Teaching New York history is mandated by the state's K-12
curriculum, but it seldom gets presented to students in a
memorable and vivid way. In large part this is because teachers
confront a dearth of exciting and useful materials, they receive
little professional training dealing with the subject matter
and its pedagogy, they are often isolated from discussions
taking place in universities, and they get little opportunity
to interact with interested peers.
Scores of talented instructors, however, in the public,
parochial and independent school systems, have devised innovative
approaches to teaching local history. In addition, there have
been many initiatives by educators working in such institutions
as public television, the Daily News, the New York Historical
Society, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, to use the
city's history in curricula.
The Gotham Center wants to bring all these people together
to pool their talent and energy. The long term goal is to
design an integrated series of curriculum packages that bundle
primary source materials (both texts and images) together
with suggested and tested lesson plans, and to post them on
our web site, making them available for immediate downloading
by teachers throughout the city.
Our recent projects have included two teaching conferences
in 2001 and 2003
that brought together local teachers, historians and cultural
organizations. We have been awarded two US Department of Education
grants, History, First Hand, and the
city-wide project, American Journey.
In 2003, the Gotham Center, along with the New York City
Department of Education and their partners, was awarded a
citywide Teaching American History Grant from the US Department
of Education. The American Journey: From Staff Development
to Student Achievement in the Study of American History
project will develop, document, evaluate and disseminate a
program of professional development that will instruct public
school teachers in basic concepts of traditional American
history. The program partners include City Lore, the Historic
House Trust, Henry Street Settlement, the Brooklyn Historical
Society, The New-York Historical Society, and other historical
societies and museums across the city.
The foundation of the program will be professional development
courses for grade 3 through 8 teachers. The program will include
Summer Institutes for less experienced teachers in elementary
and middle schools and Fellows sessions throughout the academic
year for selected middle schools teachers. Both will teach
basic concepts, content and chronologies of American history,
demonstrating how they are illustrated by some local examples.
They will also show how these histories, both national and
local, can be brought into the classroom through informed
teaching and engaging methodologies. We hope to provide a
model for the centralization and systematization of the teaching
of American and New York City history throughout the school
system.
The program will also establish a web-based History Education
Network for Grade k-12 teachers. It will support and disseminate
the history instruction, content and methodology emerging
from the professional development courses, the experience
of other Teaching American History Grant recipients, and the
vast range of resources available from the networked groups
to encourage new teaching and learning in the classroom.
The program will target teachers in schools that are not
served by other enrichment programs, including other Teaching
American History programs. We will identify other under-performing
schools and schools with a preponderance of under-trained
teachers. The grant will also enable us to build on relationships
and experience developed over many years between schools and
the participating cultural organizations.
For more information, call the Gotham Center Education Office
at 212-817-8467 or email gothamed@gc.cuny.edu
or juliemaurer@nyc.rr.com
To see the Chancellor Klein's press release announcing this
grant CLICK
HERE.
In October 2001, the Gotham
Center received a prestigious three-year grant from the U.
S. Department of Education. The History, First Hand
project, a partnership with Community School District One
(CSD One) and City Lore on the Lower East Side of Manhattan,
is an innovative model of professional development designed
to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge,
understanding, and awareness of American history. The research-based
program was developed to make the study of history more engaging
for teachers and students in 3rd to 8th grades. The project
enables teachers to teach American history as a distinct subject
within the core curriculum and aids teachers in their quest
to raise basic student literacy skills. In all phases of the
project, teachers and students learn to use the Internet as
a research tool and develop digital projects.
Over the course of the grant,
the Gotham Center and their partners developed and implemented
four teacher courses focusing on different themes in American
history, with a special emphasis on the history of New York
City. These courses exposed CSD One teachers to various aspects
of New York's history; they provided opportunities for integrating
New York City themes into the core curriculum; and they familiarized
teachers with new strategies and teaching methods for their
classrooms. The courses encouraged teachers to focus on the
full range of primary resources available for historical research:
newspaper accounts, diaries, letters, census and other manuscript
records, maps, autobiographies, fiction, poetry, accounts
by journalists, art. The first course, "New York Challenged,"
held in Spring 2002, focused on adversities that the city
has faced throughout its history, including the Draft Riots
and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. The second course, "New
York at Work and Play, 1940s-1950s," held in Fall 2002,
dealt with the ways in which labor and leisure have played
defining roles in the city's past. The third course, "New
York: Family and Community," held in Spring 2003, dealt
with the changing structure of New York families, including
the role of ethnicity, class, and race on family dynamics.
For more information, CLICK
HERE.
In addition to courses, the History, First
Hand partnership included:
-- A mentorship program in which
select Community School District One teachers were mentored
in their classrooms to develop and field test project ideas
for dissemination
-- The future publication History, First Hand,
a curriculum resource, issued both in print and online with
project ideas, lesson plans, and teaching methods
-- Citywide events such as the Gotham Center's Teaching
History Conference held on May 9-10, 2003.
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