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Internship, Public History Student, Public History studies

Internship – Collections and Connections: Interning at the Shirley-Eustis House

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By Rachel Hoyle

I have enjoyed nearly every single aspect of my internship this semester at the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury. My duties have led me to a much deeper understanding of how museums operate, from the mundane – hanging Christmas lights for an evening event – to the glamorous preparation of the house for use as a backdrop in multiple documentaries. The site’s Executive Director, Suzy Buchanan, has been gracious enough to let me trail behind her on Fridays, learning exactly how she does what she does.

However, when I use the word “nearly,” there is one particular aspect of my internship that has led to frustration: the lack of original sources to catalog for my developing web exhibit. Given that my exhibit will focus on enslaved Africans at the house, most of whom do not even have their names written in the historical record, it is not surprising that no artifacts of their existence have survived the past three hundred years. Add to that injustice the constantly changing structure and use of the Shirley-Eustis House (at one point it was even used as a “home for wayward girls”), and it is a recipe for the reproduction rather than the display of original artifacts.

The exterior of the Shirley-Eustis House in 1940, nearly forty years prior to its restoration. As is clear from this image, the house was in very bad condition at one point in time. Photo courtesy the United States National Archives.

It is not as if I am the first person studying African enslavement to encounter this problem. The staff at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), when collecting the first artifacts for display in the museum, ventured around the nation to track down relevant objects. Physical artifacts of African American history had often been either lost, passed around to various families, or stored in people’s attics for generations.[1] It was not negligence keeping these items stowed away – it was an instinct of preservation. Many African Americans certainly knew the value of these artifacts. Rex Ellis, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs at the NMAAHC, recalled the moment he first came face to face with the Bible of infamous Black slave revolt leader Nat Turner. The woman who gifted it to the NMAAHC from its longtime place in her family’s Virginia home remarked that “It was time for it to leave here…because there’s so much blood on it.”[2] It was not until the NMAAHC’s founding that many of these artifacts were seen outside the confines of a single family or community, because there were few museums and historic sites willing or able to display them with a mindful acknowledgement of the artifacts’ troublesome and sometimes disturbing histories.

A page from revolutionary and slave revolt leader Nat Turner’s Bible, which is now permanently at the NMAAHC. Photo courtesy the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Once it was clear that there would be a NMAAHC, Founding Director Lonnie Bunch began a groundbreaking campaign to collect these artifacts. Under his “Saving African American Treasures” initiative, Bunch deployed conservationists and other museum professionals around the United States in an effort to identify and save artifacts protected and preserved by generations of Black families. This campaign unearthed tens of thousands of artifacts for the NMAAHC; most were free-will donations made by people who decided their personal collections were finally able to be seen and respected in the manner they necessitated.[3] This distinction between a lack of material culture and a preservation of the very same culture is essential. How many other artifacts are still hidden in an attic, trunk, or basement because museums and historic sites have not been ready to display them respectfully? How many of those relate to the experiences of enslaved Africans?

These stories shaped my thinking as I considered the use of artifacts in my exhibit. Unfortunately, I did not have the time or resources that Bunch and the NMAAHC had to track down material culture relating directly to the house or its enslaved occupants. While there are surviving manuscripts and records of Black occupants of the Shirley-Eustis House, written documents alone do not hold the same meanings or have the same impact as three dimensional artifacts in an exhibition. These documents are most often from the perspective of white, wealthy colonists, while physical artifacts were used directly by enslaved people. The history documents and objects carry is the same, but the perspectives they offer on that history are vastly different. Even neighborhood oral histories, which provide us with engaging ideas of how the house’s story has evolved over time and connect us to individuals’ experiences and stories, have a different impact on visitors than material culture.

It was Suzy Buchanan, the house’s Executive Director, who inspired my ideas for how we might incorporate artifacts into an exhibition on the site’s African American histories. She first mentioned that a large iron washing kettle sat in the basement of the Shirley-Eustis House, right in front of the public restrooms. While it was not original to the house, she qualified, it could at least serve to illustrate some of the work likely performed by enslaved people in the eighteenth century. If that was reasonable, she said, I could include it in my exhibit. I could hardly contain my excitement. There was one part of my problem rather expertly solved.

Immediately I realized that the Shirley-Eustis House also had an unexpectedly large collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century historical tools and gardening equipment in the attic of our carriage house. While we may not have been able to tell the stories of those enslaved at the house directly through surviving artifacts, we could still use items in our collection to interpret their lives. It is important to note that there are limitations to using nineteenth century artifacts to interpret eighteenth century events – much changed over that century regarding labor and enslavement. Interpreting these artifacts is still worthwhile, even if I acknowledge their weaknesses in my interpretation. In this concrete experience, I realized the importance of a detailed and up to date collections catalogue and the interpretive possibilities that can result.

An 18th or 19th century wooden mortar and pestle in the collections at the Shirley-Eustis House. These and other kitchen tools illustrate the constant labor required in operating a household like the Shirley family’s in colonial Massachusetts. Photo taken by the author.

Two yokes for human use dating to the 18th or 19th century found in the collections at the Shirley-Eustis House. These two objects illustrate the human labor that went into daily operations at the house, even though they are not original to the house itself. Photo taken by the author.

