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!