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NEW YORK, NY May 04, 2004 — Most elementary students learn the bulk of their history from textbooks. But New York City is now in the process of training teachers to bring history to life. WNYC's Beth Fertig visited one elementary school in Brooklyn that's already gotten a jump start.

ANNE: Hello everyone, so nice to be here (claps)

For a group of students at PS 145 in Bushwick, 88 year old Anne Ricevuto is a piece of living history. Ricevuto graduated from the school in 1930 when the neighborhood was filled with Italian immigrants. She's returned to help today's mostly Latino students celebrate the 100th anniversary of their school by learning about their Brooklyn neighborhood.

GIRL: How does it feel being back? ANNE: It feels strange. It feels great. I look around, didn't have these desks. We were classes of 48 and the desks were entirely different.

Working with the Brooklyn Historical Society, the fourth graders in this after-school workshop are relying on primary sources - real people and documents. As the students interview Anne Ricevuto and her daughter, who also attended the school, many of their questions are about what it was like being a kid in the 1920s and 30s. Eduardo Zarza wants to know about discipline.

EDUARDO: If you got in trouble that goes on your record?

ANNE: Not, they tried not to be too severe with them. Because frankly if they did do something wrong it wasn't bad. It wasn't like it would be today.

The kids also want to know what she ate; what the block looked like when the Reingold Brewery was across the street; and how she played. Ricevuto's reference to a minstrel show, by students in blackface, goes right over their heads. But these nine year olds are fascinated when she tells them she had no computers.

ANNE: Had no cell phones. No phones. We didn't have television.

The students are also intrigued when Ricevuto pulls out her graduation program from 1930, and a photo of the school's first PTA.

KIDS: WHOA! That's all the teachers? All the teachers? TEACHER: This is a PTA picture that they took a long time ago, KIDS: WOW.

The school's principal, Rosa Escoto says her students seem more involved in their work because it's about a familiar subject: students like themselves.

ESCOTO: They're beginning to realize that many of them did live in Evergreen Street or Central Avenue and oh that's my building.' And to them those primary sources, everyday sources that they live with. So it's very real to them.

Escoto admits it's too soon to tell if this enthusiasm is making a dent on student achievement. But after this year's heavy concentration on math and literacy, the Education Department is now putting more focus on history and social studies. Julie Maurer is director of education at the Gotham Center for New York City History at CUNY. It's among several programs that are working with the schools through a new federal teaching grant.

MAURER: Teachers, history professors, museum educators can come together and know where to find the best lesson and the primary resource for their neighborhood or historian to come into the classroom or how do you find the old records from your schools.

At the end of their interviews, the fourth graders at PS 145 ponder what's changed at their 100 year old school. They know the bathrooms were once outside the 4 story limestone and brick building. They also argue about which things haven't changed.

KIDS: The main office. The library. No library changed. The second floor gym. Closets. The books. PTA room is still there.

The students' work will be incorporated in their school's history lessons. Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Historical Society has some of the old desks, blueprints and photos the kids have been using, on exhibit through June 6th. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.