The primary
focus of this blog has been on partnerships between museums and schools and
meeting the wants and needs of school age children. In that vein, we have
decided the best course of action would be to offer an article on how museums
support teachers in their roles as educators.
One of the
most universal and successful ways museums support teachers is by offering
teacher workshops. These workshops can fit seamlessly into teachers’ schedules
by utilizing the break automatically built into the school year. Many museums
offer weeklong workshops in the summer and some, like the Philadelphia Museum
of Art, have shorter workshops available during shorter recesses like the
winter break school schedule. Many workshops are held over the weekend and rang
anywhere from half-day to two day workshops. The National Gallery of Art has a
program called “After-School Weekday Sessions,” which works within the teachers’
work-week schedule.
Beyond workshops, some museums
offer in-service days during which the museum staff travels to schools to
provide costume workshops. Often, these in-service sessions are only offered to
schools located within a specific distance from the museum. This means that
in-service sessions are not available to all schools and teachers; in fact, the
services are actually quite limited. This is unfortunate because the in-service
sessions are often the most customizable and, for that reason, may prove to be
the most useful to teachers. Logistically it makes sense, but museum staff
should strive to reach the teachers beyond the limit of the in-service sessions
in unique ways in order to overcome this obstacle.
Other ways that museums try to
reach out to teachers is by offering professional and/or graduate school credit
for attending their workshops. To offer credit, the museums most be approved as
credit providers by the state. For museums in areas that are easily accessible
to people from multiple states, it is beneficial to be approved as a credit
provider in multiple states. For example, the Philadelphia Museum of Art provides
professional credit in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It is also important to note that the number
of credits provided per workshop is easily located on the museum’s website and
on the handouts related to the teacher workshops.
Museums appeal to teachers by
highlighting what makes the individual museum unique and by offering ways to
harness this uniqueness in the classroom. Many museums offer workshops on a
wide variety of topics and disciplines.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art offers workshops beyond those structured
for art teachers. For example, they have workshops on “Art and Autism: Social
Stories,” “Looking to Write: Narrative Writing” and “The Narrative Life of
Frederick Douglas,” a workshop that is meant to assist teachers who celebrate
Black History Month. In addition, the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame conducted a workshop on using popular music in
special education classes and workshops on using the spoken word and slam
poetry in the classroom.
Marketing the workshops to teachers
is an important step in making the workshops successful. Museums have the
privilege of providing workshops on a wide variety of interesting topics that
are meant to appeal to the classroom teachers. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential
Library & Museum offers the following workshops: “Political Cartoons in the
Classroom” and “This Damned Old House: Abraham Lincoln and the White House.” The
National Gallery of Art has a workshop called, “Can We Talk?! – Facilitating Conservations
with Works of Art.” Each of these workshops is easily marketable and is meant
to spark the interest of educators.
Aligning the needs of classroom
teachers with the offerings of the museums is the most critical step of making
a successful workshop. Luckily, there are a vast number of museums who offer
highly unique workshops to teachers.
Teachers have many opportunities to find something that might work in
their classroom. Museums have mastered the teacher workshop; they offer
workshops that work with teacher’s schedules, provide professional credit,
highlight the uniqueness of the museum and are appealing and interesting to the
teacher.
But they also offer an example that
goes beyond the workshop, a model in which the museum educators are the
experts. This might be a way to better welcome the classroom teachers in museums.
The future goals of museums should be to make a true partnership between the
classroom teacher and the museum educator. Hopefully, this relationship can be
extended into both the museum and the classroom. I found two examples of
museums striving to breakout of the teacher workshop model by offering
“Research Colloquiums” and “Roundtables.”
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential
Library & Museums has a workshop titled “Research Colloquiums” that consist
of teachers working with the museum education department to learn how best to
use primary sources and object-based teaching in the classroom. The museum
educators show the teachers the tools used in the museum field, such as how to
navigate the digital collections and the Presidential Library. The teachers get
to experience first hand what it is like to work in a museum and the resources
that are available. On the second day of the session, the teachers and the
museums educator work to make a personalized lesson plan for the teacher. By the end of the session the teachers have a
fully workable lesson plan that they made using the resources of the museum.
The regular and award-winning
“Education & the Arts Roundtables” offer a truly unique spin on teacher
workshops. These roundtables allow for a partnership between several museums, such
as the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Page Museum at the La
Brea Tar Pits, and the William S. Hart Park and Museum, as well as selected schools
in Los Angeles County, art organizations and artists. The “Education & the
Arts Roundtables” strive to “foster deep,
interdisciplinary classroom learning, and give artists and educators joint
responsibility and authority over their Museum interactions.” The mission of
the “Education & the Arts Roundtables” is one that all museums should
strive towards when forming museum and school partnerships. It is truly a
partnership between museums, teachers, students, and the community where no
single member is the expert.
Links:
Education & the Arts Roundtables
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museums
National Gallery of Art
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
This is a great topic! When I was working as an educator at a couple of museums in New York, I could definitely sense interest from teachers bringing school groups in professional development workshops at the museums, so I definitely see a demand, which is great. After spending a semester in a DCPS school, though, I also see how it can be challenging to bring in lots of teachers for these, especially during the school year. They are insanely busy and already have meetings before and after school every day, with occasional weekend classes thrown in. It sounds like the teachers who already really want these programs will seek them out (and then attend, if they have time), but I am curious about how to get teachers who don't already have that passion for museums into these workshops, since both they and the museums could really benefit from this exchange (new voices! new advocates!). We need to make these really practical (and fun!), which many already seem to be, which is good. When I was working at a children's museum in New York, I had the chance to co-lead a few PDs for librarians, actually, and it was a wonderful experience. When designing these workshops, I think it's definitely worthwhile to consider and include other informal educators.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post!
I completely agree Charlotte! And while it may be hard to reach out to educators who are not already invested in museums, I think that had potential to be a rewarding endeavor. When I was working at the Children's Museum of Cleveland we tried to reach out to teachers by attending professional events that catered towards the teachers. For example, a table from the Children's Museum would be set up at various educators' career fairs. We marketed ourselves as a tool for new teachers developing their first curriculum and also had handouts for the other educational professionals attending the career fair. The Children's Museum had an advantage because the former director of the museum had been a director of pre schools in the Cleveland area. She knew the events that were widely attended by educators. It allowed the museum to new voice and advocates!
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