May 6, 2008 by admin.

By Wendy Cole, MSS Director

“But we haven’t for a moment ceased insisting schools should be respectful and interesting places for every one of us—children, teachers, and even principals.”
—Deborah Meier, “The Power of Their Ideas”

Maple Street School is an interesting place.

When I walk through the classrooms most mornings, I listen for many educators, and my favorite phrase is, “I have an idea.” Then I wait to hear if a bridge is going to be built, a magical party is going to be planned, or a letter is going to be sent to a mom.

These ideas do not just sit around; they dance in the brain and become constructed knowledge, inquiry and a love of learning. At Maple Street this month, they became a map of my heart, a globe with Canada and a 2s clothespin collage of a family. They also will become various dramatizations of the afterlife, animal freedom or rebuilding an architectural disaster.

Ideas at Maple Street include the grown-ups, too, on every level, and it is in this that our creativity flourishes. Jenn Smith’s summer camp is a treasure trove of ideas. Whether your kid’s going to be in New Hampshire, France or at home with you, it will tempt you with creativity and fun. You can be an inventor, a spy or a pirate, or, like many of our children, create your own new combination and be a fairypiratetiger or a supermanspydora.

The summer agenda includes our very own tap camp created by afterschool director KD Harris Diallo and a construction camp created by Jack’s mom, parent, contractor and woodworker Deb Winsor, who plans to build a real house at Maple Street with the help, ideas and hammering of children.

Ideas keep our wonder going whether we are in pre-school or the parent of a pre-schooler. On April 15, our maintenance committee installed a new toilet—with the children—and together inquired what really happens when we flush. Each child got to look inside the pipes and see for him or herself.

The grown-ups at Maple Street—teachers and parents—also create together: a black and white gala, the Wish Water band, or an early childhood science grant.

We now have a band that began at Maple Street; you can go to the Brooklyn Public library and see Jeremy Zmuda, our music teacher, Scott Shaeffer, our former teacher and bassist, and Barbara Culbreath, our 3s teacher and storyteller.

Sometimes, our ideas begin slowly, and we are not sure if we want to do them because of time, skills, too many commitments or other reasons. I do admit, I coaxed Nancy Roach, parent of Clementine and Finnegan, to write a grant for teaching early childhood science and wonder. Her ideas, her research, her observations and her conversations with teachers manifested in a well-researched, early childhood, hands-on science curriculum that I hope will be implemented and create more ideas, and more wonder.

So—maybe you have an idea for the school, and better yet, one that inspires your own creativity.

An art project, a band, a grant, a school, a spaceship. . .

I look forward to hearing it.

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May 6, 2008 by admin.

By Jason Sherman

The eager imaginations of the children in the upstairs 3s—assisted one Friday morning early last month by construction paper headbands of various colors—summoned a most unusual assemblage of two- and four-legged animals from an Oz-like safari with a mission: to bring dance from the sky down to earth.

Dancing green elephants, jumping pink monkeys, brown giraffes and orange tigers.

It was story time, and Barbara Culbreath, 3s teacher and storyteller extraordinaire, told an African folk tale requiring the participation of the entire class, mostly in the form of dancing.

It was also documentary time.

Liz Dory, Lane’s mom, was armed with a hand-held video camera, gliding around the perimeter of the circle during the quiet parts of the story and darting through the pulsating mini-mosh pit when the dancing picked up, to capture the action on tape in order to craft her own narrative.

“Can you say ‘cin-e-ma-tog-ra-pher’?” Barbara asked before beginning the story, clearly enunciating each of the six syllables, as a way of introducing Dory, who was there for that rare typeof preschool show-and-tell that requires post-production work.

“I tell stories with cameras,” said Dory, whose recent credits include shooting not one—but two—documentaries that competed in this year’s Sundance Film Festival, one of which follows descendents of a wealthy colonial New England family as they investigate how their ancestors got rich in a business not commonly associated with northern states: the African slave trade. Much more on that in a moment.

