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Registration Group A (~80 Students Accepted) - Start Date: Monday, September 15, 2025
Registration Group B (~40 Students Accepted) - Start Date: Monday, October 13, 2025
Wait List - Start date to begin as soon as registered students drop out, or cannot commit to a minimum of 3 days
What to do next: Await for an email from ms51k@leapnyc.org confirming your position on the list. Emails for Group B will come soon.
Please DO NOT resubmit your application - duplicate applications may result in the removal of your application from the list.
Applications that have missing information may not have seat reserved as the applications are going into the system. Please understand this is to ensure that families are not submitting incomplete applications for the sake of holding a seat.
Applications are being input in the order they have been received over email in the order of first received - Additional emails bump the applications up to the top of the mailbox instead of the order of reception date.
ALL families will hear from LEAP@MS51 as applications are processed - ALL families will receive a Registration Group or be informed of their Waitlist status.
Waitlisted families will be contacted in order - and must be able to attend a minimum of 3 days per week.
Updated: 9/15/2025
LEAP@MS51 is a 100% FREE, arts-focused, in-house after-school program funded by the Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD). LEAP@MS51 operates Mon-Fri 3PM-6PM on days where school is in session and works in partnership with MS51 administration & teachers to bridge the gap between day school and after-school to ensure students can bridge the learning gap with extra-curricular activities. Read on below to see what makes our program offers in the classrooms!
LEAP provides educational arts programs that promote access and equity for New York City students underserved in the arts. We inspire diverse school communities to love learning and build their creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking skills.
We envision a city filled with creative and collaborative community members prepared to thrive in the 21st Century. We’re enabling underrepresented youth to find success in high-earning careers by building the next generation of life-long learners and innovative problem-solvers.
Over 70% of business leaders say that creative thinking is the top skill they look for when hiring. But the arts–one of the best ways to teach creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication skills–aren't always prioritized in schools. Even more so, traditional teaching methods can't access all types of learners, often resulting in low student engagement. Enter LEAP. -leapnyc.org
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS
Upcoming LEAP@MS51 Closures
September 23-24, 2025 - Rosh Hashanah
October 2, 2025 - Yom Kippur
October 13, 2025 - Italian Heritage/Indigenous People's Day
October 20, 2025 - Diwali
OPEN FOR REGISTRATION
Please head over to the registration page to complete an application
Email the Application to ms51k@leapnyc.org to complete registration process
Acceptance into the program will be confirmed via email**
Paper Applications are available in-person at the MS51 Main Office
We believe youth deserve an education experience beyond just day-school to explore and gain a competitive edge in the 21st century. Communities have been noticing the applications for high schools, colleges, and jobs have become more competitive than they ever were, and many youth are not prepared for the next step. As such, we want to prepare our youth for future opportunities, and to help bridge the learning gap that has been a growing concern for families.
At LEAP@MS51, we strive to build a positive learning environment to enable young minds to grow, expand, and explore new skills. We blend 3 educational frameworks into our activities: Project-Based Learning (PBL), Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), Self-Directed Learning, and Career & Technical Information (CTE). Each of these frameworks structure our classes and transform our activities to provide a well-rounded and powerful experience for our youth.
In addition to the educational frameworks, we also believe discovery, choice, and exploration is an important aspect to introduce youth to areas of study that may potentially become lifelong interests and skills. We provide a trimester schedule, which we call a "cycles" - and within each of these 3 cycles, students are provided more than a dozen different activities to choose from, and can select up to 6 different activities per cycle and up to 18 different activities by the end of the year!
Students will be provided opportunities to build upon new or existing skillsets as they complete their 6th- 8th grade with LEAP. Each student will have their own virtual portfolio link for each of their individual projects across different activities. By the end of the year, links will be compiled into a complete virtual portfolio for a “foot-up” on their competition as they grow into young adults!
PBL, SEL, SDL, and CTE are educational frameworks that have been determined to be effective in encouraging educational growth in children. We integrate many of these elements into activities to provide a well-rounded, powerful program for our students.
Project Based Learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge. -pblworks.org
PBL remains an important framework among all of our classes, as it studies have proven it is among the best ways to help students retain learning. By intentionally blending in PBL practices, LEAP@MS51 administration helps ensure activities are hands-on, fun, and engaging for youth.
SEL is best defined as an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. -casel.org
As SEL has become an integral part in education, we continue to blend in SEL practices to ensure we provide the support students need to properly regulate themselves and their emotions. LEAP@MS51 runs in a slightly more intimate setting compared to day school, with a staff-to-student ratio of 15 students per teacher as opposed to NYC DOE's 30 students per teacher. We want to help students develop more than just academically, but also personally and emotionally.
Self-directed learning describes a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes. -Malcolm Knowles
SDL is an important process in which students learn to become truly independent learners. We believe learning is a life-long journey. As we encourage our youth to learn new skills, we also want to empower them with the skills they need to learn further their own educational career.
CTE provides academic and technical instruction in the content areas of agriculture, business and marketing, family and consumer sciences, health sciences, trade and technical education, and technology education. -nysed.gov
CTE is an area that is normally applied to High School Education - however, we also believe that we can never get too early of a head start! We build in CTE elements into select activities where students have shown promise in certain areas to extend their classroom knowledge beyond just theory, and finally be able to put things into practice! While CTE topics may not apply to all activities, we implement CTE practices in activities where they can reach for real-life, hands-on learning opportunities.
All in all, we'd love for the program to "wow" you! This is about the youth we serve, and we sincerely hope your child(ren)'s work and progress will "wow" you even more - consider registering today!