Learning Comes to Life at The Green-Wood Cemetery

Most people wouldn’t think of bringing kids to class in a cemetery every week, much less kids as young as three-years-old, but that’s exactly what PS 958 has been doing this whole school year thanks to a unique partnership with The Green-Wood Cemetery and Sunset Spark, a local non-profit educational organization.

Under a new enrichment program designed to support sensory exploration and STEM instruction, PS 958 students make weekly visits to Green-Wood to explore nature, art, and architecture. The nearby Sunset Spark, which offers in-class creative technology instruction, visits classrooms to provide additional learning opportunities and deepen students' understanding in those areas.

Since its founding in 1838, Green-Wood’s 478 acres have been filled year-round with opportunities to learn about nature and the environment, restoration, arts and culture, and more. A National Historic Landmark—and an outdoor museum, arboretum, and a repository of history—Green-Wood serves as a living laboratory for people of all ages.

Green-Wood’s education department serves students year-round in grades 3-K to 12—more than 5,000 annually—from across the city, teaching a range of subjects in American history, art and architecture, and environmental education.

The new initiative with PS 958—made possible thanks to Neighborhood School Grants from the Walentas Family Foundation—began this school year. During the first semester, students in grades 3K, Pre-K, and K visited Green-Wood weekly to explore subjects that sparked their interest. Green-Wood's education department designed scavenger hunts for students to collect and sort leaves, pinecones, seeds, and other natural materials. Students also explored the built environment of Green-Wood, studying shapes, colors, and materials. Students even toured the restoration workshop and sculpted with modeling clay, created spray-paint stencil art near the memorial to Jean-Michel Basquiat, and built their own larger-than-life birds’ nest from twigs found at Green-Wood.

“Our goal for the first semester was to cast a wide net,” said Green-Wood's director of education, Rachel Walman. “We paid attention to standards for the various grade levels and thought of creative ways for those to be enhanced by the assets of Green-Wood. We focused on building fine and gross motor skills, sorting, describing things, measuring things, and a lot of it was interdisciplinary. We knew that the school wanted variety so they could see what students liked the most.”

In November 2022, Green-Wood educators and Sunset Spark met with teachers at PS 958 to discuss possible enrichment and project-based learning topics. Together, they aligned on the goals of project-based learning and the range of offerings that teachers would present to students.

Since February, students have been working on their enrichment subjects. This spring, they will discover edible plants like pine needles, juniper berries, and rosehips (though they won’t actually eat anything at Green-Wood) that grow in the Cemetery. They’ll make collages with fallen cherry blossom petals; explore engineering challenges inspired by Green-Wood; and so much more. In May, students will demonstrate their projects in a culminating event.

“This partnership has been an amazing opportunity for us to push ourselves to develop exciting, place-based, hands-on lessons—a new one every week!—for young learners,” Walman said. “We’ve benefited from working closely with PS 958 staff and Sunset Spark to make sure we’re following universal design principles and meeting the needs of all students. It’s been a wonderful collaboration. We hope we get to see PS 958 students in all grade levels every year. The Cemetery is literally in their backyard; it's their place, and this is a model for how additional schools could engage with us.”

"The partnership we have developed with The Green-Wood Cemetery and Sunset Spark has allowed our new school to hit the ground running by providing deeply enriching, inclusive learning opportunities to our young students," said Emily Shapiro, Principal at PS 958. "The grant has ensured that our students have access to green spaces and that they are developing background knowledge and rich academic vocabulary. Additionally, working with local community organizations helps our students develop a connection to the Sunset Park community and the people, places and cultures that make it special, a connection we wish to continue to develop as our school grows."

"I'm thrilled to be a partner in such an inclusive and forward-thinking program. This collaboration has been successful due to each partner’s strengths and deep commitment to education and community,” said Yadira Hadlett, Co-Director of Sunset Spark. “During my weekly classes, we embark on new and exciting learning adventures that explore the intersections of nature and technology. By using different senses, kids are engaging with their environment in really creative and imaginative ways. So far this year, students have learned about underground mycelium networks of fungi, created soft circuits with mushrooms, designed scratch-and-sniff memory maps, explored how fish communicate underwater, and created 3D models of neighborhood landscapes.”

“Our intention with the Neighborhood School Grants program was to give back to local Brooklyn schools and ensure that students could be exposed to creative and enriching forms of education beyond the classroom,” said Kate Gavriel, Director of Cultural Affairs at the Walentas Family Foundation. “The partnership between PS 958, The Green-Wood Cemetery, and Sunset Spark accomplishes exactly that—exposing students to hands-on learning experiences, and enabling them to engage in new material in a more tangible and stimulating way. The Walentas Family Foundation is happy to do our part to help ensure that students across Brooklyn have access to effective learning opportunities that will better prepare them for their futures.”