“My dad had a camera but the battery died,” Rex Knouse announced.

“I have a microphone at home,” said Jesse Levy, after Dory pointed out the sound-collecting device on the camera she was holding.

The technology required to make a simple movie is now so ubiquitous, it evidently holds little mystery for children today. The leap of using a camera to tell a story appears an easy one, based on the rapid-fire response to Dory’s question of who had seen a story told with a camera: “Horton Hears a Who” and “Green Eggs and Ham” came two of the initial replies.

Two weeks later, Liz returned to complete the show-and-tell by hosting a screening of the mini “documentary”—on her computer laptop—for the class, in small groups.

The reactions? Inevitably, there was plenty of “There I am!” “There you are!”

Then there was this observation that bore an uncanny resemblance to a professional critique: “It’s too dark,” Lila Ehrlich, commenting on the exposure, told Dory.

Lila’s dad, Judd, it turns out, is a filmmaker, too (check out, Run For Your Life, Judd’s film that premiered last month at the Tribeca Film Festival, about Fred Lebow, visionary runner and founder of the New York City Marathon).

Back to Dory. She got her first camera at age 8, had a darkroom in her childhood home in Youngstown, OH, and knew she had found her calling to tell stories with a camera after working a summer job during college as an assistant to a cinematographer on a movie. Once she completed a degree in English literature and cinematography at Denison University, Dory made a beeline from the Buckeye State for New York and became one of the first dozen women to join the cinematographer’s union, she said.

While Dory has shot numerous documentaries, movies and commercials that have taken her around the world, Traces of the Trade: A Story of the Deep North—one of the projects at this year’s Sundance festival—is a production that she is particularly passionate about, she said.

“I want people to see Traces of the Trade because I think it is a very important film for Americans to see right now,” she told The Rag. “This documentary points out that the North was equally, if not more so than the South, responsible for slave trade.”

The documentary, which will be broadcast on PBS on June 24 at 10 p.m., follows filmmaker and director Katrina Browne as she and nine relatives—all descendents of one of the largest slave-trading families in U.S. history—attempt to plumb their own ancestral history.

The account aims to not only shatter American myths about who owned slaves—the DeWolf family seat was not in the South Carolina low country but in Bristol, R.I.—but also to spark a larger discussion about race, according to Browne’s Web site, by asking:

“What, concretely, is the legacy of slavery? Who owes whom what for the sins of the fathers of this country? What history do we inherit as individuals and as citizens? How does Northern complicity change the equation? What would repair—spiritual and material—really look like and what would it take?”

Nine years in the making, the documentary follows Browne and her relatives on a journey to Ghana (where African slaves were purchased with rum made in New England) and then to Cuba (where slaves were either put to work in family-owned sugar plantations or sold at auctions in Havana) and back to Rhode Island (where sugar and molasses purchased in Cuba were shipped to family distilleries in Rhode Island).

Considerably shorter in the making is Dory’s delightful three-minute movie of the 3s bringing dance down from the sky: http://www.maplestreetschool.org/mss-movie.html

Posted in Rag May 2008, 2008 | No Comments »

May 6, 2008 by admin.

By Rachel Stack, mother of Jo Jo (2s)

I believe that some of us are born in our soul’s home and some of us find that home far from the place where we started. For our small family, Maple Street School was the first stop on a long journey back home.

To tell you our Maple Street story, I have to start in Pittsburgh. David and I met and began our life together in Brooklyn, but life lifted us away when my mother became ill, and we moved to Pittsburgh to take care of her. In our three years away, we lost my mother, grandmother and grandfather (who was a father to me). Then, the universe handed us Jo Jo, as if to say, Life goes on. It keeps breathing and clawing on, despite it all.

Reeling simultaneously with loss and new life, the only thing I could think to do was come back to Brooklyn. As a teacher, and someone who defines herself by her work in schools, finding a place whereJo Jo could grow was more important to me than any other part of this homecoming. We wanted Jo Jo to find the sense of home we’d felt when we lived in this community.

