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'Designing the City' the Title V Way
Title V "learning community" students outside historic Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights.
Title V "learning community" students get a lesson in history from church officials inside the historic structure.
'Designing the City' learing community students in somber mood during Ground Zero visit.
When is a walking tour of one of New York City's historic neighborhoods more than a walking tour? When it's part of an innovative approach to learning that is organized around "learning communities," in which groups of students take at least two of their classes together and those classes use a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to the delivery of instruction.
That's what was happening, for sure, in October as English Professor Regina Lebowitz and Department of Mathematics Professor Zhao Chen set out with 40 freshman English students (most of whom plan to pursue careers in the engineering and computer systems technologies) on a walking tour of historic Brooklyn Heights that would give them a sense of the College's adjoining neighborhood. Lebowitz is a seasoned tour guide, having led large groups of out-of-towners and others over the years on walking tours of this picturesque neighborhood.
The students' task that day was to gather information for a writing assignment that would compare and contrast the layout of streets and the architectural style of the buildings they observed in the Heights with those they would later study in their own neighborhoods. The theme for the assignment was "Designing the City," and the paper that each student would eventually write would be evaluated on how effectively each compared, in geometric terms, the arrangement of streets and the design of buildings in Brooklyn Heights with those that characterized these other neighborhoods. In this educational marriage of math and English, the papers would also be judged, of course, on how effectively they made use of language in comparing and contrasting these differences.
"Different geometric shapes and mathematical theorems are employed in the layout of different neighborhoods and the design and construction of the individual buildings within them," says Chen, "and these differences can be easily observed from one neighborhood to another. These difference seldom occur by accident."
Brooklyn Heights is essentially a neighborhood made up of square or rectangular blocks. On the other hand, the streets of Chen's own neighborhood (The Lower East Side), he notes, are more circularly configured. This difference was likely the result, in part, of differences in the natural features of each locale as each community took form.
Moreover, the upscale brownstones and other buildings of historically high-end Brooklyn Heights are more intricate in design -- fancier, if you will -- than the simpler row houses and other structures that frequently characterize lower-end neighborhoods. The difference between the triangular shapes so often included in the design and construction of the former and the more basic rectangular shapes employed in constructing the latter was largely a function of economy. A triangular roof, for example, typically costs more to construct than a flat one.
City Tech's "learning communities," interdisciplinary approach to education is funded by a U.S. Department of Education Title V grant and is now in its fourth year at the College. Much to the delight of all, an unexpected interdisciplinary bonus awaited the students and their faculty guides on October 1 as they stopped to examine the exterior architecture of Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims at Hicks and Oranges Streets. Church officials invited them in for a tour of this landmark edifice.
Plymouth Church occupies a prominent place in American history. First, it was home to American Congregational minister Henry Ward Beecher, one of the leading figures of the anti-slavery movement of the 19th century. The church is also home to a chunk of Plymouth Rock and is where President-elect Abraham Lincoln stopped to pray during his long train trip in 1861 from his residence in Illinois to his inauguration in the nation's capital. For Lincoln in those troubled times, the church surely embodied the noblest intentions of the founding fathers in establishing "one nation, with liberty and justice for all."
Inside the church, the students examined the piece of rock, sat in the pew where Lincoln prayed, and had a look at some of the narrow underground tunnels that provided refuge for runaway slaves from the South in the years before and during the Civil War.
"The tour of Plymouth Church was a wonderful experience for all of us," says Lebowitz, "completely unexpected and tremendously enriching. The students benefited from an added lesson about a hugely important time in American history. From a mathematical point of view, I guess you could say that it was an interdisciplinary learning experience expanded to the third power."
And from Williams: "At the end of the day, the students were able to tell their classmates, families and friends that they had sat where Lincoln sat, saw with their own eyes a piece of the rock from the Massachusetts harbor that welcomed the Mayflower, and experienced for themselves the dark and cramped subterranean quarters that so many runaway slaves called home more than a century and a half ago. Professors Lebowitz, Chen and I are extremely grateful to the thoughtful people at Plymouth Church for the time they spent with our students and the gift of knowledge they gave them."
This "learning community's" fall 2003 semester final project will involve writing an essay on "Designing Ground Zero." Here, in addition to developing their compositional skills, geometry and history again will come into play. Daniel's Libeskind's breathtaking master plan for a Park of Heroes, a 9/11 memorial museum and new World Trade Center office buildings -- at least one with its envisioned architecturally dramatic angular geometric shape soaring to perhaps as high as 2,000 feet -- will more than amply engage the students in elements of both mathematics and history.
Photos courtesy of Mathematics Professor Zhao Chen
