public history internship – Page 3 – Public History at UMass Boston

By Kaylee Redard, Public History

Garden view of the exterior of The House of the Seven Gables. The house was built in 1668 by John Turner, a wealthy Salem merchant. Courtesy of The House of the Seven Gables website.

The House of the Seven Gables, a non-profit historic site in Salem, Massachusetts, is dedicated to preserving the past and continuing the American story. It is both an international tourist attraction as well as a community resource, particularly for the immigrant population in Salem. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 the historic houses on site are closed to the public and, like many other museums, they are limited to running a few programs virtually in summer 2020. This has made my internship an interesting and challenging experience.

The global pandemic greatly influenced and shaped my internship, both in content and practice. I was tasked with evaluating remote museum education programs during COVID-19, and to use this data to propose redesign of a Gables face-to-face school program–Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers—as a virtual program.

Some of the items used in the on-site Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers program, including a cone of sugar. Courtesy of The House of the Seven Gables website.

Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers is a school program for grades two through five that is designed to engage students in learning about colonial life during a visit to The House of the Seven Gables. Traditionally, this program begins by introducing three 17th century children: Jehoden Palfrey, the daughter of one of the original colonists of Salem, John Turner II, who was the son of a wealthy Salem merchant, and an Irish indentured servant named Joan Sullivan. The students are then divided into groups to do activities, directed by historical interpreters, around the historic site. These activities include a brief tour of The House of the Seven Gables, a wool carding activity, learning about colonial food, and lastly, playing with colonial toys. Once the students have gone through all the activities they regroup for a concluding discussion. The entire program is very hands-on and makes use of the entire site to accommodate large groups of children. My job was to propose a way to make this hands-on, face-to-face program into an engaging virtual experience.

To do this I needed to become more informed about the current state of the museum education field and learn about remote school programming. First, I reached out to the museum education community to see how other sites were adjusting their programs in response to COVID-19. I contacted eleven different museums and historic institutions, including Historic Beverly, Salem Maritime National Historic Site, and the USS Constitution Museum, and asked if they would be willing to share how they are doing programming during COVID-19. I received enthusiastic responses and quickly arranged meetings over Zoom or phone with everyone who was available.

In these meetings, I posed four questions:

What programs did you run before COVID-19?
Have you changed any of these programs to make them accessible during the pandemic?
What feedback have you received about these programs?
Did your institution work with teachers when making changes to their education programs?

Everyone was planning different ways to engage with their visitors of all ages. Most programs were geared toward students and families, but a few have been for the general public. Since my focus was on school programs, I tried to keep the conversation on those, but I was excited to hear everyone’s plans.

Every professional colleague had imaginative ideas on how to reach out to their community. These conversations helped me envision the program I wanted to build. Discussions on how to present content in an engaging way while on the other side of a screen, or which platform has worked best for connecting with students, were helpful in determining which way my project went.

Undertaking my internship during COVID-19 was challenging, but it offered me unexpected and rewarding opportunities. I had not expected making such broad connections with professionals in the field during an internship—I came to look forward to each of these meetings not only because it was a chance to talk to someone in the midst of quarantine, but because of the opportunities for professional development and building a network of colleagues.

I also learned the importance of flexibility. To communicate with colleagues and my site supervisor, I had to make sure that my schedule was as flexible as possible to accommodate the different forms of communication and time boundaries of multiple hectic schedules. With the weekly, if not daily, change in regulations surrounding COVID-19, many museums, including The House of the Seven Gables, have had to change guidelines without much notice. This can drastically alter staff schedules and limit contact time. I have learned two other crucial lessons from this internship: the importance of patience, with people and technology, and time management, because you never know what will come next during this pandemic. I am looking forward to hopefully implementing my proposal for a virtual Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers program and the potential for other remote programs that result from this experience.