My job brought me back to Brooklyn frequently when we were living in Pittsburgh, so I visited Maple Street months before we even looked for an apartment. I knew that to make Brooklyn work for us, David and I would have to both work, a lot, so Jo Jo’s second home would be more important than the one where we lived. I was on a mission for a school.

When I met Wendy for a tour, I remember thinking to myself, if I was in high school and writing one of those who-would-you-invite-for-dinner types of essays, she’d definitely be on my guest list.I knew, after meeting her once, that I’d seat her somewhere between Eleanor Roosevelt and my mom and pick her brain for her story. I knew this because I’ve spent some time in schools. I believe that the leaders, the teachers, and the families are any school’s center. I believe that schools are the center of who we are and who we can be. The energy around Wendy and the place told me all I needed to know.

Malcolm Gladwell writes about people’s ability to sometimes just know that something is right. We don’t even need to think about it. Sometimes we make our most significant choices just as we blink. It simply happens. I knew that we wanted to plant roots here from my first visit to Maple Street. I’ve been right ever since.

Jo Jo sees Maple Street as an extension of all that we do. At night, after we talk about sending good nights to our family far away, he whispers good night to Anne Marie, Dory, Kimberly, Melissa, KD, Wendy, and (on Greenday), Phoebe. He told me the other day as we headed to school, “Laughing is good for my belly and for the Maple Street School.” Last weekend, he built our apartment out of building blocks and then firmly attached it to a building of Maple Street he’d made.

As I mom, I know he feels safe, connected, and loved. As a teacher, I could fill a book with the conversations I’ve had with Anne Marie about what the children are learning and how she thinks through and connects even the smallest moments of their experiences. She is teaching all the time.

When I read the updates from the other classes, I know that when Jo Jo moves from the 2s teachers to summer camp and to his 3s/4s rooms, he will spend his days with teachers who all live in the same philosophy: that at this age we are born craving knowledge and wondering about every incredible, magical moment in every one of our days. When Jo Jo leaves the 2s teachers for Maple Street after school, he comes home (rather, I coerce and cajole him out of after school) full of Spanish words, drumming rhythms, delicious quesadillas, and simple human happiness.

For that we cherish this place and these people on Lincoln Road. Tuition wipes us out at times. As a mom who works full time, volunteering wipes me out sometimes. Then I look at Wendy, who never stops working but exudes balance. I think about all the rest of you who invest in a co-op preschool because you are committed not just to your family, but to each of these families under this one roof. This place and these people have become, happily, luckily, a center for us. We’re home.

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May 6, 2008 by admin.

The Maple Street School kitchen after recent renovations.

By Stephanie Sherman

It won’t make the kids eat their vegetables, but one thing the new kitchen at Maple Street will do is make clean-up a lot easier.

For those who haven’t been to the innermost chamber of the first floor recently, the kitchen has a whole new look, complete with commercial dishwasher, new base cabinets, a new countertop and backsplash, and even a combination clothes washer and dryer.

The renovation, undertaken in recent weeks, came courtesy of an approximately $5,000 grant, plus additional costs that came out of the maintenance committee’s budget and more than 120 hours in sweat equity.

“We had to use it or lose it,” said committee co-chair John Woelfling of the grant.

Woelfling and wife Roberta, parents of Daisy and Sophie (4s), are both architects, as are—conveniently—a number of others on the maintenance committee. So when the project came up, there were many capable hands ready to dig in.

The grant specifically allowed for the new appliances, but in order to install them, Woelfling said, the base cabinets had to be reconfigured.

“(Co-chair) Tim (Shields) and I looked and said, ‘These base cabinets are in dreadful shape,’” Woelfling recalled. “They were one of the last things to be installed when the school first opened up, and there were some serious corners cut, and not cut very well.”

“We said, ‘You know, if we’re going to be doing this work to get these appliances in there, let’s do this the right way,’”Woelfling said.

