What does Brooklyn mean to you? To our students, Brooklyn is home. It’s the place where many of them learned to talk and walk; it’s where they made their first friends; it’s a place they will forever be connected to. Brooklyn is many things to many people, but for the Brooklyn Connections staff, it provides a rich history to dive into.
Brooklyn Connections, our archive’s school outreach arm, is celebrating its 10th birthday this year. In 2006, this program was launched as a way to connect Brooklyn students with the vast array of resources in our local history archive. Funding was procured, an educator hired, contacts made with schools, and the rest is history. 10 years later, Brooklyn Connections has cumulatively served approximately 13,000 students in nearly 100 schools throughout the borough and beyond.
Our love for research and Brooklyn’s history resonates though the lessons we share with our students. This year we talked about so many ways to use information: from analyzing primary and secondary sources to conducting research online, from note taking to developing a research question and crafting an argument. The class of 2016-2017 is ready to take on research projects from a new standpoint.
This years’ students chose project topics spanning every aspect of Brooklyn life including landmarks, (Coney Island, Prospect Park Zoo, Green-Wood Cemetery, the Verrazano Bridge), neighborhoods (Crown Heights, Bushwick, Canarsie, Carroll Gardens, Midwood, Gowanus, Newtown Creek, and Weeksville), events (American Revolution and Civil Rights), and numerous other themes around social movements, communities, and transportation. There is always more to learn about Brooklyn.
We are proud to present an exhibition of the research projects completed by students from 4th to 12th grade throughout Brooklyn and Queens. Using historic newspapers, photographs, maps, and other archival documents to explore Brooklyn’s past, our students have not only completed astonishing projects but they have also developed a deeper understanding of, and connection to, their local history.
Thank you to our extremely generous funders; without you, this program would not be possible. Thank you, too, to our class of 2016-2017 for making our 10th year a memorable one!
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