My Life: Russo Inqui, A School Technology Project On LES History

A school technology project, circa 2004, where a student from a lower east side school used a primary source to imagine the life of an immigrant attending that same school 80 years in the past.
Born 1912. Russo's record shows his marks in the 7th and 8th grades where he had the following subjects: English, Oral English, Arithmetic/Algebra, Science/Sewing, Music, History, Geography and Shop/Cooking. His marks were mostly in the 70's. He only got a 65 and a 66 in History and Geo9graphy. His official teacher was someone named Tucker. He moved 4 times before he came to PS 20. He went to PS 104, PS 79 and PS 19. He used to live uptown on 84th Street.

My Life: Catherine Fazio, A School Technology Project On LES History

A school technology project, circa 2004, where a student from a lower east side school used a primary source to imagine the life of an immigrant attending that same school 80 years in the past.
Born in 1925. Catherine's student card shows that she attended PS 91 before she came to PS 20. She lived on East 4th Street. In the 7th and 8th grade she got separate marks in the subject areas. The subjects were: English, Oral English, Arithmetic/Algebra, History, Geography, Science/Sewing, Music and Shop/Cooking. Her marks weren't too great.

My Life: Peter Inguatiato, A School Technology Project On LES History

A school technology project, circa 2004, where a student from a lower east side school used a primary source to imagine the life of an immigrant attending that same school 80 years in the past.
Born in 1909. From his record card we see that Peter lived at 313 Bowery all during his elementary school years, which was unusual for those times. People moved a lot. He went to PS 79 for most of that time and transferred to PS 20 in the 7th grade. He repeated 2B in 1918, maybe because he got a C minus the first time. He was out sick for a long time in 1921.

Mott Street: Kid's History Tour

Madison Street Tour With Kid's History

"You Live In Knickerbocker Village?'

Across The Sea Of Time

A great movie for Immigration studies with kids and for giving a then and now view of NYC. from amazon, unfortunately not available on DVD

A young boy travels across the ocean, from Europe to New York, carrying only letters, stereoptican photos, and a viewer. The letters and photos were sent over a hundred years ago by a long dead relative. He wanders around New York City trying to use the letters and photos, he has no address, to locate his family--the only family he has left. He meets many different people in the city who try to help him, but most cannot visualize any other New York than the one they know. Wonderful voice-overs from the letters and amazing juxtapositions of the old photograph against the same location decades later. The boy is clever and resourceful--you find yourself cheering him on. Fun, all ages movie. Good history of multicultural New York.

LES Movie Theaters

East Village Now Then 2
I've been hanging out a lot in the 11th and 17th Ward working on local history project for first and second graders. In putting together some then and now photos it's obvious how much movie theaters were so much a part of our lives back in the 1920's and 30's.

My Old Schools

While looking for information on old lower east side schools I came across this old slide show done in 2003. I took advantage of youtube to do the hosting, since a previous post only allowed for a smaller size

If You Lived 100 Years Ago

A read along I did for primary graders of the first few pages of an excellent resource for NYC history, "If You Lived 100 Years Ago." It's by Ann Mcgovern with illustrations by Anna Divito. I did it several years ago when the book came out. Now it should be called, If I Lived 110 Years Ago.

Division Street Walking Tour: An Archival Eye View

Division Street Walking Tour: A Kid's Eye View

Newsies: School Project

I used youtube to create a more viewable version of the video previously posted back in December of 2007

A project I did with third graders using Newsies. They had visited an old Newsboy lodging house on 6th Street, between and Avenues B and C. Neighborhood history and architecture was the overriding theme of a school wide learning fair involving social studies and technology. They had watched Newsies and had done internet research and follow up writing and art projects, dress up and role playing. I did this with them as a little culminating event.

Newsies: Part 1

One of the best ways to study the 1900 era in NYC history with kids is through the movie Newsies. It's real-life setting was the newspaper publishing center in New York at the time, which was around Park Row. The closest newsboy lodging house was on Duane and Oak Streets in the Fourth Ward. I had posted a small clip from newsies before, now I notice that the entire film can be found, in parts, on youtube. Above is part 1

