Library program turns middle schoolers into 'Young Curators'

When Bonnie Bernstein, outreach coordinator for the Cotsen's Children's Library, first envisioned the Young Curator's exhibit, she did not realize the widespread support network she would be able to harness.

"It was a real community project," Bernstein said of the exhibit, which chronicles the history of schools and was curated by Princeton-area elementary and middle school students. "That is what made it so rewarding for everyone, especially for the children."

"They got a real sense that a lot of people were truly interested in helping them to learn, and also learning from them too," Bernstein said.The project — which opened April 3 and runs through Saturday — offers children access to the rare collection of books in the library. "We wanted to bring the public in and for them to also enjoy the research and scholarly resources we have in the library," she said. "Usually they are only accessible to people with special access privileges."

Bernstein — with the assistance of student facilitators Jaime Wong '00 and Elizabeth Boothby '02, as well as a museum educator from the Smithsonian and two Rutgers students — circumvented the problem by photocopying and duplicating some of the rarest materials so they would be available to the students.

Wong, who participates in the Teacher Preparation Program, said she enjoyed the opportunity to communicate with children and gain insight into life outside the University.

"It was a good opportunity to get involved with the local schools around Princeton. Here on campus, we don't usually get to see anyone but college-aged people, so we are a bit isolated," she said. "It's fun to see how the school system and the town works, and to get a glimpse of what happens outside the University."

The hardest, and most rewarding, challenge for Wong — whose main task was to coordinate communication between the children's library and the classrooms — was to make the exhibits "kid-friendly." Before the students created their own displays, she fashioned a model exhibit for the children on the history of handwriting.

"What we learned is that the exhibits had to be as interactive as possible," Bernstein said. "So the children would not just have things for people to see, but also things to touch, little games and even tapes to listen to."

Local schools

Kathy Murtaugh's second graders at Community Park School named their exhibit, "Netting Poseidon's Knowledge: How Children Have Learned about the Sea."

"Our school theme for the year is oceans and the sea, so we wanted to tie this idea into our project," Murtaugh said.

"My kids also had a fascination with mythology, so we learned some stories about the sea," she continued. "We also learned how the children from antiquity learned about the sea through an oral tradition." She added that some of the children recorded themselves telling the stories on tape.

Shannon Dahl's eighth-grade class from John Witherspoon Middle School put together an exhibit called, "School Fads and Fashions: What Were You Thinking?" The exhibits reviewed a century of dress codes, slang and popular paraphernalia and included model lockers filled with contents appropriate to each decade.

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Eighth graders Hilary Strasburger and Katy-Rose Glickman said they chose this project because, "we are teenagers and we are all interested in fads and fashions." Strasburger added, "The most surprising thing we noticed was that a lot of the stuff that was in fashion is starting to come back, such as flares, capris and platforms. I'm glad, because they're so cool."