GreenQueens

The tightly planned visit consisted of a tour of the 5th-floor exhibition; snack and read-aloud led by several QPS students; a visit to Long Island City Academy of Music to pluck/bow/strike its collection of instruments; and a viewing of art at M55 gallery on the ground floor. Skillman School teachers enthused the whole time at how engaged their students were. And for QPS students, it was a chance to experience children whose social and learning skills are very different from theirs, and in some cases, a chance to confront fears about such an encounter.

We are grateful to the learning managers for the pre- and post-visit discussions they led with the students. Without such reflection, this visit would have been little more than a photo op rather than a deeper experienced teachable moment.

Oh, and on your way up, check out the fantastic entries in our Queensboro Bridge Art Contest!

Queens Paideia is honored to sponsor the Queensboro Bridge Art Contest, the youth outreach event of the upcoming Long Island City Arts Open, scheduled for May 14-22. Submissions are already coming in, but it’s not too late to participate. We encourage schools and parents alike to jump on board this unifying project.

Welcome to Queens!
The Queensborough Bridge Art Contest

As part of the 2011 LIC Arts Open, Queens Paideia School has organized an art contest for Queens students, ages 5-18, that celebrates the Queensboro Bridge. At more than 100 years old and an astonishing visual wonder, the bridge provides a glorious welcome to our borough, and this contest provides the perfect way for Queens’s young people to exercise their creativity and be part of a community-wide event!

It’s simple to be part of the Queensboro Bridge Art Contest. No registration is required. Just submit a 5″ x 7″ postcard that captures our beloved QB Bridge as a painting, drawing, collage, cartoon, photograph, or any other form of graphic representation.

Submissions will be reviewed by a committee of notable local leaders, with prizes awarded to winners in 4 age categories. ALL SUBMISSIONS will be exhibited at a special showing on May 14-22 at the LIC Art Center, where hundreds of people will view them during the Arts Open and the week leading up to it.

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION
-Artwork is to be created on 5″ x 7″ card stock (oak tag). You can obtain cards from art teachers at your school, if they have requested them; pick them up at the LIC Arts Center in Long Island City; or use your own as long as it is 5″ x 7″ and oak tag weight.
-Accompany your submission with a piece of paper that has your name, age, school, address, phone number, and e-mail address so we may contact you.
-Submissions must be received no later than May 2, 2011. Please send or deliver them to:

LIC Art Center
Attn: A. Ratkewitch/Queens Paideia School
44-02 23rd Street, Suite 214
Long Island City, NY 11101

For more information, specific questions, contact Alyssa Ratkewitch, aratkewitch@gmail.com. Also, go to licartsopen.org/ and the LIC Arts Open’s Facebook page for ongoing updates about this first-ever contest and other exciting activities at the Arts Open!

BOOKS FOR TREES main

There is no start-stop in this thinking; only an awareness of who each of our students is and his/her learning paths at any given time.

Next year will bring new and wonderful changes for Queens Paideia. We will have more students, which is one of our goals and pleasures. The growing age range will result in richer interactions between students and we will seek to capitalize on the benefits these relationships can bring. We are also going to expand our space, giving consideration to the role environment plays in learning.

With more students and space, we will put more pieces of the total learning puzzle into place–increased resources and technology, parent involvement, community outreach, and opportunities for our students to apply their learning in ways that enhance and further entrench it.

We are also pleased to be part of a new after-school program called Elevations, a collaboration by Queens Paideia, LIC School of Ballet, the Secret Theatre, and LIC Academy of Music to bring enrichment in dance, drama, art, writing, and music to the Queens community, all conveniently located at the LIC Arts Center. Be on the lookout for more information on this exciting program. We believe it is going to be an important contribution to the educational landscape of Queens’ youth.

Finally, we are thrilled with the interest our school is generating among educators, parents, and students alike. Our next Open House will be on September 11, 2010, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. If you would like to attend and learn more about learning at QPS, please contact us at tqps@earthlink.net or 718-361-0070. If you are unable to make this day and/or would like to visit sooner, just let us know.

Our new site, therefore, is a narrative of many spring evenings and summer days spent working at the multistep process of creating an innovative school. Each “chapter” of this story—with a few below—has been integral in our moving to the next step of building QPS, and has engendered the excitement of witnessing an organic process at work.

