About Us
About PS 452
PS 452 is a District 3 zoned public elementary school on the Upper West Side serving children in 3-K through 5th grade. Founded in 2010, PS 452 relocated to 210 W. 61st Street in 2017.
Vision Statement
PS 452 is a learning community in which children, families, and staff from diverse backgrounds wonder, discover, and create together. We provide a rigorous and dynamic academic experience and a supportive environment for healthy social emotional development. We support our students in becoming informed, empathetic, critical thinkers with the skills and agency to grow into responsible citizens capable of bringing about positive change to their communities.
Learning Environment at PS 452
PS 452 recognizes the need to educate and prepare our students for the future. We do this while, at the same time, retaining the wonder, creativity and discovery that is paramount to elementary school education. We are committed to supporting and sustaining a learning community that is inclusive, diverse and equitable. We embrace these values as being critical to development, learning, and success. It is important to recognize institutional barriers, including racism and bias, that contribute to pervasive inequities within our school system and wider communities. We take a strong stance against racism and institutional bias and stand in support of building a community of socially conscious, anti-racist lifelong learners--children and adults alike. Our community is a place that respects diversity, practices inclusion, and celebrates individual differences.
PS 452 educates students through content based-learning and standards-aligned curricula and content based learning. We believe that students learn best by doing. Social studies and science inquiry drive the curriculum and foster opportunities to explore the world outside the classroom and form educational partnerships with community organizations and through visits to museums, landmarks, parks, neighborhoods, and cultural institutions, as well as through online resources, all of which are essential to providing a holistic educational experience.
Collaborative teaching and learning is also at the heart of what we do. Group projects that require the children to plan, research, organize and share their work with others. Teachers develop goal-oriented units that use technology, art, drama and movement to express ideas, and set expectations so children are aware of the journey of each unit of study. Students are guided to demonstrate their learning using creative and developmentally appropriate ways. Assessments based on NY State Standards help inform administrators, teachers, and families about what students know well and are able to do.
PS 452 has a robust enrichment curriculum including studio art, music, and media and library studies. In order to meet the needs of the whole child, we incorporate social emotional learning via Yale University's RULER program as an explicit component of the school experience.
Each grade has an integrated Co-Teaching (ICT) class that pair a general education and special education teacher in a classroom where up to 40 percent of children have Individualized Education Plans (IEP). All students benefit from the smaller student to teacher ratio.
For more information, please visit the Academics section of our website.