The Emerging Professional’s Guide to Museum Education
My experience in museum education began in 2003 when I joined the ranks of volunteer docents at The Parthenon in Nashville, TN. This life-size replica of the original Parthenon from Ancient Athens is a staple tourist attraction and is close to the heart of every native Nashvillian (and most transplants like myself). It was there, standing at the feet of the 42’ tall golden statue that I perfected my public speaking skills and discovered how to read an audience. From there, my work has narrowed mostly to working with families, school groups, and scout groups that are primarily made up of children 18 and under. But many of the concepts I first encountered at The Parthenon still serve me in my museum education career a decade and a half later.
What is Museum Education?
Museum Education is as diverse a field as museums themselves. Each institution defines what “museum education” means to them differently from other organizations. When attempting to define museum education, many people start with the audience, and they usually default to the assumption that an educator’s audience is a K-12 student. But all educators really know that the audience for an education program can vary widely from preschoolers to senior citizens.
Audience is not the defining feature of museum education.
The primary defining feature of museum education is experiential learning.
And that is not nearly as simple as it sounds. Early in my career, I thought experiential learning meant doing an activity with my actual hands, such as turning panels in an interactive exhibit or churning butter in a ceramic churn. While these are examples of experiential learning, if you limit your understanding of experiential learning to literal “hands-on” activities, you are being exclusive and limiting.
Experiential learning is about … wait for it… experiences. And you don’t have to have hands to have experiences. Experiences come in all shapes and sizes and smells and tastes and textures and sounds and more!
Tips for Success in Museum Education
A successful museum educator knows that experiences are sensory in nature and that high quality experiences are engaging. But experiences alone are not enough to qualify as museum education; after all, a visit to Disney World is a sensory-exploding and wholly engaging experience, but it’s not necessarily educational. While all museums walk the tight-rope between education and entertainment, what distinguishes your museum education programs from mere attractions is what people learn from you.
Crafting well-researched, sensory-filled, emotionally engaging learning experiences is what a successful museum educator does on a daily basis. But learning to do that, to do it efficiently, and to do it effectively takes time and practice. Even with a graduate degree in museum studies, I was not fully prepared to create quality museum education programs as an emerging museum professional (EMP).
What I Wish I’d Known As an EMP
Who is my audience?
This seems like it should be easy to answer, but I’ve found that defining the audience can be tricky for educators. Generally speaking, your audience is who you are addressing. So, in the case of a field trip, you would think your audience is the students. And you would be partially right. However, the teachers choose your programs, the administrators approve it, and the parents have more say so than you might realize. When crafting an educational program, you have to balance engaging both the students on their level and the adult chaperones on their level, while also being able to communicate the overall significance of the program to teachers and administrators before ever finalizing the group’s reservation at all. This means being able to communicate equally well to children and adults, often at the same time.
How can I make sure my programs are diverse?
There are SO many ways to bring diversity into your programming. As time goes on, I plan to write more about how to increase diversity in educational programs. But to start, here are the three easy ways in be inclusive in your programming, no matter your institution’s discipline or focus:
Begin every program with a Land Acknowledgement.
Acknowledge your own bias before writing a program and before running it. Every time. Every day.
When planning activities, ask yourself, “Could I do this activity if I was differently abled?”
How can I add empathy to my programs?
Since I work at a historic house museum, I deal in stories. We tell the stories of the people who once lived and worked where we now work. Adding empathic elements to my programs is deceptively simple, and it’s not something I thought much about as an EMP, fifteen years ago. But now, I consider it every day. Like diversity and inclusion, I would never think of planning a program that didn’t help participants to develop empathy. There are a lot of techniques we use to encourage empathy in student and family programs, but by far the easiest way is to just ask, “How would this make you feel?” No matter what you are teaching, if you can help your participants to put themselves in the shoes of another person, you are encouraging empathy.
What qualifies as an “activity”?
In short, everything. I used to think that activities were separate from the lesson in a museum education program. And while I still use that framework when writing program descriptions, I now recognize that the guided lesson itself is an activity. While students may not be active, they are (I hope) actively listening. Now, I love “hands-on,” immersive activities, but a good educator knows how to weave opportunities for critical thinking into the guided lesson components of their program. Strategies like VTS and other inquiry-based teaching methods are ideal for the short bursts of teaching that happen during museum education programs.
What is the single most important element in a program?
The single most important element of any educational program in a museum is communication. A good educator should be able to communicate well with the teacher, mom, scout leader, or travel agent who is making the reservation. When greeting the group upon arrival, they should communicate all the details and expectations to the group. During the program, they should be able to communicate the main themes, answer questions, give instructions, and do all of that in a time-sensitive and friendly way. An experienced educator knows that there is more to any program than just the lesson; they must be able to keep the program on track, while also creating an atmosphere of conversation and growth.
One Last Piece of Advice
If I could go back in time and give my younger self one piece of advice that sums up all these points, I would say that the most engaging part of any program should be the educator. A good educator can lead a stellar program with zero hands-on elements, because the only component you actually have to have for an education program is the people. The students. Their teachers. Their parents. Their scout leaders. The family. The group of friends. And you.
In the end, museum education is about making connections. It’s about connections with the information - the history, the art, the science - and connections between people.
