Shaking Up the History of Canarsie with the Young Curators of P.S. 276!

Gabriella Kula served as an Educator for the Young Curators program at P.S. 276 in the Spring of 2013. 

As an educator for the Young Curators program, my goal was for the students of P.S. 276 to gain new insights into their local heritage and Canarsie’s past.  We began our time together by coming up with a list of questions, and we looked at artifacts, images, and primary sources to discover historical and cultural content that has left the students more connected and committed to their neighborhood than ever before.

The Young Curators of P.S. 276; photo by Gabriella Kula.

We began our study with Deanna’s question, “How was the name Canarsie made?”  We looked at renderings of Canarsie from the 1600s and found that Native Americans were the first people to live in Canarsie.  Thus, we realized that the name Canarsie must have come from them!  After a bit of research, we split into two groups, each of which was responsible for putting on a small charades-style show about a possible origin of the name Canarsie, while the other group guessed the answer.  Here is what we found:  It may have come from the French word for “duck” because there were lots of ducks by the water in Canarsie.  Or, perhaps it came from the Dutch word for fort, because both the Native people and the European settlers built fences around their land to keep themselves and their crops safe.

This finding led us to the next part of our Canarsie study.  Ashley asked “What was life like for the first people of Canarsie?  And Jabari asked, “Did immigrants come to Canarsie?” Through careful observations of images and a look at some artifacts from BHS’s collection, we found that the Canarsee Natives fished and farmed for their food, grew crops like corn, squash, and beans, and traded for other things they needed.  We played our own trading game using picture of many of the items the Canarsees would have used in their daily lives, such as wood and bark, tools, quills, skins, food, toys, and baskets.  Later on, Dutch explorers came to Canarsie and settled in big farms, where they had to grow and make everything from scratch!  After a class session where we made our own butter and played a trading game, the students realized that they are happy to live in a time in which we can go to the store and buy the things we need.

"We tried making our own butter, which was a new experience because we're not used to making our own stuff." Photo by Gabriella Kula.

"The product was delicious, and it was fun to feel how people in the old days felt." Photo by Gabriella Kula.

Kevin was curious, “Do many people around the world come to Canarsie?”  To investigate this question, we looked back at old newspaper articles and found that in the 1800s Canarsie had become a resort town because of the invention of different forms of transportation that made it possible for people to easily travel to Canarsie.  We read articles about a time when people visited Canarsie for its fresh air, beautiful bodies of water, boat races, hotels, and its famous amusement park, Golden City, which had rides, circuses, live shows, and bowling alleys.  Students’ imaginations were so captivated by this that they wanted to draw pictures of what they imagined it would have looked like in color and write their own advertisements for the hotels they could have stayed at if they’d lived in Canarsie during the late nineteenth century!

Last but not least, we answered Nessa and Levens’s questions about what makes Canarsie special today.  My students were excited to share that their favorite parts of Canarsie are the stores at King’s Plaza, the exercise equipment and sports facilities at Seaview Park, the restaurants, and of course, great schools like PS 276! To learn more about the history of our school, we spoke to Mr. Cohen, a longtime teacher at PS 276, who taught us that our school was named after Louis Marshall, a lawyer, community leader, and social activist who spent his career fighting against racial segregation and religious discrimination. I know that Louis Marshall will be a model for the Young Curators of P.S. 276 as they are launched into the world.

Shaking the butter! Photo by Gabriella Kula.

 “Young Curators” turns classes of students into curators through 10-week in-school residencies with a BHS educator.  Students become the historians as they explore primary sources from BHS’s collections in order to uncover the history of their school and neighborhood.  Since launching this program in 2006, BHS has worked in collaboration with ten different schools on sixteen different projects. Each “Young Curators” program culminates in professionally designed, historian-vetted exhibit panels that can be displayed prominently in schools for continued learning. BHS “Young Curators” residencies are typically funded by Cultural After School Adventures (CASA) grants from New York City Council Members.