Joseph A. Montagna
The New Haven
Register
Harper’s
Magazine
The purpose of this unit is to provide the student with a broad understanding of the social, economic, and political aspects of the Urban Renewal Program in New Haven. Further, the unit should convey a knowledge that is transferable to any large scale public project which affects as large a segment of the population, as did New Haven’s program.
The lessons are not designed to be a cookbook. The teacher is provided with suggested lesson outlines which may or not be suited to his/her needs. It is the responsibility of the teacher to decide which objectives are relevant to the classes he/she teaches, and gear them to the levels of the individual students. Discussions are suggested extensively throughout the course of study of this unit. These discussion groups will enable the students to develop the skill of expressing one’s ideas on a particular reading or topic. The use of role-playing situations is encouraged to make the discussions “come alive.”
The level of competence that will be achieved by individual students will depend wholly on the individual student’s abilities and interests. It is the teacher’s responsibility to recognize the differences that exist among students, and to provide individualized experiences to meet the individual needs. Therefore, it is suggested that the highly motivated students be contracted to do more than the minimal requirements of the course of study. This may take the form of doing research on a particular topic, constructing a project, writing, art, etc. One manner of keeping records on such individualized assignments is a point system. The student should have a short conference with the teacher when he/she has some idea as to the type of assignment he/she would like to tackle. The student and teacher should come to a mutual agreement on the type of assignment, length of time that is required to complete the assignment, and the number of points that the student could earn.
The unit is quite flexible. The teacher may make use of the lessons in a fashion that suits his/her techniques. The teacher should become familiar with the material covered by the books in the bibliography. Talbot’s book,
The Mayor’s Game,
is one which should be read thoroughly. There is one aspect of this unit that is quite inflexible, vocabulary development. If every student is going to participate in the lessons with any kind of confidence, he/she must first understand the terms that are central to the discussions or lessons. An outline of the procedure that should be used for vocabulary development follows in the next section.
Many of the materials that are suggested throughout this unit are available through the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, or at the New Haven Redevelopment Agency.
The lessons that are outlined are merely a skeleton of this unit. It is up to the teacher to assign other homework assignments, individual projects, and small group projects as he/she deems necessary. There are limitless opportunities for assignments in creative writing, art, poetry, research, math, reading, etc. For instance, the New Haven Redevelopment Agency has numerous charts concerning population figures for each neighborhood, racial composition, etc. Many mathematics problems can be assigned as a means of integrating math into this unit. The only limit is one’s own creativity. Further, a list of magazine articles pertaining to New Haven is available for this unit. The teacher may easily obtain these articles at the YNHTI. They may be applied on a large class basis, or may be individually contracted for a grade. Also, Sterling Library and the New Haven Public Library have The New Haven
Register
on microfilm. Articles covering the period of this unit may be obtained for similar use.