After looking at many options, the group got a contractor hired and decided on the specifics, including IKEA base cabinets and countertop
and a full-height pantry cabinet to replace the old wire shelving and serve as the larder.

The all-in-one clothes washer and dryer, though not designed for large loads, is “a very cool unit,” Woelfling said, although the most exciting for those on clean-up duty will undoubtedly be the new dishwasher. Until now, all the plastic toys were scrubbed by hand, with much effort and varying degrees of success, but with the new appliance, everything goes in the wash and the task is done.

The genesis of the project was the grant, which was written a couple of years ago by Rohana Elias-Reyes (mom of Caleb, 2s) and the grant committee and even included money for contractors to come in and do the plumbing hook-up, Woelfling said.

The Woelflings did the blueprints for the project, then discussed them with MSS Director Wendy Cole before moving forward.

Despite the enormous amount of work, Woelfling said they did manage to have some fun along the way.

“We started on a Friday night, we had eight people there and banged out most of the work. It was a very collegial event, everyone pitching in,” Woelfling said, and added that daughter Sophie even came in one day to help set some tile.

Before this, the maintenance committee undertook another project that helped make the kitchen renovation possible; opening up the crawl space beneath the stairs and sheetrocking it so it could become a bona fide storage space, a task that included installing a door that Woelfling
created at home. When that was complete, they were able to move files that had inappropriately been stored in the kitchen to a better place.

Even for Woelfling, who has worked on such varied assignments as YMCAs throughout the city and a more industrial ventilation project for the MTA, the Maple Street kitchen project was interesting.

“As architects, we wouldn’t normally delve into this level of detail, in terms of when the plumber’s going to come in,” Woelfling said. “It’s good for an architect to undertake something like this, so he or she has a good understanding of what’s involved in day to day of building.”

The project is also good for whoever succeeds him, joked Woelfling.

“I think we made it really easy for next year’s maintenance committee,” he said with a laugh.

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May 6, 2008 by admin.

Each edition of The Rag, we’ll sit down with a new Maple Street School family. In April, we met with Krystyne and Takashi Usui and their son Kaito (2s). Here, they indulge us in 14 highly personal and difficult questions:

Krystyne
Born and raised: Born in Wisconsin, raised all over U.S. (Army brat)
Current neighborhood: Prospect Lefferts Gardens
Neighborhood before that: Boerum Hill
Maple street committee assignment: Gala
Occupation: Cosmetics product development
First job: School bus driver, age 16 (Bus 237, Fayetteville, N.C.)
How and where you met: on the D train at Dekalb Ave., at the front of the train every morning
Secretly (or famously) aspire to: win an Oscar
Secretly (or famously) afraid of: heights
Three things that are always in your fridge: cheese, milk and ice cream
Your favorite childhood meal: homemade Russian meat pie
The most beautiful drive you’ve ever taken: The coast highway in Australia, especially the 12 Apostles
Last book you read: Death Note (Japanese manga)
Astrological sign: Cancer

Takashi
Born and raised: Yamanashi, Japan
Current neighborhood: Prospect Lefferts Gardnes
Neighborhood before that: Boerum Hill
Maple street committee assignment: whatever Krys tells me
Occupation: Artist/painter
First job: Drawing teacher
How and where you met: same
Secretly (or famously) aspire to: Wear Chanel suits from the 60s
Secretly (or famously) afraid of: have to think about it
Three things that are always in your fridge: miso paste, tofu and salsa verde
Your favorite childhood meal: Mochi (traditional Japanese New Year) soup
The most beautiful drive you’ve ever taken: Cusco to Machu Picchu, Peru
Last book you read: Detroit Metal City (Japanese manga)
Astrological sign: Virgo

—Stephanie Sherman

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March 5, 2008 by admin.

By Wendy Cole, MSS Director

“Maple Street School is not such a big school, but their hearts are big!”
– Max, first-grader and alumnus

On March 17, 2008, Maple Street School families will vote on a proposal to decide whether we:

1. Go forward in applying for a new contract in the Department of Education�s Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program (UPK), which provides, for free, 2 1/2 hours of education a year for as many as 20 4-year-olds.

