feature stories
City’s treasures await your students
Feb 14, 2008 12:00 PM
{pic} - At the New-York Historical Society, staff educator Karin Beckett gets some responses from students from PS 256, the Bronx.
Imagine seeing and hearing thrilling Metropolitan sopranos like Karita Mattila as Puccini’s doomed “Manon,” Angela Gheorghiu as the tragic Mimi in “La Boheme” or riveting Natalie Dessay in “The Daughter of the Regiment,” all free and at a high school in each borough.
And those are just a few trinkets from the treasure chest of riches this city holds for students. But too often the only way for students to get the key to that treasure chest is to have a teacher introduce them through class trips.
The Metropolitan Opera is doing a switch on that. Instead of waiting for students to come to the opera house, it’s bringing opera to students by offering free tickets to “Live in High-Definition” performances, which are transmitted live from the Met stage. There are four operas left in the season schedule of seven and everyone is invited, including teachers and parents and children from other schools in the city. The series is designed to supplement arts eduction, which has become less, a focus in schools in these days of test prep.
At Long Island City HS, a school that does promote the arts and the Queens site for the operas, Principal Bill Bassell reported audiences of 500 for the earlier performances of “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet.”
“This series is a great thing,” he said, “particularly for a diverse school like this. It’s really roped kids in and they love it.”
Some students who attended earlier performances have enjoyed follow-up visits backstage to interview the divas and to watch a rehearsal. For information about dates, locations and free tickets, call 1-
212-870-7421 or visit www.metopera.org/
education.
Right next door, Lincoln Center’s “Meet the Artist Series” invites students to hands-on one-hour programs by artists performing opera, jazz, dance, Broadway and physical comedy — your choice — followed by a one-hour tour of the world-famous arts center. The series has a long relationship with city schools and uses feedback from teachers to update its programs to meet curriculum standards.
William Foehrenbach, a history teacher at Satellite Academy HS in the Bronx and an enthusiastic supporter of the educational value of class trips, said, “Not to use this city’s riches is a crime.”
{pic} - Students from the Bronx school are thrilled to check a pelt like those caught by early trappers.
{pic} - Life in New Amsterdam springs to life for students as they explore artifacts used by Manhattan’s early settlers at the New York Historical Society.
Noting that students learn in different ways, he said his classes had “benefited tremendously” from his many trips to the New- York Historical Society because “what they see there they retain.”
Foehrenbach praised the “above-average guides and the interactive nature of the society’s exhibits” as well as great teacher materials. He described as “particularly terrific” a workshop he attended because, he said, “It is important to prepare teachers to prepare students to get maximum value from a class trip.”
{pic} - Above:Free tickets for students, teachers and families are available to Metropolitan Opera “Live in High-Definition” performances coming to a high school near you. Right: A poster announces an upcoming performance at one of the high schools chosen to host the event in each borough.
So students are not the only ones who profit. Many institutions provide resource guides, workshops and materials to help teachers prepare students for the trip and to tie the experience to the curriculum through pre-trip and post-trip classroom activities.
The great city museums are a mecca for tourists and should be for city students at all grade levels, too. Despite the heavy traffic of school buses outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, most students have never heard of this great institution or been inside. That great flight of stairs to the grand front door can be pretty intimidating without a proper introduction. A teacher could make that introduction and begin a lifetime of learning and pleasure for students.
Every borough has something to offer — its historic houses, zoos and cultural institutions. Then there are attractions like Ripley’s Believe It or Not for the ultimate in the odd and bizarre or a chance to see a panorama of historic personalities at Madame Tussauds.
Or get outdoors and have urban park rangers help your class explore ecology, botany and geology in the many city parks and wetlands. Six Flags Great Adventure and Wild Safari offers a series of educational days focusing on — among other topics — math, science and music.
{pic} - Students get a chance to meet Mother Nature in the many parks and wetlands of the city with urban park rangers as their guides.
The menu of things to do and see that would expand student horizons offers great variety and appeal.
