School News

"Gingko Leaf," by PS 230 2nd grader Benson Cheng was chosen for the Public School Art 2017 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Teacher Comments:
Brooklyn has several very large, old, beautiful trees. In the fall I take students outside to pick their leaves to study. Using pastels, they learn to draw the leaf as large as possible. It has to touch the top and bottom of the paper. We look at examples done by Georgia O’Keeffe. The students are taught to create layers of color and to make the background a contrasting color, preferably a complementary color. I teach the children that an artist who can draw from nature observes and understands the natural world, and we have to be observant.

Gingko Leaf is a small piece, but its color sense and composition are huge. Benson paid attention to the veins just enough to show how they radiate from the stem, indicating that the gingko leaf is from a prehistoric era. His choice of background color silhouettes the ginkgo leaf in such a way that it becomes monumental.

- Pearl Lau, PS 230 Art Teacher

To view student artwork in the P.S. Art 2017 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, click here.

    Adriana DiScipio

English as a New Language Teacher, P.S. 230 Doris L. Cohen, Kensington (15K230)  

“I have an unwavering love of language,” Adriana DiScipio shares, now in her eleventh year working with (often newly arrived) English Language Learners at PS 230. “I perceive my students’ linguistic diversity as a strength and a resource.” Driven by a fundamental belief that every child can achieve success when given the right supports and opportunities, Ms. DiScipio meticulously tracks students’ progress in language and writing skills, so she knows exactly what areas they need to work on. She spends a lot of her class time deconstructing content language for her students, and works to integrate language objectives into the curriculum that meet diverse learners’ needs.

Beyond her classroom, Ms. DiScipio serves as a Learning Partners Program Model Teacher, sharing work around language learning, academic conversation, and vocabulary development with the rest of her school community. Ms. DiScipio is devoted to fostering independence in her students; as she explains, “I want them to go to sixth grade confident that they can keep up as writers.” A colleague praises her ability to reach students who initially seem reluctant to be in school without compromising rigor, saying, “Students feel safe to express themselves when they are with her.”