The Ones that Eat the Shaving Cream, or, Museum Programs for the Masochistic

Allow me to welcome you to a very special place.

A place full of disorganization and discord.
A place where all your best laid plans are proved worthless.
A place where interpretive themes and links to the mandate are nothing but a fleeting memory.

Welcome to the wonderful world of preschool outreach.



Sure. They *look* cute...

 Let me start with a disclaimer: I love kids. Kids are awesome. I want some someday. However, the large groups of the younger variety (say, 2 1/2 to 5 years) in a museological context give me nothing but grief. I should perhaps specify that it's not their fault that I hate preschool outreach so much, but a combination of factors that I are simply amplified by their characteristics.

We're the only museum in the city that offers preschool outreach. I can't even think of any other museums that offer outreach programs in general, but I'm sure that some do for elementary schools. A quick search just confirmed my worst fears: can't seem to find any other museums that offer preschool outreach in the whole world. Some libraries, or Early Childhood Educator groups, but not museums. Interesting.

Our preschool outreach programs started as an offshoot of our on-site preschool-aged museum programs. These programs were so succesful (and unique!) that my predecessor decided to do some research into preschool outreach. It turned out that no one else offered it (surprise!) and that there was a demand for it since preschool aged children rarely went of field trips. As such, the on-site programs were adapted to be delivered at daycares and preschools.

There was a huge demand; the daycares and preschools were looking for a program like this! Unfortunately, my predecessor left before the trial phase was completed and a student was left to deliver the programs. It was a good idea in theory... not so much in practice.

I think the hardest part was (and still is) making the programs relevant outside of the museum. You know how I feel about programs having a close tie to the museum's mandate and themes, the problem is that these themes are often too difficult for preschoolers to grasp, especially without the context that the museum provides.

Imagine my surprise when some research revealed that children of that age don't even have a concept of time! So if I even try and talk about how the museum was where a man came a lived a long, long, long time ago, they'll just think, "Okay, yesterday." Their poor little brains just can't handle it as they don't really grasp the concept of the past until they're six. (Conveniently, that's when they're out of preschool...)

So I'm stuck talking about simple, simple things. My current roster includes a program about "Pioneers" (a glorified show and tell and dress-up game), a program about "Ladybugs" (really educational, I must say) and a program about "Colours" (which is the most popular because of its shaving cream marbled paper craft). The best tie-in to why the heck I'm there is, "A museum is where you learn things, today we're going to learn about...".

I suppose I should suck it up and just deal; if we're reaching out to kids and their teachers, that's good, right? But I'm not an ECE, so I can't help but feel guilty that I'm not providing an excellent product. All those teachers just watching and judging you with blank faces doesn't help either.

That's the worst part: you never know how it's going to go. The kids could be attentive, ask lots of questions, be friendly and excited, or they can be unruly, uninterested and, worst of all, sit there at watch you with blank expressions. It's a crap shoot.

As the student who delivered the outreach this summer so aptly put it:

"There are two kinds of preschool outreach;

the Montessori kids, and the ones that eat the shaving cream."

If preschool outreach has taught me anything, it's that I'm sending my kids to Montessori school.

Getting My Hands Dirty, or, Baby Steps to an Awesome Visitor Experience

Okay, so I may be the worst blogger of all time, well perhaps not of all time, but I certainly feel ashamed at my recent lack of posts. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really: You put it off, then you feel guilty for putting it off, and then it's just been too long so you don't want to get back into it. <sigh>

I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that the museum is now closed, so I'm not thinking "interpretation" or "visitor experience" as much as I do in the summer, where inspiration is always around the corner. The irony is that our museum is currently undergoing a redevelopment plan (which is awesome!), which means that there is a group of people out there (those lucky, lucky consultants) that are thinking about how to make my museum better as we speak. It blows my mind, really. So jealous, but I suppose that someone's got to actually run the museum.

Yep, I was this person in school.
Surprised?

I spend so much time thinking about things to improve and new directions to take that I'm usually bursting at the seams with ideas. You can't really share all these at once, because you'd be branded a crazy person, and as much as I'm sure many appreciate my unabated (re: seemingly impossible) enthusiasm, I understand that I can be exhausting. So I keep my little ideas in my notebook and wait with bated breath for the moment when they ask.

My boss announced to us today that the consultants would be contacting each of us for feedback about the plan. He turned to me and said, "I spoke with them yesterday. I warned them you'd have lots to say about the visitor experience." Heh heh. Me? Lots to say? Of course not...

Anyway, while this lucky group of people get to dictate the future of the museum, I get to go on with my little Program Officer life.
2011 Annual Report: check!
2011 Survey Analysis: check!
2012 Program Plan: check!

All this desk work makes me die a little bit inside, so I decided to go out to the museum with our maintenance guy yesterday and do some, well, maintenance. Remember when I spoke about the "Broken Window" theory a few months ago? Well, I'd be a damn hypocrite if I didn't do my part fixing the little things at the museum.

We spent far too long fixing a sign that is almost as old as I am. To be honest if the development plan decides to get rid of them I'd be pretty pleased, but I had these spiffy new signs I had made this summer and they needed to be installed over the old ones. We ripped off the old corkboard (I'll go back later and install some new stuff), cleaned the 26-year-old plexiglass, and tightened the old screws...

Then while the maintenance guy trimmed hedges that certainly hadn't been trimmed since they were planted in the late 1980s, I managed to do a little bit of interpretation for the random visitors who passed by.

Do you know what 120 tulip bulbs looks like?
I do...

One of the main purposes of this visit, however, was the planting of some tulip bulbs in the upper section of the garden so that we'll have a nice showing when the museum reopens in the spring. The garden itself is the bane of my existance, but I want it to look awesome for visitors, as opposed to the pit of despair that it'll resemble if I leave it as-is for next year.

For future reference, please note that you actually need tons of tulip bulbs to make a remotely nice display, I soon realized. The 120 that I purchased where nowhere near enough to make an exciting showing in the whole upper garden, so I planted half and will have to return to plan the rest soon, before it gets too #$#@ cold.

As I was doing this, I couldn't help but hear my mother's voice in my head, saying, "You didn't get your Masters' so you could dig in the dirt!!!" Yes, Mom, but I'm afraid that I understand the bigger picture. I may not have the fun job of writing and researching the development plan, but at least I can play my own little role in the site's success.

Someone's got to get their hands dirty.