WHAT'S GOING ON NOW:

2009: Outstanding Public Middle School

The Art of Education
Nurturing young talent in drama, visual arts and writing

To reach the Clinton School for Writers and Artists, one must climb five flights up a stairwell that smells of fresh paint. Inside the door you see a familiar Manhattan public middle school scene: blue lockers, acrylic murals, linoleum tile. The facilities are basic at Clinton, but who needs gloss when you have passion and creativity? Case in point: a slim 8th-grade boy in T-shirt and jeans stands on stage in the auditorium practicing for his LaGuardia High School audition, speaking movingly and simply about feeling alone in a crowd.

“You might be cut off,” warned the drama coach, demonstrating exactly what it feels like to be cut off mid-soliloquy during an audition. “Don’t show disappointment.”

“Twenty-three percent of our students got into LaGuardia last year,” said Joseph A. Anderson, a sturdy, approachable man who is the school’s new principal.

What sets Clinton apart, he explained, is the amount of time students get to spend on four arts disciplines: performing arts, music, visual arts and creative writing. Everyone participates in art three times a week, and they dabble in everything before choosing one discipline for serious study in 8th grade. Anderson’s goals are to increase time spent on art to five days a week, and to “get kids out in the art world more.” This year, students will see a Keith Haring exhibit at the Woodward Gallery on the Lower East Side and a Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in addition to other outings. The school is seeking a new building to expand studio, performance and gallery space.

Clinton attracts artsy families from District 2, which covers the East Side and much of downtown. The salmon-colored brick building is nestled among four-story townhouses on a leafy street off Eighth Avenue, where rainbow flags are ubiquitous. The school doles out lunchtime freedom by degrees—6th graders stay within the parameters of the block, chaperoned by a handful of teachers. As they get older, students are allowed to roam in a wider area, including a section of Eighth Avenue. The young-looking faculty wear jeans and casual tops, as do their look-alike students, who also sport hair-bands, dreads, striped leggings, Keds and pastel hoodies. Students sit in groups of five or six at spacious white-topped tables. The not-so-large, yet well-lit rooms hold about 33 students per class.

Inside Anderson’s office, there’s a decidedly tween-friendly atmosphere with an area rug, a bin of Twizzlers, a lava lamp and a rack of magazines. Anderson is a former English teacher and assistant principal with a background in theater. One recent Friday, he kicked off a 6th grade publishing party with an excerpt from his own writer’s notebook. He writes on his commute from Staten Island, where he lives with his wife and two small children.

“It’s 30 minutes each way on the ferry,” he said.

After he read his musings on how it feels to “publish” work, the students silently read and wrote comments on the personal essays they were sharing with each other that day. A bowl of Trader Joe’s popcorn and rows of plastic cups filled with apple juice awaited the “toasts and cheers” phase of the celebration, according to Katherine Hernandez, the 6th grade language arts teacher.

In another classroom, an energetic Jack Black look-alike administered an informal music quiz: “Where was Aaron Copland born?” he asked.

“Brooklyn!” said a boy, who was roundly chastised for calling out, but not in the least cowed by his likable shaggy-haired teacher from Wingspan Arts, a program that brings professional artist-educators into schools. Clinton also collaborates with the Roundabout Theatre Company and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, among other institutions. Each 8th-grade student is paired with an outside artist-mentor to help hone his or her portfolio.

Throughout the school, students explore the arts in a variety of ways. In one room, they make blind contour drawings of speckled eggshells, starfish, plastic dinosaurs and metal roller skates. In another room, they rehearse a play. This fall, they will perform monologues and scenes they have written and developed themselves, and in the spring they will put on a full-scale production of the musical Oklahoma!

However, Clinton does not neglect other academic subjects. In a math class, students worked on integers, while another class focused on polynomials. In a science class, the topic was levers and pulleys. Book reports on the walls were based on The Diary of Anne Frank, The Tale of Despereaux and Twilight.

Overall, Clinton has an unpolished, unpretentious air. Anderson said he enjoys middle school kids, whose development ranges “from the 6th grade, where parents still drop off their kids, to the maturity of the 8th grade.” This growth was evident in the classrooms, where the chattiness seemed to decrease as the age and size and talents of the students increased.

“This is working,” said Anderson, of the school he began to helm only in September. “We have creative children and we should tap into that. It was never a question of putting out fires in the bathroom. It’s just a matter of taking what’s good and making it great.”

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Clinton School
for Writers and Artists
320 W. 21st St.
New York, N.Y. 10011
212-255-8860
Joseph Anderson, Principal
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—Lydie Raschka

ABOVE: (top left: Creative writing is one of four arts disciplines emphasized at Clinton. Here, students participate in a reading and writing workshop. right: A student works from a textbook during science class. bottom left: Joseph Anderson, principal. Photos by Andrew Schwartz)