Debate and Diplomacy in Brooklyn’s History
Every year, the National History Day contest provides students with an opportunity to dive into research related to an overall theme and present their findings in a variety of formats at their regional contest. We’re thrilled to host the regional contest for New York City at the Center for Brooklyn History in the 2021-22 school year, and we’ve been using the summer break to brainstorm some of our favorite topics related to this year’s contest theme. This year’s theme is Debate & Diplomacy in History: Successes, Failures, Consequences. You can read more about the theme at nhd.org/theme.…
A Teacher Grows in Brooklyn: Sarah J. Smith Tompkins Garnet
In March 2020, just before the closure of Brooklyn Public Library’s physical spaces, the Brooklyn Connections team had the pleasure of spending a day at the Brooklyn College Archives with their archivists and a group of New York City school teachers for a day-long professional development workshop on women in Brooklyn. We were excited to be in the Brooklyn College Archives because of their fantastic collection of material about the life and work of Shirley Chisholm; this inspired us to look at material from the Brooklyn Collection that highlights the lives of other women of color in Brooklyn…
Online Instruction and Office Hours with Brooklyn Connections
To all the teachers who are teaching online right now, the Brooklyn Connections team wants to say: thank you for everything you are doing! We recognize how exceptionally challenging, time consuming and emotionally and physically taxing this work is and we are here to offer support. Let us know if we can help in any of the following ways: Online Instruction: Let us take the mic for awhile! Brooklyn Connections educators are here to deliver live or asynchronous lessons of your choosing for grades 4 through 12. What kind of lessons? Online research! (i.…
Stay Connected! Online Research Tutorials for Brooklyn Newsstand and our Digital Collections
Looking for tips for digging into your Brooklyn history research online? Check out our new video tutorials for Brooklyn Newsstand and the Brooklyn Collection's Digital Collections. Brooklyn Newsstand is a collection of digitized Brooklyn newspapers made available through a partnership with Newspapers.com. Right now, the full content of Brooklyn Newsstand is available for free from any location. The Digital Collections offer a selection of more than 20,000 historical photographs and maps from the Brooklyn Collection, and audio and video recordings created by the Brooklyn…
Pandemics in Brooklyn: a view from 1918
It’s hard to know which of these things is more unexpected: that, in a time of health crisis and desperate need for accurate information, my first instinct is to read the newspaper from 100 years ago; or that said news coverage has proved oddly comforting. If either of these instincts resonates with you as well, check out what the Brooklyn Daily Eagle shared about the 1918 influenza pandemic. First of all: folks felt unsure about things. On September 18th, writing about “Influenza and Sports” (some things never change…), the Eagle reported that “Whether the influenza will flourish is a…
Teaching with Primary Sources: History Mystery!
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection. It focuses on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. Using primary sources in the classroom shows us that we can access history through many different formats as long as we are grounded in historical thinking. A History Mystery is a fun way to create an…
Teaching with Primary Sources: School History in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection, focused on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. As part of our work, we create freely available Primary Source Packets to help students and teachers access primary source material from the Brooklyn Collection about local history topics. Now that school is…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Food in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection, focused on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. As part of our work, we create freely available Primary Source Packets to help students and teachers access primary source material from the Brooklyn Collection about local history topics. Brooklynites love to…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Environmentalism in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection, focused on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. As part of our work, we create freely available Primary Source Packets to help students and teachers access primary source material from the Brooklyn Collection about local history topics. As summer…
Outlining inequality: how student research put redlining on the map
At Brooklyn Connections we are all about student research, and so we’re always excited to find historic examples of this in the Brooklyn Collection. One item in particular gives a glimpse into the impact student research has had on our borough. NYPIRG, the New York Public Interest Research Group, was founded in the 1970s as an issues-focused student activist group. Within seven years of its inception it was based on thirteen campuses across the state and counted over 100,000 dues-paying members. Students were able to receive academic credit for engaging in research on NYPIRG projects;…
Teaching with Primary Sources: the LGBTQ+ Movement in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection, focused on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. As part of our work, we create freely available Primary Source Packets to help students and teachers access primary source material from the Brooklyn Collection about local history topics. Every year in June we…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Bridges in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection, focused on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. As part of our work, we create freely available Primary Source Packets to help students and teachers access primary source material from the Brooklyn Collection about local history topics. Brooklyn is all…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Women’s History Month
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection, focused on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. As part of our work, we create Primary Source Packets to help students and teachers access primary source material from the Brooklyn Collection about local history topics. Each Packet contains one secondary…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Black History Month
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection, focused on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. As part of our work, we create Primary Source Packets to help students and teachers access primary source material from the Brooklyn Collection about local history topics. Each Packet contains one…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Community Organizing in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection, focused on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. As part of our work, we create Primary Source Packets to help students and teachers access primary source material from the Brooklyn Collection about local history topics. Each Packet contains one…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Maps and Atlases in the English Classroom
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection. It focuses on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. We’ve already talked about how much we love maps and atlases when we’re teaching with primary sources; this blog post looks at how we can use those in the English classroom by examining a lesson on the…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Avoiding Plagiarism
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection. It focuses on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. Using primary sources in the classroom shows us that we can access history through many different formats as long as we are grounded in historical thinking. When we’re using primary sources in the classroom,…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Claims and Counterclaims in History
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection. It focuses on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. The ability to identify and analyze claims and counterclaims is key for students of all ages. Primary sources give us a terrific opportunity to identify claims and counterclaims of various voices…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Citing our Sources
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection. It focuses on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. This blog post is part of a series from the Brooklyn Connections team, sharing skills and ideas for using archives primary source material in the classroom. Using primary sources in the classroom shows us that we can access history through many different formats as long as we are grounded in historical thinking. Whether we’re using primary or sources in the…
Housing in Brooklyn
Brooklyn Connections is the education outreach program in the Brooklyn Collection. It focuses on cultivating 21st Century learning skills in students and supporting teachers on the incorporation of archives materials into curricula. As part of our work, we create Primary Source Packets to help students and teachers access primary source material from the Brooklyn Collection about local history topics. Each Packet contains one secondary source which provides a general introduction to the topic, followed by at least ten primary sources accompanied by document based questions. For the start of…