Teen Thursdays at BLDG 92 Part II

In 2014, NYC School’s Chancellor Carmen Farina announced a new program called Teen Thursdays, which pairs cultural institutions with middle schools to provide afterschool programming. Brooklyn Historical Society was proud to be a part of that pilot year, and to participate in the program’s expansion this year to our partner site at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92. They recorded their sessions on Tumblr (including a video of their final performance!). Last week, Janise Mitchell wrote about her experience with the Teens. Here, Heather Flanagan, School Programs Educator at BHS & BLDG 92, adds to the conversation.

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The Teen Thursday group’s final performance in BLDG 92’s World War II gallery. The teens created a play based on oral histories from women & men who worked in the Yard during WWII.

I’m new to museum education (in a previous life I was a public high school English teacher), and one of the things I love about working at Brooklyn Historical Society is we get to give kids a fun, high-interest experience that seeks to spark and nurture our students’ curiosity.  I’m definitely biased, but I think our debut Teen Thursdays program at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92 was a perfect example of this!

Teen Thursdays is such a special program because it gives us the chance to welcome back the same group of middle school students week after week, and for students to develop a relationship with a cultural institution that goes way beyond what a quick field trip could provide.  This fall was the first Teen Thursdays program at the Navy Yard, and we had a truly fantastic group!

In seven sessions, my co-teacher Janise and I taught students how to observe and interpret objects and images, how to distinguish primary sources from secondary sources, and how to approach oral histories.  We specifically focused on BLDG 92’s rich World War II collection that highlights the experiences of women and people of color working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  In one of my favorite activities, students listened to several oral histories and used them to create composite characters for original skits they wrote and performed in the gallery space.

The students created Brooklyn Navy Yard ID’s to wear during the culminating performance of the program.

For our culminating activity, Janise wrote an amazing original performance piece that interwove excerpts from the oral histories that the students found most compelling.  The kids worked hard to get out of their comfort zones and speak their lines with feeling, and I just loved watching them connect to the people who broke down race and gender barriers at the Navy Yard over seventy years ago.

Janise and I had so much fun working with our group, and I loved getting the chance to learn from her.  I think we’re both really excited for Teen Thursdays to start up again next spring, and we hope our kids will be back to visit BLDG 92 again soon!