The Archival History Toolkit

‍What aspects of your school’s history - known or unknown - may be hindering your work as an educational institution? How might your school learn about and tell the stories of former and current students, parents, teachers, and administrators of your school? How can your school community study its own history to unearth new understandings, repair past harm, and increase equity, justice, and belonging?

Through the development of a new Independent School Archival History Toolkit, the Klingenstein Center seeks to provide tools to help schools answer these questions. The toolkit will provide independent schools with a framework to:

1. conduct archival and oral history research in partnership with students, parents, teachers, administrators, and alumni;
2. organize and share their findings;
3. engage their communities in dialogue; and
4. incorporate new understandings into their school cultures and traditions.

Ideally, this toolkit will serve a wide range of schools and projects such as historically and/or predominantly white schools that wish to explore the experiences of students of color, or a previously all-boys school that wishes to understand the experiences of female students as the school became co-ed.

Research Team

The project is led by Dr. Emily Bailin Wells, postdoctoral research fellow at the Klingenstein Center. Joining the Center as partners on this project are Dr. Michelle Purdy, associate professor of education at Washington University and author of the award-winning book Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools, and Lisa Johnson, on behalf of Private School Village, a non-profit she founded and leads that is dedicated to providing community connection and resources for families of color in private schools. An advisory board of volunteer educators and archivists has provided insight during the development of the toolkit.