A Living Archive
CONNECTING WITH
OUR HISTORY
Many students (and teachers) experience their schools as regimented, predictable places. But a school can also be an exciting invention space — where teachers and students produce original work as evidenced in curriculum and lesson plans, student projects, creative writing and other artistic expressions.
Historically, very little of this work has enjoyed a life beyond one classroom, one school building, one household. One of our primary motivations in bringing The Group School (TGS) alumni and staff together was to try to figure out collectively what to do with all the “stuff” that had been produced during the life of the school.
“How, we wondered, could we honor and preserve the legacy of the school? And more urgently, how could we make these artifacts and materials readily available to those who were part of this effort, to researchers interested in exploring the history of innovation in American education, and to educational inventors today?”
Throughout the archive you will find literary magazines produced by students and teachers, plays written by students and performed for teachers and students in other schools and youth programs, a full-length documentary focused on the governance model of the school in its first year, yearbooks dense with photos and student writing, and more.