through fifth grade classes. Our teachers and students are learning about utilizing Chromebooks in the upper grades and iPads in the primary grades to support creativity, research, and productivity. We hope to teach students to see these devices as an essential tool for future learning.
Mt. Pleasant Academy is helping all students develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by encouraging and fostering critical thinking and collaboration. The teachers and staff at MPA work to provide students multiple opportunities to work with their peers. One such opportunity is our “book buddy” program. Each class, including our two self-contained special needs classes, partners with another class in reading together, collaborating on activities and building relationships with students who may be different. Students collaborate during class time through group projects, small group stations and technology projects. This year our students worked together to raise funds for the learners in our special needs program to participate in therapeutic enrichment activities in honor of a former student.
This year students in need of additional support in numeracy participated in math intervention targeting critical thinking and math fluency practice. These students, particularly those in third grade, demonstrated great academic gains. In fact, 94.2% of all students in third grade are projected to meet or exceed standards on the SC READY Math assessment taken this spring.
At Mt. Pleasant Academy, we endeavor to see our students grow into productive citizens, each using his or her own talents and gifts to learn, create and think critically. We could not achieve this goal without the ongoing support of our families and the community.
Kim Jackson, Principal
Carly Sparano, SIC Chair
