"New York's Future as I View It" Lesson Plans

"New York's Future as I View It" Lesson Plans

The Spring 2025 session of the Public History Workshop worked on high school history lesson plans based on a forgotten collection of New York students’ essays from the 1960s. Now fully digitized and searchable, the “New York’s Future As I View It” essay contest from 1965 offers a unique snapshot of the history of the city’s future. 

Over several months, groups of participants comprised of Ph.D. students in history drafted and workshopped lesson plans with New York City public high school teachers. The group presented their lesson plan for feedback in May 20, 2025 at Bard High School Early College Queens. 

Sponsored by the World-Telegram & Sun newspaper and the Empire State Building, the contest was open to all high-school students who lived within a 50-mile radius of the landmark skyscraper on 34th Street.

Contest entry forms provided some research tips, encouraging authors to visit local libraries, or consult with their social studies teachers. Organizers had suggestions, too, for topics to cover. “Select any significant issue related to New York, and develop your own prizewinning essay,” they proposed. “Today, New York ranks as a world capital of commerce, culture and the United Nations. You can write on these and other facets of New York’s future . .. as you see them.” 

Lesson Plans

This set includes the Introduction and four Lesson Plans, which situate select student essays from "New York's Future as I View It" in their historical background. 

Focus Question: What was on young New Yorkers’ minds when they envisioned the future of their city in 1965?

Lesson Objectives: Students will (1) identify common themes in different essays, (2) discuss how they may have affected a young person’s perspective of the future, and (3) compare those concerns to their own.

Lesson Plans

  1. Remaking Space in the ‘60s: Urban Renewal, Slum Clearance, and Suburbanization

  2. Fighting for Racial Justice: the Harlem Riots and School Boycotts

  3. Cold War in the Aftermath of the Missile Crisis: the United Nations and the Atom Bomb

  4. A Greener New York: Pollution and Emerging Environmentalism

Hannah Bruno and Marc Orriols Gimenez

This Lesson Plan focuses on close reading primary sources, the use of an archive, and the use of databases.

Focus Questions: What is the archive? How is it created? How can we use it?

Lesson Objective: Emphasize the exploratory and constructed nature of the archive.

  • Understand not only what it is, but how to navigate it
  • Think about how expansive of a category “data” actually is
  • Emphasize discovery - model the work of a historian on a smaller scale.


Grace Elicker, Batel Levy and Jordan Weinstock

We envision this lesson will come after students have learned the historical context of the 1960s and tools for analyzing primary sources. In particular, we imagine that students will have already been exposed to some essays from the “New York’s Future as I View It” contest collection in prior lessons about analyzing primary sources. This lesson could take one class period (plus homework) or could span longer, depending on how much editing/revision or how many letters the teacher hopes the student will complete. 

  1. Focus Questions
    1. What were young New Yorkers’ hopes and fears in 1965?
    2. How do their hopes and fears resonate with you now?
  2. Lesson Objectives
    1. Students will analyze primary sources to explain what young New Yorkers hoped for and feared in 1965
    2. Students will demonstrate historical understanding and empathy as they craft responses to these letters
  3. Resources
    1. Sample Essays
    2. “New York’s Future as I View It” Project Worksheet

 

Gracie Anderson and Sophia Scanlan