Conference Highlights Civic Engagement and Historical Research

Noh’s presentation, “The History of Disability,” examined how the school has supported students with disabilities throughout its history. “I specifically focused on the support system for students with learning differences. Surprisingly, my research time period ranges from Mr. Gunn’s time to today,” Noh said. In her presentation, she defined disability education and spoke about Frederick Gunn‘s individualized education, academic support programs, and the controversy over the Glenholme School, a private, therapeutic boarding school in Washington. Noh concluded that overall, the school met the needs of a wide range of students with different learning abilities and styles.

Wright's presentation, “The Frederick Gunn School in the Progressive Age,” traced the history of the Progressive Era at The Frederick Gunn School, from approximately 1880-1920. His presentation reflected his research on globalization and industrialization, and the wave of social change, including feminism, temperance, race relations, and muckracking. Wright was able to incorporate accounts from the school newspaper, written correspondence, Gunn alumni papers, and some secondary sources into his research. 

A living archive
The Rooted Research Conference was established in 2018 as a way to showcase the work of the school’s Gunn Scholars and others conducting local, place-based historical research. Gunn Scholar is an endowed program, established in 2002 by former School Archivist and Director of Communications Paula Gibson Krimsky with the support of a generous 50th reunion gift from the Class of 1957, which has assured the publication of every Gunn Scholar project. This year, the program was led by Archivist and Assistant Librarian Moira Conlan and Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning Emily Gum.

In her opening remarks at the conference, Gum reflected that, when Frederick Gunn established his school in 1850, he had a vision for a community that would be rooted in the town of Washington, “in a way that gave students a sense of civic agency and purpose, and allowed them to go out into the world and make a change, be a force for good.” 

“The Gunn Scholar program is a place where we try to ask hard questions of our own history, to understand the history of this school and this town, the community that this school formed, in a way that we can leverage that understanding for positive change in the future,” Gum said. The program was conceived by Krimsky as a way to preserve the legacy of Mr. Gunn and archival materials, including the extensive collection of letters that flowed between Mr. Gunn and his wife, Abigail Brinsmade Gunn, and prominent figures in the 19th century. What began as a program for one scholar per year has blossomed into one that will support four scholars in the 2022-23 school year: Georgie Charette ’23, Holli Hay ’23, Sidney Mutau ’23, and Gloria Wang ’23.

These research projects not only look into the history of the school, but add to the archives. “You’re contributing to the school’s archive, by digging into the materials, bringing them into conversation with one another, and then bringing them up to the current day,” Gum said to this year’s scholars. “That is so important, not only that an archive captures something from the past, but it’s a living archive that helps to inform future generations about what you all have been learning, what projects that you all have been doing, and we’re really proud of that.”

An emphasis on active citizenship
Beginning this year, the hope is that the annual Rooted Research Conference will help to emphasize the school’s commitment to active citizenship by becoming a starting-off point for juniors to work on their Civic Changemakers Projects (CCP). A diploma requirement, the CCP provides students with the opportunity to put into action what they have learned over the course of the school’s four-year citizenship curriculum under the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy. For example, Phineas Wright ’22 and Eddie Rayhill ’22 created and hosted a podcast about engaging in depolarized political discussion on campus as a project with the Gray Party. The student-led organization was established by Anthony Cochrane ’18, a Republican, and Mark Choi ’18, a Democrat, with the goal of encouraging civil discourse and increasing civic engagement among students, and each year, new student leaders have emerged to carry on that work. Wright and Rayhill presented at the conference, along with Yoyo Zhang ’22, Sean Hall ’22 and Paul Clement ’22.

“There is no shortage of inspiration at the conference with examples of both active civic engagement and in-depth historical research,” said Bart McMann, Director of the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy. “It is our hope that the juniors will be able to see the myriad of possibilities for contributing to the community and directly connect with the presenters through breakout sessions.”

McMann was instrumental in bringing the students from the Original Civic Research and Action program (ORCA) at Mamaroneck High School to the conference this year. He met Joe Liberti, who teaches AP U.S. Government and Politics at Mamaroneck, in 2019 at the Summer Institute for Civic Studies, which they both attended at the Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University.

“Joe and I are like-minded in our passion to pioneer innovative, civic-minded projects for high school students. Over the last three years, Joe has created the Original Civic Research and Action program. ORCA is a four-year civic action and engagement program at MHS that inspires students to identify opportunities to make change in their local communities. ORCA students become civic entrepreneurs by identifying needs in the community and, in turn, developing and implementing community based civic action projects with the assistance of local mentors/experts.”

Liberti’s students presented at the conference on four-year research projects that focused on issues such as housing as a human right, increasing voter engagement, and incentivising community members to participate in a municipality-run food scrap recycling program. 

Conlan, McMann and Liberti are already thinking about opportunities for the two schools to collaborate on civic-minded projects at next year's conference. "I was thoroughly impressed with the depth of research provided by the Mammaroneck students," Conlan said. "The students articulated the challenges of their projects and exhibited a resilient intellectual curiosity that was inspirational. Our students were impressed with both their professionalism and willingness to work for the common good in their communities. The Original Civic Research and Action program is the perfect avenue for students to practice entrepreneurial and innovative thinking to be a force for positive change in the world."

McMann hopes the ORCA projects will help Gunn students "broaden their imagination for their own Civic Changemakers Projects. Next year at the Rooted Research Conference, we hope that the ORCA presentations will aid in onboarding our juniors to the Civic Changemakers Project."

All of the projects presented at this year’s conference demonstrated ways in which students are becoming civic actors, whether they are bringing history from our archives to light and making it relevant to today, or addressing contemporary issues such as the need for affordable housing. “Those are all ways that we are learning to be citizens in this world, all ways that we are trying to have an impact, both understanding the history, seeing that history over time, and then figuring out a contemporary project that can put that into action,” Gum said.