|| Program Description || Program Process || Evaluation Comments ||

New Haven’s Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places© (NHCL)

“NHCL supports our fifth grade mandate to study local history by using the architecture and design of New Haven to learn fundamental concepts in history, civics, government, geography, economics, global perspectives and diversity. These content standards are integrated naturally through architecture. In addition to meeting these standards we value NHCL for its ability to respond to another New Haven mandate, which is to integrate the arts into the curriculum. We believe the program is particularly valuable at this time, as study after study indicates that, while most disciplines focus on development of a single skill or talent, the arts engage multiple skills, and abilities. Engagement in the arts nurtures the development of cognitive, social, and personal competencies. The NHCL program addresses curriculum requirements while providing opportunities for a wide variety of ways in which students can demonstrate their understanding.

The variety of active hands-on learning activities that teachers participated in during publication introduction sessions was motivating. In some cases design was the subject of investigation; in other cases, it was the means of investigation. It was clear from observations that NHCL experiences invigorate teachers, transform the nature of teaching, and fosters success for all types of learners.

Community studies of this kind engage kids in a closer look at their immediate environment and help them find numerous connections for engaged learning and ultimately a chance to see where they might fit in–to imagine their responsibilities in that site. Students (and their teachers) are invited to become [producers] of knowledge that they can share with the larger community. This kind of empowering education can invite the caring and responsible behaviors that distinguish worthy, democratic citizenship.”

Willie Freeman,
Social Studies Supervisor,
New Haven Public Schools

“ My overall impression is that I have in my hands the beginning of the answer of how to lead K-12 students in the study of local histories across the United States. The book helps students to understand that Living nature of communities and how buildings are not lifeless decaying structures but rather are at the center of understanding life across time, space and place-this is not a book for graduate study but is a publication appropriately designed for fifth graders…..This publication is an extraordinary teaching and learning tool being used in every fifth grade classroom in New haven Public Schools……Only collaboration of a diverse and interdisciplinary team could have produced such a comprehensive yet readble and teachable history”

Otherine Neisler, Ph. D.,
Chair Education Department,
St. Joseph College

Program Description

The goal of New Haven’s Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places was to develop an interdisciplinary program for teaching New Haven fifth grade students about their community by presenting specific and general components of New Haven’s cultural landscape — including the natural landscape, planning, architecture, monuments, and parks, as well as stories of how each of them has developed through time according to the needs and desires of the local community.

Publications were created as part of a full year professional development program for teachers provided by the Architecture Resource Center in partnership with the New Haven Colony Historical Society and include walking tours and hands-on design workshops for students and teachers. This project was developed to address the fifth grade New Haven Public School performance standards in the social studies and visual arts.

Teaching students about their communities by using the urban landscape as a focus anchors the learning experience by connecting it to the visible, tangible context of students’ everyday lives. This method fosters students’ sense of how their community operates and how they can participate. Consequently, these lessons can help empower students to envision and promote change locally. In addition to educating and connecting students to their local community, studying the local, manmade environment invites and often requires multiple subjects of conversation, thus creating an interdisciplinary set of lessons suitable for the current, integrated pedagogical approach. Students are introduced to the inherent complexity of the world around them while learning basic lessons about the environment, social groups, ethnic groups, history, art, architecture, mathematics, geology, technology, industry, economics, planning, politics, government, and more.

Specifically, this course material makes the following curriculum connections:

• Identifies 25 buildings that serve as primary resources representing a wide variety of functions within the urban community. Many buildings have historical roots that represent a timeless, universal need, while others represent a contemporary need in a changing community.
• Addresses the issues if the natural environment and the indigenous population of New Haven and how the introduction of European settlement changed the landscape and its native presence.
• Discusses changes in the needs of a community as population increases and technology changes.
• Identifies public or private New Haven buildings that represent: religion, arts, public safety, education, recreation, law, government, business, industry and technology.
• Identifies buildings that represent larger social historical concepts of gender roles; cultural, ethnic, and racial identity; and domestic life.
• Identifies buildings that had a role in New Haven's relationship with: the American Revolution, maritime history, the industrial revolution, and growth of transportation and communication.

Content for New Haven’s Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places was provided by a diverse group of New Haven historians, educators, designers, city planners, and community members. Through the process of creating these materials we learned much about each others methodologies and strategies, language, and technology. It is our hope that New Haven’s Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places will be a springboard for increased public interest in the City's landscape and that teachers, parents, and neighborhoods will be inspired to learn more of the stories connected to their own, specific places.

Program Process

Any grade, any city, anywhere…

The ARC team can advise and guide any group interested in creating a similar, locally focused design education companion to an existing curriculum. ARC partners for NHCL include the New Haven Colony Historical Society, New Haven Public Schools, and the Yale University Teacher Preparation Program. Following is a snapshot of the process

• Assembled a team of educators, historians, scholars, and designers.
• Selected principal sites and conducted primary and secondary document research.
• Created student and teacher editions in collaboration with classroom teachers.
• Implemented a professional development program for all fifth grade teachers that included walking tours, hands-on design activities, lesson planning, museum workshops and interactive presentations by historians, designers, and scholars.
• Developed a marketing plan that included public television programming.
• Initiated an NHCL website as an extension of the publication.
  

Evaluation Comments

The following is a sampling of comments from teacher evaluation of the publication:

"NHCL fills a void in the new [NHPS social studies] curriculum."

"Getting kids to relate to the community they come from and using it as a comparison to the rest of the world will make it more meaningful to them."

"This hands-on approach is how students learn best."

"Architecture is an innovative way to create an integrated approach."

"[NHCL is] an exciting program teaching through architecture that will carry over to the students, [I] can’t wait for the next part, the walking tours so I will be able to guide my students."

"In a very clear, organized and detailed way it ties in things that students have around them."

"The primary research component goes hand in hand with what we have to do in school."

"Fantastic activities and approach!"

"I am thrilled to have a book and that the kids have a book."

‘From the teachers viewpoint, the use of design in the classroom can achieves two important goals: support a broad range of student achievement by transforming the teacher from authority to faciltator, reaching all learner types, making learning active; and, build connections among teachers, students, subject areas, and the community.”

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