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Brooklyn Botanic Garden 2006 Annual Report
School Programs
Educators at BBG maintain a leadership role in Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment (BASE), a small public high school located in the Prospect Heights School complex on Washington Avenue, directly across the street from BBG. Launched in 2003 in partnership with the Prospect Park Alliance and the New York City Department of Education, BASE is part of the citywide New Century High Schools Initiative to create small, effective high schools that help students meet high standards for academic and personal success. During its third year (2005–06), there were 347 students in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade enrolled at BASE. Ninth-grade students used the Garden's collections and facilities in a number of their weekly field-study classes to supplement the required Living Environment class. The New Century High Schools Initiative is managed by New Visions for Public Schools and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Open Society Institute. Additional support for BASE has been provided by the Institute of Museum & Library Services, American Honda Foundation, Louis Calder Foundation, John N. and Gillett A. Gilbert Family Fund, New York City Environmental Fund, Newman's Own Foundation, Inc., and Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund.
Students of the Brooklyn Academy of Science and the Environment (BASE) used the Garden's collections and facilities in a number of field-study classes.
Six students participated in science internships at BBG, a new option for BASE juniors. Interns conducted a study of thermogenic (heat releasing) plants, which focused on skunk cabbage and magnolias, and started a DNA database of BBG's living collections. The students presented their findings at the 2006 YouthCaN Conference at the American Museum of Natural History and won grand prize in the national iScience competition for the thermogenics project. BASE juniors have also been placed in internships at a number of science-focused institutions throughout the city, and students at the school have participated in experiential learning expeditions in locations such as the Florida Everglades and upstate New York.
Guided programs for public and private school groups throughout the city remain a vital way for BBG educators to help teachers and students make use of the BBG plant collections to enhance science learning. During the past school year, 192 prekindergarten through 12-grade classes—a total of 4,493 students—attended school workshop programs at BBG. An additional 777 students in 35 classes had tours and plant-potting sessions led by volunteer Garden Guides. And 47,000 children from 1,723 groups visited with their teachers on free self-guided tours, having taken advantage of BBG's new online preregistration system.
For Brooklyn schools that are unable to provide regular field trips to the Garden, Project Green Reach (PGR) provides a school-based, semester-long botanical education program that includes an in-class lesson, a field trip to BBG, professional development for the teacher, and materials for a planting project to benefit the local community. This year, 40 schools, 80 teachers, and 1,784 students participated in the program. In summer 2005, 18 students who had taken part in the PGR program with their school classes were selected to work as Junior Botanists (grades 4, 5, and 6) or Plant Investigators (grades 7 and 8) onsite at BBG for six weeks. These children, from low-income backgrounds, received full scholarships to the program. They raised plants in the Children's Garden, conducted scientific experiments, and took a three-day camping trip to the Delaware Water Gap.
Through the Teacher Education Program, BBG educators are working with teachers from all five boroughs to provide training in current educational methods in science and other disciplines. Seven one-day workshops provided professional development for 163 educators; they included two workshops for 30 teachers from nonpublic schools and five workshops custom-designed for individual schools or groups, serving 133 teachers. Another 64 teachers enrolled in a 30-hour course offered three times during the year, entitled "What Did a Plant Ever Do for You?" The course is equivalent to three graduate credits through the After School Professional Development Program of the New York City Department of Education. BBG also served as an informal educational training and observation site for 41 education-major students at New York University's Wallerstein Collaborative.
BBG continued to be a partner in the Urban Advantage collaboration with six other science-rich institutions led by the American Museum of Natural History. The goal of Urban Advantage is to improve the quality of required eighth-grade exit projects (individual student research projects) through teacher training and making institutional resources accessible to their students and families. The program has become a model for middle school science education citywide. Funded by the New York City Council, Urban Advantage in its second year provided 195 middle school science teachers (representing 18,722 students in 111 public schools throughout the city) with professional development sessions, science equipment for their classrooms, and access to the partner institutions' resources. BBG educators collaborated on the program development and new teacher orientation, provided a 24-hour course at the Garden for 24 teachers and a 12-hour course for an additional 15 teachers, and hosted several one-day sessions on site. Our educators also made on-site visits to seven middle schools in Brooklyn to consult with participating teachers and cooperated on the Citywide Urban Advantage Science Expo, a year-end celebration that featured a display of student projects.
On October 19, 2005, BBG welcomed nearly 300 middle school students and their teachers to the 10th Annual Green Horizons Conference presented by New York ReLeaf, the Environmental Education Advisory Council, and the Magnolia Tree Earth Center of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Inc. The conference was particularly meaningful because BBG had been the first host site for the event ten years ago. Green Horizons was created to help students learn more about career opportunities in a wide variety of natural resources and environmental fields. BBG educators and horticultural staff were on hand to lead workshops and provide support throughout the day. For the first time, BASE students served as volunteers, and one of the students was a keynote speaker during the plenary session.