CFE – Royal B.C. Museum

Three weeks seemed like a long chunk of time to begin with, but by the third week it feels like it’s flown by – and just when I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of this place!  But it has been a terrific experience, and has just got me more motivated for these other avenues of education beyond the classroom!  This week was especially inspiring in that regard, as Chris O’Connor asked Courtney and I to participate in the RBCM’s Learning Department’s discussion of a recently released white paper on the future of museum education.  It had some thought-provoking articles that got my wheels a-turnin’ about how museums can play a part in helping to transform our school systems to better fit the needs of our students, especially in accrediting informal learning that happens beyond the classroom walls, and 9am-3pm hours.

http://www.aam-us.org/docs/default-source/center-for-the-future-of-museums/building-the-future-of-education-museums-and-the-learning-ecosystem.pdf?sfvrsn=2

The last Sunday of every month is Wonder Sunday at the RBCM, which allows families to take part in engaging explorations of the museum.  This month we were supposed to be exploring the marine invertebrates at Clover Point, but sadly there was a sewage spill the day before!  Instead, families were able to go behind the scenes and explore the RBCM’s Invertebrate Collection with Heidi Gartner, the Collections Manager (as Kids’ Club was able to do the week before!), and then come and do some redesigning of the Ocean Gallery with Courtney and I!  A large part of the Ocean Gallery hasn’t changed for over 30 years, and doesn’t get much attention – from kids or adults!  So we thought we could use some bright young minds to help us reimagine how else the RBCM might use the space.

The end of my time at the RBCM very bittersweet; although it brings me one step closer to finishing the B.Ed program and starting my career, it was hard to leave as I so enjoyed exploring the galleries, getting a deeper understanding of what informal learning can be and can offer, and how I was able to contribute to it in some small way.  I can certainly see myself returning to informal learning, or even curriculum development, after I’ve had some more time in the classroom, and I certainly hope to maintain a connection to the Learning Department at the RBCM!

This has been another full week!  This week I’ve been able to focus more on what kind of lesson plans and teacher guides I will be completing for the RBCM.  The RBCM is excited to focus on Ocean Literacy in its next year of educational programs and resources, so I will be creating some materials around that, as well as a focus on the Living Languages exhibition (which I’m really excited about!)

http://oceanliteracy.wp2.coexploration.org/

Courtney and I were also able to act as cultural ambassadors/glorified tour guides to a visiting French travel scout.  She has apparently been sent out to see what Canada has to offer, and report back to France!  She was particularly interested in the First Nations Gallery and Living Languages exhibit.   It was a great opportunity to see how someone from another culture and country took the exhibit in, and to realize how familiar with the exhibit I had become.  Her blog is below:

http://www.curieusevoyageuse.com/

One of the main parts of the week was helping out again with the weekly Kids’ Club and this week I was in charge of writing the blog, so please check it out!

http://royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/staffprofiles/2014/06/30/the-31st-of-32-views-marine-biodiversity/

On a side note, the BCTF held a rally across the street from the RBCM on the Legislature lawns during one of our work days.  It felt strange just being a bystander!  But got to have a look at them from the RBCM’s great view!

Wow, what a whirlwind of a week!  Finishing up my practicum Friday, packing up, heading to Victoria, and starting bright and early Monday morning was quite the experience!  But what a welcome we received, and what an incredible new world of education we have discovered!

The first few days were a mix of getting a sense of what Courtney and I will be contributing to in the Learning Department at the RBCM, and getting some amazing inside scoops of the goings-on behind the scenes of this museum.  Though we certainly got down to work this week on brainstorming lesson plans, tour-guide ideas, and some fun Viking-themed scavenger hunt activities (as well as getting to have some fun interactions with some real, live kiddies!), some of the real fun of this week was the amazing amount of time Chris took in helping to familiarize us with the plethora of research, collections, exhibitions, and hard work that goes on at the RBCM.  From vertebrates, to invertebrates, to ethnology, to conservation, to construction, to the arts department, to photography, and more – we saw it!  And we were able to meet a whole host of amazing staff and dedicated volunteers who keep this place a-hummin’!

Having grown up in Victoria and feeling as though I was half-raised in this museum, it is particularly fascinating to me to find out how much really does happen at the RBCM, and how small a percentage of that is able to be manifested in physical form in the galleries.  I hadn’t consciously thought about museums as being places of research, but from talking with many of the leading curators and collections managers here my eyes have been opened as to what an integral role it plays in so many different spheres.

One of the most intriguing parts of this week was being able to review the museum’s new inquiry-based worksheets for students to use as a means of interacting with the different galleries and exhibits.  We were then able to observe two classes tour the galleries using these worksheets to help the Education Department determine how well they work in helping students interact more meaningfully with the content presented to them (the previous worksheets were apparently glorified scavenger hunts).  Though some students certainly seemed to take advantage of the more open-ended questions presented to them by approaching the exhibits with thought and attention, it was disappointing to see how many of the students still zoomed through it all, as if they had blinders on, focused solely on getting what the question asked, and then moving on to snicker at the naked statue in the First Peoples Gallery.  This has got my mind a-whirlin’ about what ways we can try to facilitate materials and experiences that captivate and connect our students to these informal learning environments.  Hopefully some inspiration will hit me, or at least slowly percolate down into my subconscious, and then manifest in my lesson plans for next week.  I’m particularly interested in the new Living Languages exhibit which show cases the incredible diversity of First Nations’ languages in B.C. and would love to find a hook to get the average student more intrigued in this province’s rich, pre-European contact history.

Next week I’m looking forward to working in more depth on my lesson plans, exploring some more nooks and crannies of this amazing place, and helping out with the weekly Kids Club exploration of the museum and writing up their adventures on the RBCM blog!  This week was vertebrates…so on to invertebrates we go!