EXPERIENCE

For two years after graduating with my Bachelors’ degree in History, Thinkery Children’s Museum gave me the perfect playground to freely explore how museum education can be used as a framework for building a sense of community identity. From creating curriculum that utilizes Google Cardboard XR technology to prompt children to think critically about accessibility within public gardens to arranging urban planners to share their considerations for construction with youth at our summer camps, my work encouraged participants to use a scientific mindset to analyze their own communities.

During the summer months at Thinkery, I supervised and supported approximately forty educators, fifty volunteers, and one thousand three hundred children.

When the COVID-19 pandemic affected our operations in March 2020, I contributed to the Public Program department’s response by adapting our summer programming into a blended digital format.

Participating in the Collaborative Escape Room Project at the University of Texas also challenged me to expand my own understanding of what educational experiences could entail. During a five-month period, our motley team of artists and engineers collaborated to design, fabricate, program, install, and test an immersive escape room experience that would emotionally connect our audience to current environmental issues. This constant theme of technology as a tool to support an audience in their own informal learning process continues to permeates my work.

Smithsonian Institution’s Museum on Main Street responds to the growing need for preservation-based economic development in historic downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts by providing traveling exhibitions that communities personalize to their local histories. On their behalf I produced education modules that have been used by school districts to encourage youth to participate within their community and foster a sense of belonging. The traveling exhibitions and accompanying resources I created draws much-needed attention to the Main Streets of small-town America, and spark conversations about restoring the vitality of historic commercial districts. The success of this program demonstrated to me how the creation of digital tools could be used as a powerful framework for building a sense of community identity and cohesion.

Several of my assignments at the Museum of Fine Arts allowed me to incorporate my love of history into the educational tours. I created a tour about 18th century ships, talked to +1,200 children about Inuit art history, and assisted on museum tours explaining the histories of European, Egyptian, African, Asian, Indian, and American art.

My first experience in museum education was during high school when I assisted the educational director of the Kemp Center for the Arts for two summers. I took on several responsibilities in the organization and execution of summer camps, community nights, and master workshops. From this I learned how to communicate and work alongside both the general public and children.

After my first summer internship, I expressed an interest in creating new curriculum for the summer camps. Taking advantage of the informal education setting, I reached to various diverse community organizations to pitch in such as the local Wild Bird Rescue Center, which agreed to send a volunteer to do an educational presentation with a live falcon in the classroom. The community theater also contributed by sending actors to visit the children roleplaying as the book characters.