Unique Partnership: Brooklyn Botanic
Garden & Brooklyn Academy of Science & Environment
By Sybil Maimin
Location, location, location! What better place to be a school devoted to the study of
science and the environment than across the street from the Brooklyn Botanic
Garden (BBG) and down the block from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park (PP). With these two institutions as founding
partners and additional collaboration with another close neighbor, the Brooklyn
Museum, as well as nearby Medgar Evans College, a formula for exciting learning
and extraordinary opportunities is in place. The Brooklyn Academy of Science
and the Environment (BASE), opened its doors in 2003 as one of four new small
schools (its maximum is 500 students) in a grand old high school building. It
is part of The New Century High Schools Initiative, a $30 million project (with
significant outside funding), “to create 60 new, better and smaller high
schools in New York City.”
At BASE, in addition to a
traditional curriculum, urban apartment-dwelling students get a heavy dose of
outdoor learning with field studies and trips, hands-on projects, and close
work with naturalists from a variety of disciplines. They learn scientific
research skills and are exposed to an array of technology tools and methods.
Mike Duggan, a marine biologist who worked as a coral curator in the US Virgin
Islands, inspires students in a bright, airy laboratory at BASE filled with
fish tanks and objects and images from the sea. His class designs and performs
tests and makes and records observations about fish behavior using computers,
internet research, graphs, and logs. BASE founding Principal Veronica M.
Peterson, a biologist, explains that, in addition to plant studies, she “wants
every aspect of science in the school,” and “to have a marine biologist is the
best thing we could have here.” In fact, she reports, scientists are drawn to
teach at the school because of its focus and after “a very involved process,”
she is able to hire “experts in their fields.”
BBG and PP help develop and implement curriculum with school
faculty and administration for classes including Chemistry Field Labs, Nature
Writing, Community Environmental Research, and Environmental Science. Field Studies
classes are conducted in the Botanic Garden and the Park. The Park’s lakes,
woods, and meadows, as well as its Audubon Center, Lefferts Historic House, and
archives are sites of learning. At
BBG, Leeann Lavin explains, “We want plants to be a gateway to spark the
imagination and learning throughout life.” The Garden’s library, herbarium,
archival databases, and web site are utilized by students. Each year, eight
BASE juniors are chosen from the Science Research Class “to do real science”
with world-class horticulturalists in BBG’s impressive Science Building. They
may extract DNA from plants, prepare herbarium specimens, help the lilac
curator identify a new plant, and transfer catalogue information to the Web.
They learn laboratory procedures and techniques and, according to plant
molecular systematist Dr. Susan Pell who works closely with the students, “They
are making enormous contributions to science….The barium specimens they have
made will last hundreds of years.” BBG’s Elyssa Arnone reflects, “Aside from
cool discoveries, the techniques they are learning can be useful in many careers.
We do not expect all students to become scientists but they will be able to
make informed decisions based on observations and critical thinking because of
their scientific backgrounds.”
BASE is graduating its first
class this year and the prom, appropriately, is in Prospect Park. Principal
Peterson is proud of student achievement. She reports 90 percent passed the
Living Environment Regents, including almost all Special Ed students (“We have
seamless inclusion”). Eighty eight percent met the NY State Education Department
benchmark in math and 94 percent met the science mark. “My goal is for my
school to be number one in the country,” she exclaims. BASE is on the way! #