By: Laurie L. Kearney

In September of 2017, I started my Public History internship with Historic Newton as an Education Collection Interpretation Intern. Historic Newton has a very active presence in their city. They were founded in the 1950s and today run two museums, The Jackson Homestead & Museum and the Durant-Kenrick House & Grounds. They also maintain the town’s historic cemeteries, offer many educational programs to their community including programs for adults and school children, and have online programs that include exhibits, historical information and teacher resources. Their mission is to illuminate their city’s history in the context of the nation’s history.

Jackson Homestead, 527 Washington Street, Newton, MA

Historic Newton is dedicated to providing educational opportunities, not only for Newton residents, but for the broader community via the world wide web. Historic Newton offers many educational programs for school age children, and these programs were the focus of my role as intern. In recent years, Historic Newton has developed a daylong lesson on old burying grounds in conjunction with Newton’s middle school teachers. Their two museum spaces feature multiple exhibits on Newton’s history, including sections on slavery and the Underground Railroad, and the domestic life of a Newton family spanning over a century. Online visitors can find exhibits on the Charles River, Newton artists, penny postcards, and the Underground Railroad. Currently, Historic Newton is writing a new curriculum on immigration and has several new programs in the works for the community.

Capt. Edward Durant House, 286 Waverley Ave, Newton, MA

Over the last thirty years, museum education has become an integral part of exhibit planning. Before the 1960s, museums were spaces where people went to simply look at exhibits. In the 1970s, museums began to be thought of as nontraditional learning spaces (versus a traditional classroom setting) and history museum staff began developing exhibits with learning objectives in mind. As a result, there has been a shift from passive to active learning. Today, when people visit a museum they expect to learn something new from an exhibit, a community program, a walking tour, or an activity; most likely, a museum educator had a hand in its development. Museum educators are a vital component of a well-staffed museum. They are specialists who assist institutions in achieving their educational goals.

Museum educators may work with a variety of people, whether they are in-house professionals, community residents, or local public school teachers, to develop programs that are both engaging and informative. Working with teachers on developing curriculums, results in lessons that are meaningful to students, respond to the curriculum, and that teachers are eager to teach. This kind of collaboration creates ownership for the project, which helps the community value the exhibit or program. Through collaboration and exhibit design, museum educators create meaningful programs, lessons, and exhibits for their participants.

One of my responsibilities as an intern was to create a “please touch” table for our museum visitors.

As the Education Collection Interpretation Intern, it was my turn to put these ideas and theories into practice. My responsibilities included updating the existing program “If You Lived in the Jackson Homestead” to make it more participatory for young audiences; creating a new exhibit for the “Please Touch” table in the Historic Newton Gallery; and researching items in their education collection for further use in Historic Newton’s educational programs. My goal was to create hands-on activities that allow young children to encounter the past in meaningful ways and engage them in age-appropriate historical thinking.

The “If You Lived at the Jackson Homestead” program is one of Historic Newton’s much loved and older programs, but both staff and visiting teachers identified the need to make it less lecture-based and more participatory for its young audiences. Feedback from teachers indicated a need for more resources for use in their classrooms to support this program. My initial observation of this hour-long lesson for children ages 4 to7 revealed the need for a new approach – these young children spent 30 minutes listening to the presenter deliver information before they had an opportunity to participate in a hands-on activity. My challenge was to figure out how to incorporate participatory elements into the 30-minute information-based session, to make it fun and meaningful for the children. I came up with several ideas then refined them with the help of Newton Public School teachers and Historic Newton staff. In addition, I revised objectives, artifacts, instructions, and follow-up for the existing artifact-handling activity, devising a game that allows children to practice comparing past and present through images of objects of the past and their versions in the present. This new approach to the activity and the other additions to this lesson added a strong participatory component, which better engaged the children.

Public History at UMass Boston

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Tag: public history internship (page 3 of 3)

Going Virtual: Museum Education During COVID-19

Internship at Historic Newton: Putting Education into Practice