Harriet Merrill Johnson was born in Bangor, Maine in 1986. She graduated from the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital and began working as a district nurse at the Henry Street Settlement. While working as a district nurse, Johnson became interested in the needs of children. Along the side of Lucy Mitchell and Caroline Pratt, they formed the Bureau of Education Experiments in 1916. Their aim was to bring various specialists and researchers together in an experimental educational environment. Johnson was the founder and first director of the bureau's Nursery school, which was later named in her honor.
Harriet Johnson wrote many books:
- In 1916 -> The Visiting Teacher
- In 1924 -> A Nursery School Experiment: Descriptive Report
- In 1928 -> Children in Nursery School
- In 1933 -> The Art of block building
- In 1936 -> School Begins at two: A book for Teachers and Parents
Harriet Johnson Nursery School
The Harriet Johnson Nursery School opened in 1918 at the Bureau's new quarters in a series of houses on West 12th and West 13th Street. The staff included teachers, psychologists and researchers who worked to discover the environments in which children grew and learned to their full potential. The staff observed how children learned, and they began documenting the learning process in order to determine the environments and educational practices best suited to foster the growth and development of children. Their findings contributed to a fundamental reform in the way children were taught. Graduates from Johnson's Nursery school went to Caroline Pratt's City and Country school. The nursery school also educated teachers and others on how to create these environments. Children at Johnson's Nursery school were given opportunities to draw, paint and model in clay. These were unusual forms of expression in schools at this time. A child's education was recognized at something other than prescribed curriculum. The children here and at Caroline Pratt's city and country school, under the support of the Bureau, had all of New York City as their classroom. They were able to ride ferries, visit zoos and look at bridges.
Timeline of Bank Street College
1926 - Working council of the Bureau began a process of appraisal of the program of the past 10 years and a rethinking of objectives and strategies. The central strategy for effecting educational reform would be the development of a teacher education program that would serve as a model to the educational world.
1930 - Acquisition of the old Fleischman's yeast brewery and storage building. This building was fireproof, sturdy, spacious, and had lots of room for the nursery school to expand and even had room for the new cooperative school for teachers.
1937 - Division of publication were established to do the work of writing for and about children.
1943 - New York City board of education asked that workshops be given to some of its teachers on the bank street method.
1946 - The college began to offer night and weekend courses for students who don't have the requirements to attend college. 500 people were attending these courses.
1960 - With the support of Carnegle corporation, Bank street's educational resource center, started to help in the education of students handicapped by segregation and poverty.
1965 - The college established one of the first national model head start programs called the 42nd street early childhood model head start training center. The college embarked on program activities on behalf of the project head start with a national workshop for administrators of the program, combined with an out-placement service.
Today - Over the years, and after all the changes, one thing has stayed the same: the focus on children --> their needs and how to meet them.
Books
Bank street college created The Little Golden Book Series, which brought opportunities for reading into homes at low costs. They also created Bank Street Readers. It was developed for the classroom and focused on the lives of inter-city children.