New Middle School Coming to Fort Greene
According to The Local, Fort Greene will get a new 300-seat middle school starting in the Fall of 2010. The Fort Greene Preparatory Academy, as it will be called, will be located at 100 Clermont Avenue where PS 46 currently is. The academics will be structured around Socratic seminars and the arts. The goal of…
According to The Local, Fort Greene will get a new 300-seat middle school starting in the Fall of 2010. The Fort Greene Preparatory Academy, as it will be called, will be located at 100 Clermont Avenue where PS 46 currently is. The academics will be structured around Socratic seminars and the arts. The goal of the school is to be driven by student inquiry, said Paula Lettiere, the intended principal. We’re seeking to move away from traditional curriculum. This sounds like a pretty conscious effort to provide an alternative to the PS 20 approach that has turned off so many of the families that have moved to the neighborhood in recent years.
New Middle School Coming in 2010 [Local/NYT]
Photo by silk cut
The problem is that programs like this often neglect the basics – grammar, spelling, math, science, basic logical thinking – in favor of exploring whatever. I’m all in favor of inquiry learning *if* a student has the basics down, OR if it’s used as a tool to teach the basics. Most teachers (and I am one) don’t have the time, ability, and/or inclination to combine inquiry learning and the basics. Inquiry learning is suited to gifted students in small classes with master teachers at that age, but that environment is almost impossible to replicate on a large scale.
Maybe 113 has had “great success with its students” because its curriculum is traditional and very structured?
I agree, sixyears, that the principal and teachers will make the school. But District 13 definitely needs a less structured option. The only full-size middle school in FG/CH is 113, which has had great success with its students but which is traditional and very structured.
also, i understood the problem with ps 20 to be with the authoritarian/disciplinarian environment, not with the curriculum per se.
Count me in as a skeptic too, sixyears.
It is a middle school that will be housed inside an elementary school.
The headline says it’s a middle school and Brownstoner’s write-up says it’s an elementary school…which is it? The Local says it’s a middle school (6th-8th grades).
Schools like this can either be amazingly good or amazingly awful. It depends on the quality of teachers and administrators they recruit. If they are using “Socratic seminars” (a rather grand term for middle school education!) they’d need kids who are very smart, very disciplined, or both.
Count me as a skeptic.
Sorry, I read the first sentence of the posting rather than the local headline.
11-14 is still too young to be specializing and learning in that way in my opinion.
HELLO!!! IT’S A MIDDLE SCHOOL!!!
Grades 6-8, ages 11-ish to 14-ish. Standardized tests every year.