As a consulting archivist, I am always thinking about the "backstory" of a place, how an institution's legacy is cultivated and preserved, and how all of the stuff a school collects over time can reveal the culture of the place. School archives are by far a favorite "genre" of archive for me, primarily because I find them easy to leverage in a variety of applications. I have found alumni to be terrific "super fans" of school archives, contributing material with generous enthusiasm. Among other things, these kinds of donations can be a wonderful tool for any development director wishing to cultivate connections with the alumni base.
In my experience, a well-managed school archives is a place many wish to visit, because it serves as a robust resource — for development directors, communication directors, and faculty members with a creative flair who enjoy using primary resource materials to teach. One example of how a specific contribution to a school’s archives can leverage connections comes from St. Bernard’s School (New York), where I work as the archivist. Whitney Seymour, Jr., an alumnus from the Class of 1937, contacted me about a Sports Day trophy cup that he won in 1935. He offered to donate the cup to the school collection, for which I was thrilled. In return, I asked him to come to a school assembly to talk to the boys about his memory of Sports Day.This contribution, as well as his talk, made for a great story in the school newsletter. An image of the cup was included in an online exhibit titled “The History of St. Bernard’s School in 25 Objects.” As a result, his brother, Thaddeus, Class of 1941, also contacted me regarding 16mm footage his father took of Sports Day in the late 1930s. This digitized footage remains a go-to item with any show-and-tell in the archives. The students love seeing it. The film is also shown often at reunions.
On any given day in a school archives, I can count on having at least one conversation with someone who feels true passion about the collection, often because they are personally connected to the history of the place and wish to contribute to that legacy, or perhaps there is an interest in finding a way to tell a better story using the material from the collection. Currently, we are celebrating the 100th birthday of our school building. The original Delano Aldrich blueprints in the archives serve as a key element for a faculty member’s talk at a school assembly about the school’s architecture.
Speaking with alumni, faculty members (past or present), or longtime staff members reminds me that we are all participating in a larger story. The history and culture of an academic institution is a shared story — very often connected to our own personal history. It’s a great place to find stories and encourage supporters of the school to contribute to the overarching legacy of the institution.
I recently asked school archivists to tell me their stories about how their schools leverage the archives to create a shared sense of culture and history. One in particular — from City and Country School (New York) — stands out. The responses to the questions came from Jordis Rosberg, City and Country School’s archivist.
What is one item that particularly stands out in your collection?
Caroline Pratt founded City and Country School in 1914 in Greenwich Village, New York City, having spent the previous three decades refining her pedagogical philosophy as a woodworking teacher, labor and women’s rights advocate, and progressive thinker. Convinced that children learn best when provided with open-ended materials with which to re-create and thus better understand their world, Pratt took to designing her own line of dolls. She named them “Do-With Toys,” to emphasize their flexible nature and to differentiate them from the less interactive toys that dominated the market. The City and Country School archives house a number of original drawings Pratt made of these dolls, as well as a few early wooden figures and numerous news articles related to the toys. Predating the school, as well as Pratt’s more widely known invention, unit blocks, these drawings illustrate how deeply foundational the use of open-ended materials is to the school’s program.Who uses the collection most frequently?
The City and Country School archives are a living resource for both the school community (past and present) and outside researchers. Our extensive photograph collection dating back to 1916 is widely drawn-upon for school publications, anniversaries, alumni events, and as a reference for new and existing staff. The school’s communications and development departments are the most frequent internal users of the collection, drawing on the files for the website and newsletters, alumni profiles, and relations. Faculty members often read articles, notes, and meeting minutes spanning the last century, using them to inform the school’s work today. From time to time, current students also use the archives to explore samples of iconic projects from the past as they plan and execute their own projects.Given the school’s history as a hub for progressive thinkers — former staff and many alumni families have significant ties to historic events and movements of the last century — it is not surprising that outside researchers of myriad subjects have also found their way to the school’s collection. These relationships have illuminated much about the history of our school, and the school is constantly discovering connections between its pedagogy and population and the history of New York City.
