Museum-School Partnerships

Museums are natural partners with schools; they provide opportunities that deepen formal curriculum, often in a more interactive, hands-on environment. These partnerships exist in a variety of ways - some work with only certain schools, others are more informal and open to student applicants from the area. We as museum educators need to continually advocate for this special relationship between museums of all genres and students. Our group has compiled a list of several interesting and effective partnerships between schools and museums to illustrate their benefit to students.

1. Oakland Museum of California and Korematsu Discovery Academy and La Escuelita (Oakland, California)

http://museumca.org/museum-school-partnerships

The science education department of the Oakland Museum of California partners with three fifth grade classes from Korematsu Discovery Academy and La Escuelita throughout a school year. The program, Water Striders Junior Guides: From Creeks to Coastline, helps students better understand the ecology of local watersheds and the affect their own actions can have on the surrounding habitats. Over the course of the year, students visit a creek, salt marsh, bay, and coast to observe both fresh and salt water environments. The students then use their observations and discoveries to create tours for the Natural Sciences Gallery at the Museum. Additionally, the students work with docents to design activities for younger students and lead students from their own school on tours to teach them about what they have learned during the project. Finally, the students use their new skills and knowledge to participate in a family event where they host their friends and family on a tour.

On-line exhibits of students’ work:

http://tinyurl.com/http-rosa-com
http://tinyurl.com/http-ali-com
http://tinyurl.com/http-rusche-com

2. The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Student Docent Program (Ridgefield, Connecticut)

http://www.aldrichart.org/education/docent.php

This program is not a partnership with a specific school, but rather open to students from local schools. There are two levels of the program - Student Docents in grades 5-12, and Varsity Docents in grades 9-12. The Student Docent Program trains students in small groups to facilitate discussions with their own peers about contemporary art. The hope is that when their own classmates lead them on a tour, students are “more likely to make connections between the work on view and their own experiences.” Students who have gone through the docent program twice and are willing to make a more serious commitment are eligible to apply for the Varsity Docent Program. This program functions similarly to an internship, and introduces students to additional aspects of the museum environment, including multiple programs and audiences. This on-site experience is combined with discussions with staff members, field trips to New York, and artist workshops, and is intended to give student participants a strong foundational understanding of museum work.

3. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, Massachusetts)

http://www.gardnermuseum.org/education/school_partnerships

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum partnerships with a small number of schools each year in order to build deep working relationships. This year they are working with Boston Latin School, Maurice J. Tobin K08 School, Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers, Dudley Street Neighborhood Charter School, and Rafael Hernandez K-8 School. Isabella Stewart seeks to help students explore art in a way that they can make connections through their own experiences and knowledge. They do this using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a discussion-based pedagogy that asks three questions: “What’s going on in this picture?” “What do you see that makes you say that?” and “What more can we find?” Through this discussion, students develop skills in reading artwork, becoming more flexible thinkers, and learning ways to become better speakers and listeners. The program is a true partnership between school and museum, as teachers must  present 10 VTS lessons, and students visit the Museum multiple times. These visits last for several hours, and include an art-making project in the Education Studio or Greenhouse Classroom.

4. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (Los Angeles, California)

http://www.nhm.org/site/for-teachers/teacher-resources/education-arts-roundtable/history

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County has created the Education and Arts Roundtable, a partnership that connects Los Angeles-area schools with mid-sized arts organizations. This new initiative developed out of a strategic plan that sought to more deeply engage the community with museum programs. Staff and board members asked, “what sorts of student learning opportunities would emerge when unencumbered by practical needs and logistics.” These partnerships work with grades K-12, and they develop learning projects inspired by the Museum’s collections and resources. The Natural History Museum also includes an area on the first floor, Inter/Act which shows both the students’ work as well as the process they used to reach their questions and discovery. The goal of the Roundtable is help students learn to “use visual and performing arts as a catalyst to learn about the natural and social sciences.”

5. Early Elementary Science Partnership (Chicago, Illinois)

http://fieldmuseum.org/schools/school-partnerships

This partnership is a different from those listed above in that its purpose is to provide K-3 teachers with professional develop opportunities to improve their abilities to teach science. Ten schools have partnered with the Field Museum, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Children’s Museum, Lincoln Park Zoo, CPS Office of Science and Northwestern University as part of a two-year intensive plan of 76 professional development hours. One hundred teachers participate in this professional development, along with university-based coursework, collaborative teacher teams, and field trips, that will eventually reach 3,000 teachers. The goals of this partnership are to improve science content knowledge for both students and teachers, teachers’ ability to use museums as informal learning environments, and to pilot this cooperative partnership between schools, the University, and informal learning environments.

To finish this post, we wanted to provide you all with a website that provides a background, practical ideas, and resources for museum and school partnerships:

www.artbeyondsite.org/handbook/az-museum-school.shtml