2. Do not go forward with our Universal Pre-Kindergarten Program and instead begin a two-tiered tuition system where we can provide a 24% lower tuition for as many as 20 students per year based on family need. This would mean two multi-age classes for 3- and 4-year-olds.

The proposal also includes lowering class size, which, because of quality of teaching, limited space, and meeting the National Association for Education of Young Children’s standards, I fully support.

The question is, should we continue to run a UPK program at the Maple Street School? The answer, I think, is Max’s answer; we have big hearts. And I think our hearts our bigger if we decide to have a new, two-tiered, multi-age system and not have UPK.

Why?

The heart of Maple Street�s philosophy is different than UPK�s educational requirements.

• UPK is about meeting state standards in their prescribed way. Maple Street is about learning and growing (and paying attention to state standards, the National Association of Education of Young Children, and knowledge of child development). UPK is more teacher-directed, Maple Street is more child-centered.

Each year, I attend a Department of Education meeting to learn what the requirements for running UPK will be. This year, we were given a suggested schedule for UPK in our February meeting that actually totaled more than 2 1/2 hours and included independent activities, morning meeting, learning centers and small group instruction, circle time, music and movement or gross motor, and reflections and goodbye. It is suggested that we go outside for up to 30 minutes during those 2 1/2 hours, and last year, when our children were outside one beautiful sunny day for 2 1/2 hours learning and playing, our instructional specialist kindly let us know we needed to go back inside for group instruction.

Maple Street School, on a sunny day when there is learning and playing to do be done in the park, wants to be able to stay in the park. We can learn in the park, too!

Additionally, each year UPK asks for more large group instruction. Maple Street believes large group time should be short. Circle time requires sitting and listening with 20 other children, and this is not the necessarily the best way young children learn. At Maple Street, they learn in small groups, individually, and through play!

• Play is allowed in UPK. Play is considered essential to learning at Maple Street.

While play is allowed in UPK, the suggested schedule does not specifically mention it. Play is the heart of Maple Street.

Children learn math through blocks and science in the sand and water tables, but they also learn to get along, to practice life, and to explore and construct the world around them. These skills are the beginnings of giant skills in life-like relationships and critical thinking. Additionally, multi-age groups add to the complexity of play, where children get to be even more teachers and learners of each other.

• UPK is based on lottery. The tiered-tuition model is based on need.

UPK provides free services based on lottery, whereas Maple Street’s new proposal is based on need. Maple Street believes there is value and teaching in our diversity.

• In the past in UPK, families did not get in. In the tiered-tuition model, we can create our own process.

Many families did not get into UPK last year. This was extremely upsetting to families because their child could not be in 4’s classroom during UPK hours, and they would have to pay more for private tuition. In the new system, everyone would not be guaranteed an exact schedule or classroom, but we can be fairer and work toward a system that families believe is good for them and their children. This is step one to an admissions process that works for all cooperative members.

UPK is not administratively easy or easy for teachers, but it is doable, and each year it gets easier as we get better at it. It does not, though, meet the vision I have of Maple Street as well as our tiered-tuition, multi-age proposal which is based on the following:

• To have quality classrooms where children’s learning and love of learning is valued.
• To recognize play as fundamental to children’s development.
• To value diversity in the classroom, and in society.
• To understand there are multiple intelligences and ways of learning, and to offer opportunities for all our learners. To honor a child’s sense of wonder, and meet it with exploration, research, and discovery.

This is our big heart version that Max might have been talking about. This is, I also think, our bigger mind version. It allows us to expand what we study in the ways we want to, rather than to stick to a schedule or curriculum. It allows us to do what we do better; wonder, explore, research, discover, play and learn!

Posted in Rag March 2008, 2008 | No Comments »

March 5, 2008 by admin.

By Stephanie Sherman

It’s 4:30 p.m. on Friday, and upstairs on the second floor at Maple Street School, the bargaining has begun.

