A tribute to school days

AFT
AFT Voices
Published in
3 min readAug 30, 2018
Martin Raskin sits in an old public school teacher’s chair in his collection, in New York, May 4, 2018. Raskin, who taught at Canarsie High School in Brooklyn hopes to find a home for his extensive collection of public school memorabilia. New York Times photo.

School has always been the center of Martin Raskin’s life. “I wasn’t the best student, but everything I have in my life is connected to school,” he says.
That’s why he has dedicated his time, and much of his apartment, to amassing a collection of public school memorabilia. Raskin has been fascinated with the trappings of school life since he was a student at Public School 202 in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the 1950s, and a teacher’s orange fountain pen caught his fancy.

Raskin, a retired member of the United Federation of Teachers, spent more than 30 years as a business teacher at Canarsie High School in Brooklyn. Raskin’s collection is a sentimental journey through his school days. Over the years, he has picked up enough school memorabilia to fill his three-bedroom apartment in New York City. Raskin even turned an entire room into a replica of an elementary school classroom that includes a row of wooden desks with inkwells, a regulator clock, a window pole and a teacher’s reading chair.

Creating a showcase of school memorabilia has been a labor of love for Martin Raskin.

“When I retired, my collection just mushroomed,” says Raskin, who says 95 percent of his items come from New York City public schools. So, he has made it his mission to find a permanent home for his collection in the city. (A new home for his collection would also make his partner and fellow teacher, Jerilyn Rubenstein, pretty happy too.)

AFT President Randi Weingarten shows off a brass doorknob given to her from Martin Raskin’s (pictured) school memorabilia collection at the 2018 AFT Convention in Pittsburgh.

Creating a showcase of school memorabilia has been a labor of love, says Raskin, but it’s about more than the act of collecting. “It’s fun and rewarding,” he says, recounting a story about a 90-year-old man who donated his school notebook from the 1940s to his collection. Seeing the collection “brought him to tears,” says Raskin, pointing out that items like school beanies, class rings and pins, brass doorknobs and attendance cards “bring back memories for people and make them feel good.”

Although his partner is ready to downsize, Raskin is still actively looking for additions to his collection. He has managed to squirrel away a few things that are stored in different places throughout the city, but he reiterates, “my collection needs a home.”

Story by Adrienne Coles /photos by the New York Times and Pamela Wolfe.

If you have items you’d like to donate or have an idea for a potential home for Martin Raskin’s collection, contact him at memorabuti@gmail.com.

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Published in AFT Voices

Raising up the voices of AFT members in preK-12 public education, higher education, healthcare and public services.

Written by AFT

We’re 1.7 million teachers, paraprofessionals/school-related personnel, higher ed faculty, public employees, & healthcare workers making a difference every day.

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