NorthJersey.com, NJ
Jan 21 2005

Turning nature into a classroom for young minds

Friday, January 21, 2005

By CATHERINE HOLAHAN
STAFF WRITER

NEW MILFORD – Saving energy to energize minds.

That could be a new motto at the Hovnanian School, where teachers and
students are trying to raise $118,000 to construct a greenhouse and
garden learning center that runs completely on alternative energy
sources.

“I think it’s appropriate for the kids to grow up in this kind of
environmentally sensitive surrounding,” said Vahak Hovnanian, founder
of the Armenian private school in New Milford.

The pre-K-8 school was started 29 years ago by Hovnanian to educate
the region’s growing Armenian student population in the Armenian and
French languages, as well as connect the students to their ancestral
culture. The school has 200 students from Bergen County and New York.

“America is beautiful because we have so many different nationalities
living here, and we are part of the mosaic,” Hovnanian said. “We
don’t want to lose our color in that beautiful garden that we all are
in.”

Teachers and parents came up with the idea for the garden learning
center last year as a way to utilize land around the school to teach
students about nature and science, and have space for outdoor
classes.

Miriam Kaprielian, the parent of a seventh-grade student, volunteered
to head the committee to develop the plans and raise funds for the
center.

Kaprielian contacted friend David Delardi of Wayne-based Landscape
Perceptions and Lynn Stile, a professor of physics at Richard
Stockton College and a geothermal technology expert, to design the
center.

Plans call for construction of a greenhouse heated by coils or pumps
that are installed deep underground and draw heat from the earth.
Floor lighting for the center will be solar-powered, and rainwater
will be collected in a cistern and pumped out to nourish the
greenhouse plants, Kaprielian said.

School faculty also hope to have a bird-feeding station, a place for
wind instruments, a pond, a sunken outdoor classroom for poetry and
English courses, and a human checkerboard where the kids take the
role of the pieces.

Kaprielian said that nearly all the courses have designed curriculum
that would utilize some feature of the greenhouse and garden. Science
classes will teach about various forms of energy and plants, computer
classes will log information gathered through experiments in the
garden, and the English and language classes will use the outdoor
classroom on warm days.

“We are very excited,” Kaprielian said. “The hard part is raising the
money.”

The school has raised $11,886 of the total cost. On Saturday and
Sunday, a yard sale will be held at the school to raise money. A
specially made quilt will be auctioned off on Sunday.

Varak Baronian, a 13-year-old seventh-grader, said he is looking
forward to the center.

“It will be a nice place to be with your friends and study,” he said.