|| Program Description || Program Goals || Evaluation Comments ||

The Hartford Connection©

“The promise of using Hartford’s landscape and historic built environment to teach American history is remarkably great. There is not place in the United States wher the 20th century gulf between city and suburb has been wider, It is equally true, however, that the hartford region is undergoing major demographic and economic changes that make it less and less sensible to speak of city and its suburbs defined against one another. The Hartford Connection project is particulary valuable because it will create a common course of study-a common experience and base of information-for students from the hartfiord Eregionb, and across the whole state. The project is also particulary promising becaues it offers (and will document) a collaborative model of curriculum development that is designed to meet the needs of secondary school tecahers who are in the process of adapting to new, standards-based curricula. We will, in other words, be delievering the right product to the right people at the right moment.”

Andrew H. Walsh Ph. D.
serving as Project Director of Interpretation of Research Associate and Director,
The Leonard E. Greenburg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life,
Trinity College.

“I believe that the interdisciplinary programs offered by the Architecture Resource Center provide an innovative approach to assist communities, youth, and their educators with hands-on experiences that will enhance their achievements by strengthening and advancing the teaching and learning in the humanities and arts. The collaborative, educational design programs of the ARC enable our children to grasp a deeper understanding of the world around them, demonstrating the vast connections that constitute the fabric of our lives, our neighborhoods, our communities, and our world. Understanding design and its influence on our lives is essential to observing, interpreting, and shaping the world around us.”

Daniel W. Gregg,
Social Studies Consultant,
State of Connecticut Department of Education

Program Description

The Hartford Connection (HC) is an interdisciplinary, cultural heritage education program centered in the arts and humanities, designed to support and strengthen the American history program taught in CT’s middle school classrooms as mandated in the curriculum frameworks established by the CT State Department of Education. The four year program, now entering into its final phase (production of products) merited multi-year funding, a $250,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts.

This program is unique in that it was designed as a standard-setting curriculum and professional development initiative. It began with research and development in five CT school districts (Hartford, East Hartford, Manchester, Windsor, and Salem), expanded to include application and testing in six additional Capitol Region districts (Bolton, East Windsor, Hebron, Simsbury, West Hartford, and Wethersfield), and now is ultimately destined to serving middle school teachers and students throughout CT. In addition, HC will be disseminated as a model for adaptation in school districts throughout the nation. The overall purpose of the HC initiative is to provide middle school students with an understanding of a city (Hartford) as a metropolitan region, seen as it functions locally and as it relates to the state nation, and world. Over the four years the project shifted from teacher training to curriculum development and finally project dissemination.

The Hartford Connection represents a partnership with Trinity College, Connecticut State Library; and Capitol Region Education Council and is supported as well by outstanding regional and state cultural organizations and government agencies.

Program Need: Architecture has tremendous, largely untapped potential for integrated humanities and arts education. While state mandates and education experts are calling for schools to offer their students programs that integrate multiple disciplines, present primary sources, address students’ various learning styles, and relate directly to students’ experiences, educational materials that support these programs are scarce and usually address only one or two of these components. HC uses the built environment as an example of how to provide all four. Furthermore, HC is unusual in its attention to the critically important and generally misunderstood interrelationship of city and suburbs.

Program Goals

• To create ongoing working relationships between public school teachers, scholars and designers that lead to opportunities for enhanced arts and humanities teaching and learning.
  
  
• To create a series of standards-based lessons that address calls for materials that integrate multiple disciplines, incorporate primary sources, accommodate various learning styles, relate directly to students’ experiences, and employ current technologies for the improvement of students’ learning in the arts and humanities.
  
  
• To engage teachers and, in turn, students in an appreciation of the built environment and its reflection of the culture and history of metropolitan Hartford.
  
  
• To train teachers in a design language through varied design activities and primary research and to ensure they can pass these skills on to students.
  
  
• To create a framework for developing similar cultural heritage projects.
  

The conceptual basis of the HC program is in compliance with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s definition of heritage education, which is "an approach to teaching and learning that integrates information preserved in the natural and built environment and material culture with other sources of evidence, such as written documents, oral tradition, graphic materials, music and folkways. It is an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that draws upon the research and practice of many fields of study, including archaeology, anthropology, sociology, history, geography, economics, science and the arts."

HC is premised on the idea that design is more than a symptom of our time; it is rather a creative response to the contemporary scene. Each of the fourteen HC case studies, the focus for the program, was selected for its distinctiveness as an integral thread within Hartford’s historic fabric and for its ability to demonstrate the ways in which new designs interpret the changing life of the contemporary city—especially the capital city—to its living inhabitants. Individually, they represent a principal period of U.S. history as identified by the public schools; a specific building or landscape type; the diversity of the capital city through time; and major events in local or state history.

Because teachers were actively involved in developing and piloting program materials, the publications are guaranteed to be highly effective tools for creative classroom teaching. Each unit of the text, focused on one of the fourteen case studies, addresses a topic in American history (e.g. the formation of the United States government, the Civil War and Reconstruction) and will include an overview discussion of how national trends have had local manifestations (e.g. Hartford’s experience of the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution in CT and Hartford). Each case study explores one or more aspects of metropolitan Hartford’s cultural landscape, through discussion, illustration (modern and historic), primary documents, and design activities. The publications also include, an index, a glossary of terms and people, a timeline, related resources (web sites and museums), enrichment activities, aerial photos, and maps of metropolitan Hartford and CT.