Staff: Our two teachers share a love of teaching and learning that is contagious, and complement each other through their personal knowledge bases and perspectives. They have been working with our development committee and parents to create learning plans that reflect who our students are, what they need to know, and what might ignite their passions while ensuring “no skill left behind.”

Space: The LIC Arts Center is in an area where our students can feel part of a community, encounter interesting and inspiring people, and be on the threshold of NYC’s educational and cultural perks. It is accessible by subway and bus and near many arts organizations, including the LIC School of Ballet, which one of our partners. The Arts Center, with its creative and contemporary presence, exemplifies why so many artists, entrepreneurs, and families are moving to Queens to plant roots and grow their dreams.

Calendar: The QPS calendar pokes at some basic assumptions of the conventional school calendar by tying our students’ pace to what is often the best way for people to learn—with flexibility, alternating high-energy projects with reflective pursuits. How many adults have two to three months off each year, during which they are responsible for retaining much of what they did before then, but all the while paying perfunctory, if any, attention to it?

Learning Plans: This is the heart of what we do and what we will focus on each day going forward. Our students’ learning plans and pacing, and the independence they develop as they move along through them, all tie back to our goal for them to become motivated learners who not only take responsibility for their learning, but also find joy in it.

We see this site as a work in progress, one that will evolve in tandem with our understanding of how our students learn best–and how QPS can best help that process along.

• A child’s school day is a mystery to his parent, due to the child’s limited reporting skills and because there is no regular dialog with the teacher.
• The teacher complains to the parent about the child’s behavior or uses charts, stars, and reprimands to get her to sit still. Both parent and teacher then fixate on the child’s classroom behavior rather than on her other accomplishments.
• A parent looks on as her child is singled out for opprobrium by the teacher, or is excluded by classmates. The parent voices concern but can do little else about it. The teacher senses animosity from the parent, from the child, and possibly from supervisors.

Rather than destructive triangulation, QPS looks toward constructive triangular relationships between parents, teachers, and students. What does this look like?

• Teachers know their students and parents well as a result of a continuing close relationship that will span several years .
• Parents work with teachers to formulate and revise their children’s learning objectives on an ongoing basis, a process in which the children are active participants. Parents also help out in the classroom and go on field trips when they can.
• Students participate in the formation of QPS by providing the information that only they have—What are you interested in or curious about these days? What have you been doing this past week? Which of these things would you like to learn?—and by committing to their learning objectives and then soliciting teacher and parent assistance in meeting them.

In the process of creating QPS, we are considering these key roles from a new perspective and eagerly anticipating the shape of things to come.

So, too, for field trips, be it museums, concerts, or visits to governmental agencies or interesting businesses and factories. It is as much fun to brainstorm about such activities as it might be for children to participate in them.

What often gets lost in such musings is how children actually learn. It’s quite understandable because it is a subject of great complexity and elusiveness, the not-so-well-kept secret being that every person learns differently, and also differently in different settings. Who wants to go there? Certainly not the majority of schools, because it would mean opening a bottomless can of worms.

The way most schools get around it is by paying lip service to the idea. Parents are encouraged to get involved because “studies have shown that kids whose parents are involved in their school” do better; they are invited to attend PTA meetings, visit a classroom here, organize a play there, and perhaps even teach an after-school enrichment class. Some parents then go further around it by hiring tutors as their children encounter more demanding workloads that exceed their current skills and knowledge. Another set of buzzwords, this time “differentiation” and “individual learning style,” enters the discourse, but there is a resigned acknowledgment that our education system as currently configured cannot accommodate such needs.

Unfortunately none of this addresses how school-related learning for almost seven hours a day, along with annually increasing homework, can be made more effective and joyous. To get to that, we need to tap into the larger secret most of us know in our minds and hearts: it starts, first and foremost, with the child—what he or she cares about, is interested in, and is ready to learn. Parents, teachers, and anyone else involved in that child’s learning, along with the child, must think about the ideal conditions for him or her to be truly engaged with a subject or material and with the skills and knowledge to be acquired. Without an understanding of what these are, the child’s learning process will probably be uncertain, painful, and halting, and certainly not optimal. And all the manipulatives, yarn, lizards, plants, and posters on the wall won’t do a thing to change that.