“One more song, Rafe!” Rob Adler calls from the sidelines. Son Rafael Adler-O’Neill, a member of the 3s class, nods and goes back to breakdancing.

“It’s always a negotiation,” Adler said of pick-up time, adding, “Sometimes I have to come back.”

The popularity of afterschool at Maple Street has followed its own trend over the last few years, rising and falling according to the needs of parents. This year, it’s on the rise again, and Maple Street School Director Wendy Cole points to the enthusiasm with which the teachers approach creating a dynamic, creative environment as the main reason why.

“Day school is very generalist, and the afterschool allows us to be specialists,” Cole said. “There’s a chance to do that in the day [school], but the afterschool can really zoom in a little more.”

Afterschool Director KD Harris Diallo also is determined to make the experience much more than childcare.

“If it’s just to take care of your kids, if it were me, I’d hire a babysitter,” Diallo said. “The enrichment is the heart and soul.”

A self-taught dancer who’s been dancing almost as long as she’s been walking, Diallo began working at Maple Street in 2006, when she came up with a global dance camp to add to the regular summer camp itinerary. That fall, she began working as an assistant in the 2s classroom, and this year, she stepped into the role of afterschool director.

Diallo, who describes herself as “very much an at-home mom” to son Sylla, 5, and Haiz, a member of the 2s class, wants the Maple Street community to be excited about afterschool. Acknowledging it can make a long day for families who don’t necessarily need that much childcare, she feels nevertheless that it offers a unique opportunity for growth.

As with day school, each day of afterschool finds a different focus.

Mondays and Tuesdays are Spanish — two days because Diallo and Cole decided the children needed more than one day of language a week to retain much. More specifically, Mondays focus on music and Tuesdays focus on art, and Diallo said they aim to tie both days together with a story of some kind.

Wednesdays are Greenday, with Wendy as the specialist; Thursdays are theater day with 2s mom Nicole Cain leading the charge — “Thursdays are their expressive day,” Diallo said; and Fridays are all about music, usually drumming and singing led by West African drummer and dancer Ismael Kouyate.

“The goal is to really immerse them in something,” Cole said. As head of Greenday, she says she has a number of larger ideas she’d like to see happen, including a year-long study of the park, “to really get into something in the community as much as possible from the macro to the micro.”

Also like day school, afterschool aims to respond to the needs of the school community as a whole, she said.

“Each year is a little bit different because we do what the community is asking for and with the resources we’ve found. Maple Street is really dynamic in that next year, if we have twenty French families asking to do more French, we could maybe accommodate that,” Cole said.

In Cho’s daughter Kai, a member of the 4s class, tried her hand at breakdancing — and a lot of giggling — with friends on a recent Friday.

“We have other options [for childcare], but she’s happiest this way,” Cho said. “Just the fact that she said, ‘I love afterschool.’ She literally said that!”

Because families may purchase either a 5- or 10-class card, and can use that card whenever they wish, afterschool can be a bit unpredictable. The average number of children on any given afternoon is about 15, but the total number enrolled is about twice that, Cole said.

Joseph Stack and Evan Bentch, both in the 2s, said their favorite part of afterschool is snack time, though both are clearly into it when assistant 3s teacher Habby Jacques gets down on the floor to start the afternoon with some stretches. Jacques follows this with the aforementioned breakdancing — complete with a flattened cardboard box for ease of spinning and other movement — and even krump dancing, a version of which incorporates the ever-popular face painting.

Both Cole and Diallo said they would like to see afterschool expand in a way that would allow more children from the community to attend.

The idea is still in development, but Diallo said she and others are working on outreach ideas, including trying to get funding for as many as twenty need-based families.

“One of the goals is to make it more affordable as child care, because Maple Street wants to be diverse and work for families who have to work,” Cole said.

On the flip side, she said, “afterschool is a financial opportunity for Maple Street … but it is also our most underused piece of the budget.”