From Independent School Bulletin, January 1955Independent Schools And Schools Of EducationPractical teaching experience is of the greatest value to a student in a school of education: enough experience to show him what some of the problems are, yet not so much as to make him think that he knows what all the answers are. If it is possible for an independent school teacher to attend a good school of education after he has taught for a year, or a few years, he has a wonderful opportunity to learn more about his chosen profession at a time when he is most ready to learn. I think that many have missed this opportunity to meet their colleagues who are trying to solve the problems of our vast public school system. It is my hope that more and more of our independent school people will attend these graduate schools of teaching. The job of education is big and infinitely important to the future of the country and the free world. Let us, in the independent schools, use intelligently all the resources available, lest we be accused of fighting the battle with but one hand. —From “Independent Schools and Schools of Education,” by Donald C. Duncan, faculty member at Milton Academy (Massachusetts) |
Was the collection assembled when planning for a centennial or milestone event?
In the school’s earliest days, it functioned as an observational site for the Bureau of Educational Experiments (BEE), a group founded by a handful of progressive educators in downtown New York. One of the primary objectives of the BEE was to study children closely, taking careful record of these observations, and then develop curricula and programs in response. In keeping with this ethic, City and Country School has, from the start, kept careful records of its work through meeting minutes, articles, student work, and photographs.Over the decades, multiple staff members stepped in as stewards of the school’s collection, often due to personal interest, and preserved and organized materials as best they could. It was not until the mid-1990s, however, that the school was able to commit the time and resources to create a complete organizational structure for the collection, and, a decade later, a climate-controlled archives room and staff archivist.
Can you share one example of the role the archives play in celebrating the culture of the school?
In 2014, City and Country School celebrated its centennial. One of the events organized to commemorate this milestone was a 10-day archival exhibit of the school’s program at Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village. In preparation for this event, as well as the republication of Caroline Pratt’s memoir, I Learn from Children, we had the dedicated time and resources to create a trove of digital scans of both photographs and artifacts. Following the exhibit, we added many of these items to our website, such as a timeline and a digital version of the original exhibit, and, moving forward, we plan to add all of the scans to our online digital archive. Already we have experienced many benefits from this work — access to photographs and key information about the school’s history is more efficient, and the archives, having enjoyed their moment in the sun, have experienced an uptick in inquiries.While the exhibit, both physical and digital, afforded us an excellent opportunity to update and preserve our collection in new ways, it primarily served to bring our community together and to celebrate the history and mission of the school. As alumni from the 1930s through 2013 reminisced, and as our current students and families looked and learned, we were reminded again of the impact and importance of preserving our history and the vital community City and Country has cultivated for more than a century.
Northfield Mount Hermon School (Massachusetts)Northfield Mount Hermon’s school archive holds an extraordinary archival image that has been reproduced several times — the famous shot taken during the Northfield/Deerfield football game, held on November 20, 1965. The school lost the game, ending a 15-game winning streak, as well as its science building — all in one afternoon. Fortunately a new science building was already under construction on another part of the campus at the time. Northfield Mount Hermon’s current archivist, Peter Weis, was actually at the game, but wandered home on that cold, damp afternoon before the fire broke out.  The school archive is leveraged in a wide variety of ways. Annually, a 50th-year reunion book is created for that class year, culling several selected items from the archives for this much-revered alumni publication. Northfield Mount Hermon’s archive is a highly valued resource when tracking and honoring the school’s legacy families. Alumni steeped in genealogical research frequent the archive to access an extraordinary collection of school records — many of which include letters of recommendation for the students as well as correspondence, some of which includes letters from students to the school through their postgraduate years. |
To Build a Future, Remember the Past
Our days are busier than ever — or seem so. And the institutional changes brought about primarily by technology and new understandings of how students learn have pushed schools to focus mostly on where they are going. But it’s important for their school’s history, their reasons for coming into existence in the first place, the evolutionary steps that brought them to the present.
In other words, our stories matter. Developing, protecting, and sharing our archives matter. They not only connect us to the past; they also remind us that we are part of a great and important continuum. They highlight our legacy, strengthen community and school culture, and connect alumni. Most important, they encourage ongoing institutional stewardship — so we, too, will be remembered by those who come after us.
Care for your archives. Share your stories.