Newsies is a 1992 Disney live action film musical starring Christian Bale, David Moscow, and Bill Pullman. Robert Duvall and Ann-Margret also appeared in supporting roles. The movie gained a cult following after its initial failure at the box office. The film marked the directorial debut of Dirty Dancing choreographer Kenny Ortega (High School Musical) and featured the music of composer Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin).
Although the film was not originally intended to be a musical, it contains twelve songs and multiple dance sequences (for which the young cast trained for approximately 10 weeks). Musical highlights include "Carrying the Banner," "Santa Fe," "Seize The Day," and "King of New York."
Newsies was not a commercial success when first released; in fact, it ranked among the highest-costing and lowest-grossing Disney live-action films in the studio's history. Movie critic/historian Leonard Maltin even christened it "Howard the Paperboy" (in reference to another infamous box-office flop, Howard the Duck).
However, the picture gained fans when it was released on VHS and was played on the Disney Channel. After much petitioning, Newsies was released on DVD in 2002. It has since gained a modest yet enthusiastic cult following.
Newsies is based on the true story of the Newsboys Strike of 1899 in New York City. Thousands of homeless children are living in Newsboys Lodging Houses, including Manhattan newsboy Jack Kelly (Christian Bale), who is a regular newsboy selling newspapers for Joseph Pulitzer (Robert Duvall) and his paper, the New York World. Jack "Cowboy" Kelly has a dream of escaping NYC to go to Santa Fe, NM. David Jacobs (David Moscow) leaves school temporarily and joins the newsies along with his little brother Les (Luke Edwards) to help his family while his father is out of work because of a broken arm. Soon, Jack and David become good friends, David introduces Jack to his family, and Jack falls in love with Sarah, David's sister. Shortly afterward, the price of newspapers for purchase by the newsboys is raised 10 cents per 100 papers, decided by joint decision of Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.
Feeling they will be unable to bear the added cost, Jack Kelly organizes a strike with the aid of David Jacobs. As the protagonist, Jack Kelly struggles with his past as he forms an important friendship with David and his family. Between his dream of one day going to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and currently wanting to help his friends, he faces lots of difficult decisions involving money and lodging. Along the way, the boys are aided by newspaper reporter Bryan Denton (Bill Pullman) and vaudeville performer Medda Larkin (Ann-Margret), as well as being hindered by Snyder, warden of "The Refuge" juvenile detention facility (Kevin Tighe). Jack and the newsies gain the cooperation of every newsie from New York and Brooklyn to team up and strike against the big-shot newspapermen.

Happy Halloween: The Witch Of Fourth Street

Here's an ancient slide show (2002) I just unearthed. It uses the book the "Witch of 4th Street." I narrated the first few pages of the story and added pictures to help give the story more context. Yes, I know I made a mistake in the first line, it's just too labor intensive to redo. click here to link to movie, you have to click the arrow to move it manually
The Lower East Side History Project has a lot by lot history of the block.

Come Fly With Me 2 and 3

I forgot that I once used Come Fly With Me in a third grade social studies project on ancestors about five years ago. It took me a while but I remembered that I had tucked it away here
I also remembered that I had posted Frank's video version here.

Dutch New York: School Projects 2

From a 2005 post from pseudo-intellectualism
Here's a great New Amsterdam project done in HyperStudio and then converted to Quicktime and combined with a colonial midi file. It's done by Noelle's class at the Children's Workshop School from 2001-2 and it's great. Noelle O'Reilly is a gem and it's worth the price of admission to hear her Bono impersonation.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5581/1279/1600/spier.jpg

Dutch New York: School Projects 1

From a 2005 post from pseudo-intellectualism
This wonderful book is out of print. Here's my narrated version from the early slide show era. It's 6MB, a longer than usual download.

I Want To Rock With You LES

Originally posted back in December of 2007, but here I took advantage of youtube's bigger screen size to make it more visible. A h/t to Michael Jackson and Howie

Triangle Commeroration 2005

from 8/11/05 from pseudo-intellectualism

As mentioned previously on 8/8/05 posting; Ms. Joseph's fifth graders at the Triangle Shirtwaist Commemoration sponsored by Unite on March 26, 2005. Here's a clip from ny1.com where you can see a group of students with their work on stage. Mr. Maltese is referring to the following information from David von Drehle's recent book on the Triangle Fire: http://www.groveatlantic.com/grove/wc.dll?groveproc~misc~2620
MALTESE, Catherine, asphyxiation/burns. 35 Second Ave. Identified on December 18, 1911, when her husband, Serafino, finally recognized one of her possessions. Mother of Lucy and Sara. Leon Stein, The Triangle Fire, p. 204.
MALTESE, Lucia “Lucy,” 20, asphyxiation/burns. 35 Second Ave. Identified by her father Serafino. Sister of Sara, daughter of Catherine. Multiple newspapers, March 27.
MALTESE, Rosaria “Sara,” 14, asphyxiation/burns. 35 Second Ave. Identified by her father Serafino. Sister of Lucy, daughter of Catherine. Multiple newspapers, March 27.