“It’s really our only true multi-age group program, with the littlest ones to the biggest ones, and KD and I have talked about how you develop little families among the children, and that’s really special to me in afterschool. It really taps into the social and emotional aspects,” Cole said.

Diallo described one such scene in detail. A 2-year-old who was new to afterschool was a little nervous and having some trouble adjusting, “and here come the older girls, taking care of him.

“They didn’t need any guidance for that, they didn’t have me saying, ‘Tell him how much you love him,’” she said. “The kids are really trying to come full circle as a family.”

Posted in Rag March 2008, 2008 | No Comments »

March 5, 2008 by admin.

Siobhan O’Neill, Gala chairwoman, has prepared handy kits packed with helpful hints and useful form letters to assist families with fulfilling their responsibilities. These kits are in the school lobby.

Advertising requirement
-ads due March 7

Auction requirement
-auction donations due March 28

Ticket requirement
-ticket requests due April 16

Posted in Rag March 2008, Gala 2008, 2008 | No Comments »

March 5, 2008 by admin.

Old School Sesame Street and Jeremy Zmuda’s New Children’s Record

By Jason Sherman

I grew up on a gritty block on the edge of Harlem in the 1970s that felt a lot like Sesame Street: the place was teeming with kids; our corner grocery store was run by a bespectacled, bowtie- and white-apron-wearing proprietor; a guy named Jack had a television fix-it shop across the street; and there were always neighbors hanging out on our stoop.

We kids of 121^st street during that era were lucky enough to have a real connection to the children’s television show as well; Damien Brown, a child and family friend on our block, made regular appearances with Mr. Hooper and Maria and Grover.

It was he who delivered the totally scandalous news that there was no actual Sesame Street; just a television studio inside a nondescript building on Broadway at 81^st street.

One of my brothers, Caleb, even toured the set when he was about 5, on a playgroup day trip, and was traumatized at seeing the Big Bird costume hanging limp by the scruff of the neck, high in the rafters above the set.

Later, another of my brothers, Brendan — the fourth of us five kids — had a crack at joining the kids’ ensemble on the show; but on his second day, the directors deemed him too difficult to work with because they couldn’t convince him to take off his sneakers for a bit that involved running around without shoes.

Brendan now says he was so self conscious about the shabby hand-me-down socks he was wearing that day that he couldn’t bring himself take off his ProKeds, a story that sends my parents — to this day — reeling with embarrassment and disbelief.

These experiences and revelations, however, did nothing to dampen the love my siblings and I had for the show, particularly it’s songs. We had a number of vinyl Sesame Street song collections that remained high in our listening rotation for years.

Looking back, I realize how so many of those tunes — many of which describe urban life — anchor memories of magical times and serve as a time capsule, capturing New York City during a period where the subways weren’t particularly safe and the streets were a lot less clean.
Since becoming a parent nearly three years ago, I’ve wondered who — if anyone — might provide a soundtrack for my children, something with bona fide street credibility.

Might a collection of new tunes be capable of making a similarly indelible impression?

Maple Street School’s music teacher Jeremy Zmuda and artistic partner Clare Muldaur Manchom, a singer and songwriter, have launched a project that aims to do just that.

With the help of a small flock of young Maple Street School alumni, Zmuda and Manchom this month plan to turn the upstairs 3s classroom into a studio and wrap up recording their album of original children’s songs about life in New York City.

Backup singers for a number of tracks on the new album are slated to include: Lucy Pascarosa, Kamari Pope, Nina Weinstock, Lauren Banks, and Orlando Cole Gorton. Jeremy’s niece, Kate Bailey, is flying in from Chicago to sing along, as well.

The as-yet-untitled record, due for release this summer, includes tunes that depict — with humor and a child’s sensibility — essentials of Gotham life: navigating the subway system; finding a good meal; getting your bearings across the five boroughs; and the realization that living in the city means one never has a good excuse to be bored.

Zmuda and Manchom — who first met in the late 1990s while studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston — are gifted musicians.

