Skip to main content

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Collaboration with Saint David's School


Saint David's collaborates with leading institutions in the city and beyond for units of study. These partnerships, rooted in curricular goals and objectives, are long term, occurring over several sessions during a course of study. They augment and deepen boys' in-class learning.

Yesterday, we kicked off one of these signature collaborations: our Grade Six partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. During their learning of American history, the sixth graders will visit the Gilder Lehrman Collection, housed at the New-York Historical Society. There, they will be able to closely examine artifacts and original sources from among the more than 70,000 important historical documents housed in the Collection.

During yesterday morning's kick-off workshop for sixth graders and their parents, James Basker, President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University, led a discussion in our Otto-Bernstein Performing Arts Theatre about "Why Documents Matter."

Why are they important? After Mr. Basker posed the question to the boys, one sixth grader noted, "We keep these materials to contextualize where we are now compared to a past event." Another, posited that documents provide insight into what people were thinking at a given time. Mr. Basker reminded us that because they serve as a way to remember what has happened in the past, printed documents also give us strongly rooted memory, which is key to our identity.

The workshop continued with an examination of several documents in the Collection, such as Paul Revere's Boston Massacre, the Declaration of Independence, and a draft of the United States Constitution. Analysis of each resulted in some surprising, elucidating information.

A high point of this workshop was a discussion of Black Hours and Narrow Escapes, a new book published by the Gilder Lehrman Institute that features the World War II experience of Bombardier Robert L. Stone, father of Saint David's alumni Robert Lewis Stone Jr. '68 and Peter Lee Stone '69.

The book contains letters that Mr. Stone wrote home from the front as a way to maintain a connection to the cause for which he so bravely fought. His wife, Sheila, who was at the workshop, discovered the letters in a box after Bob died in 2009. As she noted in the book's introduction, it is her hope that the documents, "will bring you closer to Bob and how he felt during those crucial years when he and his fellow soldiers saved our democratic way of life."

History is made real when it is presented in the context of people or events we know or can relate to. The boys were fascinated and moved by the discussion of a Saint David's dad who fought in World War II, and by being able to see his handwritten letters. Documents matter.



Popular posts from this blog

The Wisdom Within - A Matter of Trust

The Teaching Boys Initiative (TBI) is a cornerstone of Saint David’s School’s strategic vision, aimed at developing a robust framework of evidence-based best practices in boys’ education. The initiative’s primary goal is to empower educators with the knowledge, skills, habits, and dispositions of reflective practitioners, enhancing their professional growth and the overall quality of teaching and learning for boys.  In TBI's new quarterly blog series, "The Wisdom Within," our faculty share stories that inform, inspire, and encourage reflective practice using evidence-based approaches in teaching and learning for boys.  The following inaugural entry, "A Matter of Trust," was written by reflective practitioner and Master Teacher Tom Ryan, who has been inspiring generations of Saint David's boys for more than 53 years. A MATTER OF TRUST …but, I digress. I cannot possibly begin any writing piece, and/or class, without some digression that, as I have said to my s...

"The Wisdom Within" - Bringing Sound to Space

In the second entry of our Teaching Boys Initiative's quarterly blog series, "The Wisdom Within," Saint David's reflective practitioner and Master Teacher Cathy O'Neill explores the pedagogical power of play in the education of young boys. BRINGING SOUND TO SPACE It began with a mound of mangled metal and the vapor of a vision gleaned from recent comments and random fact-dropping by the Pre-K boys. Unsure of what exactly I was looking for, but fueled by the idea of a makeshift rocket to dovetail with our upcoming space unit, I gingerly picked through the scrap pile until my hands grazed an old VW control panel devoid of its dashboard. Eureka! An array of knobs, dials, and buttons - while in reality, dead as doornails - in the right small hands, would become the epicenter of our NASA-inspired dramatic play corner. With a couple of lawn chairs and some old CB radio microphones to round out the set, engines would be ignited by the power of imagination. All systems go...

"The Wisdom Within" - Building Student Motivation Through Choice

In the third entry of our Teaching Boys Initiative quarterly blog series, Master Teacher Jim Barbieri explores how providing boys with agency to choose builds motivation and enhances learning. BUILDING STUDENT MOTIVATION THROUGH CHOICE By the time I was eight years old, I had become completely absorbed in all things baseball. Living in New York was perfect for a baseball fan; although I was a Mets fan thanks to my idol, Tom Seaver, I was also interested in learning about all the amazing Yankees stars of yore. How could I call myself a baseball fan if I didn’t know the history and records of stars like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Yogi Berra? I loved collecting baseball cards and reading the career statistics of each player on the back. Looking through my collection one day, I discovered that I shared a birthday with the legendary Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente. At eight years old, I was crushed to hear the news that he had died tragically in a plane crash while trying to ...