During the spring semester 2018, Teachers College students enrolled in my course, “History of Education in New York City,” were involved in the initial stage of collecting data for Writ Large. Incorporated as a primary teaching tool in the class, Writ Large supported students’ exploration of learning within different domains and settings in the city over time and directly engaged them in original historical research.

Responsible for mapping sites of teaching and learning in operation over the twentieth century in neighborhoods on Manhattan’s West Side, students surveyed fire insurance maps, tracked down archival collections, consulted city directories, located photographs, and read published documents and reports to provide searchable data and descriptive summaries of places where city residents of all ages learned.

In the process, they unearthed pieces of the city’s history that identify rich ecologies of education across neighborhoods and point to ways places of learning figure within broader historical narratives about New York City and beyond. By identifying archival collections pertinent to the sites of teaching and learning they mapped, students also contributed to a database of archival resources to support new research by students and scholars alike about the city’s educational past.

Prior to the start of the mapping process, students read broadly in the secondary literature to expand their understanding of educational history, the importance of “place” in urban studies, the changing demographics and spatial transformation of neighborhoods and communities, and the central role both formal and informal settings of learning played in the lives of different groups of New Yorkers. With that foundation in place, students began research to locate sites of learning on neighborhood blocks and input data to Writ Large.

A scaffold of workshops and assignments supported the process. For example, an in-class presentation by Columbia CTL staff gave students an overview of the staged construction of Writ Large and technical instruction in how to navigate and input data to the site. Students visited the Map Division of The New York Public Library to read fire insurance maps documenting the built environment of West Side neighborhoods with the goal of producing an initial list of places of learning to map and research. Students worked together to compile bibliographies (of primary and secondary sources) about learning sites - notably parochial schools - that they would likely encounter in their neighborhood surveys, but which have been paid scant attention to in the secondary literature. Finally, students kept weekly “Field Notes,” which available for review by all class members, provided a platform for discussion and reflection about the variables of the research and mapping process, and how those variables lined up with the functionality of Writ Large and the value of a mapping tool to facilitate a richer understanding of urban educational history.

As a final project for the semester, students were asked to dig deeper into the history of one site of learning they located on the Writ Large map and post an essay on WordPress, illustrated with selected primary sources, that speaks to the significance of the site to a public history audience.

• Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier and the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women

  Phillip Twining writes about the founding, in 1863, of the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women by a female physician who worked within the broader arena of women’s rights activism.

• Chelsea Park — “Play is an education”

  Rachel Klepper documents the construction of Chelsea Park, in 1907, as a vital part of the educational history of a New York neighborhood and a reflection of emerging trends about the value of play and recreation to the learning process.

Both essays, I think, nicely capture two primary course objectives: to draw students’ attention to what lies at the margins of knowledge about the city’s educational history, and to involve them directly in correcting the historical record.

— Bette Weneck