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Bringing the World Together in the Classroom

Charter teacher focuses on building community with students from many countries

By Rosaleen Ortiz

Growing up in suburban New Jersey, Lindsay Korn fell in love with books in Ms. Crowley’s 1st-grade classroom. By the time she was in 2nd grade, her mind was made up: She would be a teacher. Years later, while a student at Northeastern University in Boston, she discovered urban teaching and set her eyes on the Big Apple.

Korn, 27, has been teaching in New York City schools for the last four years, most recently 2nd grade at Long Island City’s eco-themed Growing Up Green Charter School.

Korn says she can’t imagine doing anything else.

“What I love about teaching is the interaction with all different types of people,” she said. “I have learned so much from our kids.”

Teaching in one of the most diverse counties in the country means that Korn has learned to say hello in languages she’d never heard before, and has sampled a lot of unfamiliar food. She’s learned about families of young immigrants who made their way to Queens from countries in South America and North Africa, while others trace their lives in the city back five generations.

Korn hopes the lessons learned from such a diverse community are not lost in the kids.

“The most important part of my classroom is the community that we build,” she said. “It’s really amazing to see how much they actually care for each other even though they come from vastly different backgrounds.”

Growing Up Green’s principal Matthew Greenberg said Korn has built “terrific relationships with the children and the families in her class.”

Parent Ellen Greenberg (no relation to the principal) said Korn is responsive to parents, answering texts at 10 p.m.

“I’m an obsessive sort of a neurotic mother and I worry about stuff,” said Greenberg, whose 7-year-old son Jason is in Korn’s 2nd-grade classroom. “Teachers are overwhelmed every day at the classroom, but she takes the time to make sure the parents know what’s going on.”

Greenberg remembers a day when Jason was upset because she wasn’t accompanying him on a school outing. She said Korn sent her a picture of her son smiling and having fun.

“Parents want to be able to help, but a lot of them don’t know how or what to do,” said Korn. In keeping with school policy, she sends a weekly newsletter to parents detailing what the students will be working on the following week.

“If [parents] are constantly aware about what is happening in the classroom then they can help their children at home,” she explained.

This week, Korn’s 28 students will be working on final drafts of their non-fiction books.

They’ve also created real-estate brochures exploring the benefits of living in a rural, suburban or urban community. Korn’s students learned about New York City’s history by putting on a school play; the kids created their own costumes and props. And they are grasping the concept of fractions by cutting up pieces of clay.

“I’m a very hands-on teacher. I think learning should be very messy,” said Korn.

Luckily for her, Growing Up Green is a fairly new school that encourages creativity and social interactions, she said. Korn and two colleagues designed the 2nd-grade curriculum from scratch last summer. Prior to that, the school only had kindergarten and 1st-grade programs.

Korn moved up a grade to 2nd this year, together with her class.

Second grade has become her favorite grade to teach because, she said, kids can grasp more difficult concepts, yet they are still wide-eyed and eager to learn.

She said she hopes that when her students move on from her classroom that they’ve mastered kindness and learned to always “look at the world through other people’s eyes, not just their own.”

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Lindsay Korn
Growing Up Green
Charter School
39-37 28th St., Queens