Training will include professional development by the curriculum specialists at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Center for Architecture and Building Science Research. Teachers, educational administrators and local preservationists will learn how the curriculum was constructed to allow students to view traditional academic subjects through the lens of historic preservation. The curriculum does this by focusing on a specific historic structure or artifact through which to study the elements of its creation, preservation, and interpretation. Using this model, teachers can work together using a common architectural theme as an expression of the period under study through which they can integrate their respective academic disciplines.
[Download not found]The landmarks with which the curriculum is developed, called “benchmarks,” are academic points of reference. They are selected to follow the progression of the history class. By cross-referencing the sequential material taught in each subject area, students and teachers find their work integrated, reapplied, and reinforced throughout the curriculum. For example, we understand the history of transportation and the rise of the industry in the physical reality of the Brooklyn Bridge’s presence and the historical forces that created it. Those forces come alive to us through the sites, sounds, issues and the times portrayed by the writers of the time: Whitman, Douglas, and Wharton. The technical and engineering feats of the period can be seen in the applied mathematical illustrated by the cable structure’s percentile increase in strength and their manufacturing in the Roebling factory, along with the science needed to understand the natural forces such as wind, waves, and erosion, the understanding of which were all applied in the bridge’s design, construction and its preservation today.
In this process, academic subjects are integrated across disciplines by using historic preservation to teach literature, the sciences, mathematics, the arts, and history. Using a comprehensive historic preservation-based learning approach, students become aware of how various humanities and other academic disciplines are integral to one another and how they are incorporated into their workplace activities.