Zmuda, originally from Long Beach, IN, is an award-winning songwriter and accomplished jazz guitarist.

Manchom, who grew up on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off Cape Cod, is a singer who melds contemporary folk and jazz styles. She has backed up Sting, Bette Midler and Billy Joel and last fall released an album with her pop band, Clare & the Reasons.

“It’s one of the most exciting recording projects I’ve ever been involved in,” said Zmuda, who, in addition to teaching at Maple Street School, also instructs at the Grace Preschool in Brooklyn and the Roosevelt Island Nursery School. “The potential is huge,” he said of this project, “More so than with my jazz records.”

They allowed me to preview a couple of the songs, such as “Subways All Ways,” with a delightfully infectious chorus that manages to pack in the name of every train line, works in a kazoo along with real sounds from underground, and funny touches such as one of those maddeningly unintelligible announcements about a service change.

“There’s a few songs that you listen to and you’d know they are kid songs. But then there are a couple that you wouldn’t be so sure were kids songs,” said Manchom. “We hope that it will be parents friendly.”

Along with the liner notes, the record will include an illustrated map of the city featuring places mentioned in the songs, she said.

The idea for the project was spawned last summer during Saturday music classes Zmuda taught at Maple Street School. Zmuda has a formal degree as a music educator and has taught for more than ten years students from age two through college. He has taught at Maple Street since 2005.

“I wanted to start my own curriculum and write my own songs,” he said. “I didn’t think I was up for writing it all by myself.” So, he pulled in Manchom, now his Ditmas Park neighbor, to work with him.

To give their original songs — with titles such as “Taxi,” “I’m Hungry (I’m Hungry, I’m Hungry, I’m Hungry, I’m Tired),” “Five Boroughs,” and “Bridges and Tunnels” — an additional dose of authentic city flavor, they collected real ambient sounds of the city and woven them through the tunes.

My daughter Annabelle (2s), a huge fan of the Q train and pretty much all forms of public transportation, is already regularly requesting “Subways All Ways.” Check it out on the blog. You can preview other tunes that will be on the album online at myspace.com/songsinthekeyofnewyork.

Posted in Rag March 2008, 2008 | No Comments »

March 5, 2008 by admin.

Each edition of The Rag, we’ll sit down with a new Maple Street School family. In February, we talked with Veronique Gambier-Davis and Carlton Davis and their daughters Chloe, a member of the 4s class, and Iris, 18 months. Here, they indulge us in 15 highly personal and difficult questions:

Carlton
Born and raised: Hartford, CT
Current neighborhood: Clinton Hill
Neighborhood before that: Prospect Heights
Number of siblings: 3
Occupation: photographer
First job: paper boy
Secretly (or famously) aspire to: sleep
Maple Street committee assignment: gala
How you met your mate: at a clambake on the beach
Three things that are always in your fridge: mustard, chocolate, hot sauce
Something you love to eat: Veronique’s cooking
Something you love to cook: duck breast
Secretly (or famously) afraid of: sleep
Last book you read: Goodnight Moon
Craziest thing you’ve seen in New York City: monarch butterflies fluttering outside of my 12th-floor studio window
Astrological sign: Scorpio

Veronique
Born and raised: Toulon, France
Current neighborhood: Clinton Hill
Neighborhood before that: Prospect Heights
Number of siblings: 2
Occupation: Mom
First job: babysitting
Secretly (or famously) aspire to: paint- paint-paint
Maple Street committee assignment: gala
How you met your mate: at a Birthday party on the beach in the Hamptons
Three things that are always in your fridge: green salad, cheese, creme fraiche
Something you love to eat: Muscat grapes
Something you love to cook: onion tart
Secretly (or famously) afraid of: roller coaster
Last book you read: Today? A Very Hungry Caterpillar
Craziest thing you�ve seen in New York City: Someone riding a bike with a parrot on his shoulder
Astrological sign: Taurus

– Stephanie Sherman

Posted in Rag March 2008, 2008 | No Comments »