The HC program complements and expands on the foundation laid by the ARC’s New Haven’s Cultural Landscape program. At the conceptual level, HC places architecture and landscape in a more comprehensive social and historical context. In addition to exploring major features of the built environment as architecture, HC uses these buildings—both architectural masterworks and more modest buildings and landscapes of social significance—to illustrate the region’s growth over four centuries, from a frontier village to a complex, interdependent, urban region. The study units are structured chronologically, both so that they can be deployed easily to enrich the coordinate units of Connecticut’s secondary school U.S. history curriculum and to illustrate how the uses and social meanings of the built environment change over time. New Haven’s Cultural Landscape was structured effectively to meet the needs of that city’s standards-based curriculum at the fifth-grade level. The Hartford Connection will serve a much larger audience in its seamless meshing with the curriculum standards for the mandatory statewide middle school U.S. history survey. In addition, it is structured to supplement this curriculum period by historical period, to enable teachers to use the region’s cultural resources to teach across the full spectrum of American history and develop in their students a rich and accurate sense of the region and its experience through time. Through generous illustration; carefully selected primary sources; context-minded and age-appropriate prose; and tested, hands-on design activities, HC offers all Connecticut students an understanding of Hartford, as a city and metropolitan region, as it functions locally and as it relates to the state, the nation and the world.

Evalualtion Comments

External evaluation was conducted by Curriculum Research Evaluation Inc., who has a strong reputation as an independent evaluator on national and local evaluation studies for private business and industry, universities, pre K-12 school districts, and state and local government agencies.

According to CRE, by the end of the professional development sessions, the teachers indicted that the sessions had had the following impact on their teaching and on their students’ learning:

• Better understanding of design skills and concepts
• Understanding of the importance of using a hands-on approach
• Strategies for engaging all students in the design activities
• A basic understanding of classical Greek architecture
• An understanding that form follows function in the design of a building, especially those in a democracy
• Experiences with new approaches to teaching and learning
• Better understanding of the ideas of history and culture
• Better understanding of the architecture in the local neighborhood
• Additional opportunities for vocabulary development
• Better understanding of ways to develop students’ knowledge of architecture and its connection to art
• Better understanding of how to connect state standards with interdisciplinary activities that support the district curriculum
• Better understanding of the connection between content learned and the “real world.”
• An opportunity to experience creative and practical age appropriate instruction and application activities
• Practice with math and measurement skills
• Demonstration of the use of multidisciplinary approaches to enhance understanding and applicability of concepts.
  

By the end of the program session teachers indicated that the experience had given them and their students:
Insight into local architecture

• The inspiration to learn more about their country
• An opportunity to engage in a relevant project that forced each participant to creatively solve a real and local crisis
• A motivational experience
• The beginnings of an expository lesson in which the students will describe their building and explain their choice and its necessity in a successful city
• A memorable learning experience
• An excellent strategy for connecting design activities to the curriculum
• Excellent examples of hands-on design activities
• The starting point for including other teachers and other disciplines in future design activities
• An opportunity to challenge themselves to work to their potential
• An activity in which all students can be engaged and successful
• An opportunity to expand student learning

The majority of quantitative data collected from participating teachers regarding the theme-focused workshops was positive. Most appreciated the experiences they were offered through their participation in this program, especially the opportunity to work directly with scholars and design experts to better understand content and develop effective curriculum. Written comments collected on the surveys verifying these finding include:

I really liked the combination of oral history and written history presented in the workshops.

The field trips, scholars and tour guides were excellent.

The presenters were excellent giving presentation that increased my clarity of the topic

The overview was excellent, especially in regards to placing the history of colonial time in context of the European Expansion.

I learned new things from the presenters.

Information was clearer and more understandable the second time through.

The discussion of primary source documents was excellent.

The approach used by the presenters was extremely helpful to my understanding of the topic and its use in my classroom.

The use of primary source documents helped to make the complex topic understandable.

The presenters seemed to be familiar with what we as teachers need and are interested in.

It was a good discussion of the teaching unit to be developed and the planning format to be used.

The presentation focused on the goals and objectives of the project.

We had a good discussion of the unit/lesson plan template.

The presentation by the scholar really added to the text materials received.

The presentation was effective and stimulating and I could really see the topic in a larger context.

The tour of the State Museum and the performance at the Library was awesome, really making history come alive.

The presentation provided excellent ideas for lesson plans.

The scholar and tour guide seemed very “tuned in” to what we were doing.

The walking tour was very informative.

After this experience, I am confident I can conduct an effective tour for my own students.

The presentation was very relevant to the theme of the day.

The presentation was tied into other areas of Hartford’s history that we have studied.

The presenter was very well prepared.

The use of props and visuals in the presentation stimulated my visual literacy and organizing skills.

The handouts were excellent for developing units.