Arieyanna Davis, a second grader at New City School, should have been excited about getting a day off for parent-teacher conferences last Friday. But she said she’d rather learn and see her friends.
“I like when the teacher tells me about the world, about Lewis and Clark,” Davis said. “They explore the world and learn about plants and animals, and they go to learn about the Northwest Passage.”
Grace Rogers, also a second grader, said when her parents got her progress report last week, they learned that the things she excelled in were listening and movement.
“But right now, I’m working on patience,” she said. “It’s kind of hard, but it’s getting easier for me.”
At New City, located at 5209 Waterman Blvd. in the Central West End, her teacher Sheryl Reardon watches how Rogers improves in life’s skills as much as her academics. In fact, the first page of the progress report is all about intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, such as confidence, tenacity and appreciation for diversity. And Reardon said the feedback from parents is overwhelming.
“Of course they want the children to do well academically, but the most important thing is that the children can be good decision-makers,” said Jessica Dodson, parent.
“And for me that encapsulates everything with this school. You can have the smartest kid in the state, but if they can’t make a good decision, they won’t know how to take that and do anything with it.”
This year, New City School celebrated its 40th year as an independent, private school that focuses on giving students a variety of ways to learn and promoting diversity.
When the school was formed back in the late sixties, a group of Central West End neighbors felt that the school could be used a tool for helping develop children who would be problem solvers, and who could help make the world a better place, said Principal Thomas Hoerr.
“Although the school has changed enormously in its 40 years, that is still true today,” he said. “I like to say this is a school focused on success in life, not just success in school.”
Multiple Intelligences
At New City, there’s a special focus on what they call Multiple Intelligences. Students use their interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial and naturalist skills. A mouthful.
But to Rogers, it’s just “BK.” You know, bodily-kinesthetic.
The students use their bodies to learn, and that’s Rogers’ favorite part of class. The other day, she said, the class learned sign language as spoken by Native Americans. She also wrote and performed a song about the adventures of Lewis and Clark.
Reardon said she doesn’t remember singing songs about topics she was learning in class as a child. “But for some kids that is how they show their genuine understanding of something,” she said.
New City was the second school in country to begin using Multiple Intelligences in 1988. The theory is that children learn in many different ways, and they solve problems in many different ways.
“We’ve been using MI as a tool to give kids more ways to solve problem,” said Hoerr, who wrote a book called Becoming a Multiple Intelligences School. “More children succeed because there are different routes, and it makes learning much more exciting and much more fun.”
For Davis, she loves place value. That’s when she talks about the place of the numbers. Take 1,524, she said. The “4” is in the ones place. The “2” is in the tens place, and so on.
“I want to be a doctor because I like to help people when they’re hurt, and I like to make them feel better when they’re sad,” she said.
Mary K. Cullen, a second-grade parent, said, “All the kids graduate with a sense of who they are, and a sense of how they learn best. I don’t even know that.”
Kate Glazer, a parent, loves that the school teaches the students about different perspectives. For instance, the second graders learn about what it was like for the Indians as well as European settlers.
“It shows the kids what social justice is from different angles,” she said, “and what that means when history plays itself out.”
Another example, Glazer said, was the gold hunt that the second graders participated in. Some of the students shared and others hoarded. But then, one of the older classrooms came and took all of the kids’ loot one day, showing that aspect as well.
Foundation of diversity
Reardon is the school’s diversity coordinator, and she said that diversity was one of the school’s founding cornerstones. The founders recognized that “the world was going to continue to be an ever more diverse place, and that kids needed some specific skills in order to function,” she said.
“Unlike many schools, this isn’t a new thing for us,” she said. “It’s part of who we’ve always been.”
Hoerr said that diversity for their school is not just about political correctness.
“It’s recognizing that if you are going to be a success in the world, you are going to have to work with people who are different colors, different ethnic backgrounds, different incomes,” Hoerr said. “If kids don’t have that exposure until they’re older, it’s a disadvantage.”
In many ways, the dream has been realized, Hoerr said. The school has become an excellent institution.
But it’s always a work in progress. Society changes. Families change, and the needs of children change.
“For us, one of the most important things about supporting a child is knowing that the child is more than just that one kid sitting in class,” Reardon said. “It’s really getting the family the support that they need.”
The school has coffee nooks for parents, encouraging them to stick around after they drop their kids off and socialize. And they do. Equally, the school focuses on making sure all adults are excited to learn and grow.
Now after being the school’s principal for a year shy of 30 years, Hoerr said, things never get old.
“It’s been a wonderful experience because it’s a setting where everybody grows, including me,” he said. “The assumption is for children to learn, the adults need to learn too. So I’ve enjoyed what I’ve learned.”
