Health + Wellness

From the Inside Out

Pinewood students thrive socially, emotionally, physically, and academically.

Our programming–from balanced lunch menus to invigorating PE classes to mindfulness moments and more–promotes and reinforces that inner and outer health that makes Pinewood students healthy, happy, and successful.


Since Pinewood’s beginning in 1959, our culture has been characterized by kindness, respect and inclusivity. When Social and Emotional Learning became a buzzword in education, we looked around and saw that it was already a part of our fabric. Woven into our curriculum, fostered by small class sizes, modeled by quality teachers, and evident in our students’ outstanding ability to empathize and communicate, Social and Emotional Learning is a crucial part of who we are here at Pinewood. In formal and informal ways, our students are growing in their social and emotional skills from Kindergarten until graduation day.

Pinewood students learn to:

  • Manage their emotions in a positive way
  • Build relationships with others
  • Develop appropriate vocabulary to express their feelings constructively


Epicurean Group is a local company that provides healthy, balanced, delicious meals for our school community. Daily lunches are prepared from scratch, using natural and organic ingredients; all produce comes from farms in the Bay Area and stocks, dressings, and sauces are made in-house. Epicurean welcomes feedback from parents and students and works to customize school menus during the year. Click here to be directed to the Epicurean website.


Our students engage in a variety of activities that will contribute to the development of a positive attitude toward physical fitness and a life-long habit for healthy living. Through fitness activities and individual and team sports, Pinewood’s physical education classes help foster self-confidence, sociability, teamwork, and sportsmanship. In addition to the required physical education courses, Pinewood encourages all students to participate in the school’s interscholastic athletics program.


Wellness Clubs at Upper Campus (Grades 7-12)


NAMI On-Campus High School (NCHS) Club

NCHS is a mental health awareness club for students and teachers on high school campuses. The purpose is to create a dialogue on campus about mental health and well-being to help eliminate the stigma of mental illness. It is not a support or therapy group. Students are encouraged to join and learn more about mental health, warning signs of mental illness, how to seek help for themselves or others, and how to be a supportive friend to someone experiencing a mental illness.

Social Awareness Club

The goal of the club is to raise awareness about many issues that exist today. This gives students the opportunity to learn about and find ways to reduce inequality and injustice in the world. Past projects have included all-school assemblies on topics such as racism and the stigmas surrounding learning differences, increasing the diversity of books available in the library, and finding solutions to help people living in refugee camps gain an education and career skills. These activities are designed to promote awareness and acceptance of differences at all scales from the classroom to the world.

"Pinewood is an environment where creativity, hard work, and compassion combine to create a solid education and emotionally intelligent students. There is a balance between focused work, exploration, movement, collaboration, projects, and reflection worked into the daily schedule so each one of my children really enjoys school. My children thrive at Pinewood!"
– Pinewood Parent