Celebrating Student Research: Brooklyn Connections 2020-21

Brooklyn Connections is a program run by the Center for Brooklyn History’s education department that cultivates 21st Century learning skills in students and supports teachers with the incorporation of archives materials into curricula.  Click here to view a selection of this year's Brooklyn Connections final projects. 

Has gentrification affected the lives of immigrants in Brooklyn? How did Coney Island become the destination it is today? If you could interview a survivor of a British prison ship during the American Revolution, what would they say? 

These are just some of the research questions asked and answered by students in the Brooklyn Connections program during the past school year. Brooklyn Connections is the Center for Brooklyn History education team's signature partnership program. Every year, CBH education offers fourth through twelfth grade classes rare access to original archival materials while students complete a customized project on a local history topic of their choice. Our educators visit their classrooms throughout the partnership, teaching valuable research skills, and students visit our landmark Othmer Library archive. At the end of the school year, participating classes gather for a convocation event where students present and exhibit their projects. 

To find a selection of this year’s projects click here.  

As the second Brooklyn Connections cohort to do the program during the COVID-19 pandemic, students and educators did not gather in person to celebrate their achievements this year. Instead, Brooklyn Public Library staff celebrated students and educators in a virtual ceremony.  

The challenges of this school year did not stop students from engaging in original research and producing fascinating projects. One of the goals of the Brooklyn Connections program is to engage students more deeply with the borough they call home and give them the agency to interrogate dominant narratives that have shaped our understanding of history. Thankfully for the rest of us, that means we get to learn so much from these young researchers. What better way to learn about the ways Bushwick is changing than from middle schoolers who live in the neighborhood?  The history of community organizing in Bed Stuy takes on a new significance when it is presented by youth who may very well be the neighborhood’s next generation of community organizers.  

Brooklyn Connections teaches the sort of archival research skills that many don’t learn until college to students as young as 9 years old. It is amazing to see what students throughout Brooklyn have done with their bountiful curiosity, creativity, and intelligence. We hope you will come away from viewing their projects with some new knowledge, and hopefully some research questions of your own!