ALA Wednesday March 23

The plan for today was to bring everyone in that had been working on the music cycle and put them on the floor of the museum with some of their projects to interact with the visitors. As i was preparing for this, i realized that i would not have the support staff nor the space to do this with all the kids on this particular day. The plans were changed then to giving the students some real practical experience in working with the public in a new capacity. THe students were introduced to the wonderful world of working the exhibits at the museum. BEFORE I CONTINUE HERE IS THE REASON BEHIND THAT DECISCION AND IT'S FUTURE IMPLICATION: We have a chance this summer to teach three weeks of museum school classes based on our work in Design IT. Saafir, Megan, and myself will be teaching one week of classes. we are going to be bringing in some of the program students to be our teaching assistants those weeks. They have been informed of this and we have given them three criteria that we are looking for. ONE, We want to see fluency with the technology - which will be crickets, LOGOBLOCKS, and Microworlds. TWO, we want to see dependability on the part of the student (consistent commitment to the program) and the ability to work WITH anyone, not just their friends (i.e. not complaining about partners, etc.) THREE, we want to see who will take some initiative, show some leadership skill, and be able to really engage the public no matter the circumstance. The second and third criteria were experimented during this exercise, because the people were partnered up at random to go to the different galleries. The students were in EXPLORAZONE, KIDSTUFF, JOSHUA'S JOURNEY, DinoDIG, and KIDSPACE. They understood that they were to help out the floor staff in the areas given, and that they were to find ways to engage and interact with the public using all the tools available in the galleries. The floor staff knew that they were to put the students to work wherever they thought the kids would do the most good, and to keep watch from time to time for anything extraordinary taking place (or a big problem.) What i was expecting was a few standouts and a lot of trouble keeping people focused. What i experienced blew me away.
Each one of the students truly rose to the occasion. There are students that i don't think i've ever seen come out of their respective shells, but this day it was all different. Lauren found her comfort in herself by helping kids in Kidspace. Wesley was amazing in his interaction with students in the DinoDig. Tyler did great at moving all around the gallery engaging as many people as possible. Arsenio took over the Bed of Nails and impressed a lot of people. Filip, Bianca, and Ara started a TWISTER tournament on the floor in the KIDSTUFF exhibit. Putting the students in an unfamiliar situation and telling them we wanted to see them show initiative in their public engagement skills was a risk. I"ll admit that. This risk worked! The kids were different after this experience. they all experienced some amazing moments with visitors, and also some tough challenges. Some of the responses ranged from "i didn't know how to interact with this child" to " that visitor was really rude" to "how do we deal with too many people around the exhibit" and "some kids don't know how to share." All of the challenges are felt by people who come to work here for the first time. The students were debriefed and asked to think about how they might interact in a teaching setting with us, as well as in new places putting their own works on display. Next week, we will be changing up the places where they go, as well as discussing professional conduct, what is meant by meaningful and positive visitor interaction, and debrief after they've had a chance to experience a new place and new people. All of these skills are going to come into play this summer with our teaching opportunity, and with our proposed intern ideas and hopefully mentoring opportunities as well.