WHAT'S GOING ON NOW:

OUTSTANDING PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Cross-Disciplinary Education
At P.S. 234, integrated subjects and hands-on experience

When a public school's popularity grows to such a degree that the office stops printing promotional brochures, it is a safe bet that something special is going on inside those walls. With Tribeca's P.S. 234 bursting at the seams with creative, independent students who are eager to learn, the cost of promotional materials is far better invested elsewhere.

"We've stopped really promoting the school because we're so overcrowded," said Sandra Bridges, the principal.

The three-story building, designed to house 600 students, is filled to the brim with 700 children in grades K to five, all of whom live in the area. Bridges describes the Tribeca neighborhood as having the feel of a small town, and the close relationships among neighbors help promote a tight-knit school community.

"The school wouldn't be what it is without the parents," explained Ellen McCrum, a fourth and fifth grade teacher at P.S. 234."They are vital to all the things that we do.Because we are so overcrowded, we need the parents to help out with the projects that we do because they are ambitious projects."

"The parent body is so extraordinary," said Ann Luce, who has seen all three of her children graduate from P.S.234 over the course of 15 years. "They all make huge contributions to the school, either of their time or their creative endeavors. Parents come in every day to help in the classroom and our library is a parent volunteer-run library."

Just as strong as the feeling of community around the school is the philosophy of active learning within P.S. 234. The common belief that children learn best through experience permeates nearly every aspect of the education students receive at P.S. 234. Field trips are designed not only to enhance the learning experience, but as a basis for it. "A trip is meaningless if you don't have things built up in your brain before you get there," said Trish Lent, a second and third grade teacher. "You prepare to go on a field trip and then you process what you've learned, and all that becomes fodder for writing and understanding. The trips are a form of research; they're not meant as entertainment or as a reward at the end of hard work."

The trips don't just benefit students either. One year, a parent went on every one of her child's out-of-school excursions. Principal Bridges said the mother told her that she had never learned so much as she did on those trips. Most of the field trips are part of the social studies curriculum, which forms the basis of the school's cross-disciplinary education.

"Social studies is our core curriculum," said Ellen McCrum, a fourth and fifth grade teacher. "We teach a lot of things through social studies."

"We try to think of social studies as a way into reading and writing," Bridges explained. "If you're going to read and write, you need to read and write about something that you're becoming an expert in."

In that vein, each social study is designed to turn students into experts in their field. Each class spends five months studying a single topic before delving into a different subject for the second half of the year. Past studies have included New Amsterdam, Central Park, the Eastern Woodland Indians and the American Revolution.

"It's much more holistic," Bridges said of the social studies curriculum. "It's not just, 'Read this chapter and take a test.' It's, 'We're going to go on this trip, and then we're going to build a model that reconstructs what a Dutch house looks like.' It's also helpful for the kids that aren't the best readers and writers, but might be amazing sculptors or fantastic painters. There are all sorts of ways to show your knowledge, and I think that it really brings kids into the whole learning process." Each study is carefully designed to cross over into all disciplines, and classroom teachers work together with specialty teachers to plan an integrated curriculum.

"It helps the children to understand what learning is really all about," said Luce, the parent. "It's not about regurgitating information; it's really about understanding things in depth."

Within each themed study, teachers have the freedom to implement their own projects and change portions of the content to suit their forte, and Bridges encourages staff to talk out their problems and play to their strengths.

"There is constant tweaking and developing," explained Lent, the second and third grade teacher. "I've done a lot of the same studies year after year, but never in the same way. There is a very solid foundation, and then room for a lot of evolution of both what we're teaching and how we get at it."

Teacher collaboration helps not only in the academic aspect of the students' education, but in the social aspect as well. Teachers do their best to ensure that each class of 27 students includes a range of personalities and academic strengths to foster peer modeling among the children. The school also has a loop structure, so students stay with the same teacher for two years (K/1, 2/3, 4/5) and have time to build a relationship with that individual. According to Bridges, the larger class sizes work to the advantage of the children.

"Since they start out in big classes, kids get to be independent faster," Bridges said. "I think there's no greater gift you can give a child than the ability to be independent. They're much more active about their learning, and I think active learners are really lifelong learners."

-- Carolyn Braf