Suzy also reminded me that we at the Shirley-Eustis House are not isolated from other museums. One benefit of designing an online exhibit is the potential to use collections beyond your own by linking other sites’ collections into the digital exhibit. Considering this option helped me realize that creating a rich and informative site on the history of enslavement is my priority for this exhibit, not simply drawing visitors to the Shirley-Eustis House and its unique resources alone. If our exhibit leads visitors to another site with more relevant artifacts, then I have done my job well.

The dispersion of artifacts from the Shirley-Eustis House likely occurred due to changing ownership, renovation, and repeated episodes of the house’s disrepair. It may be impossible to know what became of the site’s original eighteenth century artifacts, but this does not render its staff incapable of interpreting a broader history of the house and its residents, including its laborers. I hope that my exhibit does justice to the lives of enslaved Africans and their roles in local and national histories.

[1] https://sah.columbia.edu/content/prizes/tony-horwitz-prize/2021-lonnie-g-bunch-iii

[2] Vinson Cunningham, “Making a Home for Black History,” The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/29/analyzing-the-national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture.

[3] Vinson Cunningham, “Making a Home for Black History.”

Internship, Public History Student, Public History studies

Internship – The Significance of an Individual: developing Exhibits in Historic House Museums

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By Meghan Arends

Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. Photograph taken upon my initial visit in August.

Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site is owned and operated by the National Park Service. Built in 1759, the Georgian style house became the headquarters of George Washington during the Siege of Boston in 1775. It eventually became the home of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when it was bought by his father-in-law as a wedding gift.[1] From then on, the house became an important center of politics, society, and the arts.

The estate drew me in because of my interest in material culture. The collections held at the Longfellow House are numerous and diverse, representing the vast culture the family had the privilege of experiencing during their time. My internship here offered me a satisfying and richly challenging professional experience that expands past encounters with collections.

My overall internship goals were both practical and intellectual. In-depth research of extended family member Brevet Captain Nathan Appleton Jr. for the upcoming temporary exhibit “Longfellow Family in the Civil War” sat at the center of my experience. This involved familiar tasks, including online and off-site research into Nathan’s life, writing exhibit labels for artifacts and, eventually, producing web content to further expand upon his life as a Union soldier. This project required an intense focus on a singular subject and his place within the broader American history, which I don’t always get the chance to explore. Rather than generalized concepts and assumptions, an individual’s history can reveal their impact on the world and vise-versa.

Photographs of Brevet Captain Nathan Appleton Jr., “Appleton Family Papers,” Massachusetts Historical Society. Left: Nathan as a Harvard Student, shortly before entering the war. Right: Nathan after initial enlistment in 1863 as 2nd Lieutenant. Photographs courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The most exciting part of the internship was certainly the weeklong research trip I took to the Massachusetts Historical Society, which maintains the Appleton Family Papers. Hundreds of documents shed light on the life of Nathan and his family in the years surrounding and including the Civil War. The richness and extent of the resources meant that I had to prioritize materials within the extensive collection. I had to determine which sources were most important to the themes and questions of my project, putting others aside. Previous research endeavors have never offered me such a volume of sources. My week spent at MHS taught me the importance of guiding themes in a research project, which is relevant for both historians and public historians.

The professional and practical aspects of the internship are among its greatest rewards, especially the communication and networking opportunities I’ve had with professionals in the field of public history. I attended weekly meetings with the rest of the site staff; they’ve provided an invaluable glance into the world of historic sites and their daily operations. The isolation of an internship can make it seem like the project you’re working on is the only one, but in reality, there are dozens of programs in development simultaneously. Nothing has expanded my personal field of public history knowledge more than hearing from other staff members about the various projects they are working on each day and their contributions to the site’s significance. A historic site can’t rely on one program or strategy to maintain relevance and interest. Diversity in programming and site history helps them serve multiple audiences and their needs.

The internship offered me opportunities to work on new skills, such as writing labels for exhibits. My natural instinct as a historian is to take my time crafting an argument and presenting evidence. That luxury isn’t available when writing exhibit labels, where you must communicate significance and meaning in relatively few words. General introductions that can’t explain the significance of an artifact in the context of the exhibit provide little substance for the audience. We read Beverly Serrell’s guide, Exhibit Labels, in class, but now I’ve had the chance to put her advice into practice and take on the challenges of writing exhibit text to tell stories and connect the past and present.[2] This is done all within 100 words written for the public, not scholars.

Process of writing and editing exhibit labels. 1. A short narrative with a list of the medals (too long) 2. A more narrative approach 3. Revision after separating a medal, requiring a new title 4. Continuous edits that create an interpretive narrative rather than just a list of facts

It’s inspiring to think that the work I’m currently doing isn’t just for a grade in a class. Instead, I hope to leave a mark on my field, to teach people and help them connect to the lives of this family. Eventually, this project will become part of a larger exhibit that will open in the spring of 2022. My work is not yet finished, as I will be helping with the design and execution of that larger exhibit for my capstone project next semester. I’m looking forward to identifying more stories that answer questions, inspire new ones, and entertain the public while pushing them to consider new ideas in the ever-evolving databank that is our history.

[1] Beverly Serrell, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach (Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 1996), 19.

[2] “Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters,” Home Page, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm.

Internship, Public History Student

Internship: A Fresh Perspective on local History

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By Tom Begley

We rarely have the opportunity to learn a city’s history through the perspectives of women. Until recently, the everyday lives and achievements of women have not been well documented or celebrated, silenced or pushed to the margins. Since the mid-20th century, historians and public history institutions have increasingly worked to fix this, searching the records and highlighting stories of women and other marginalized populations. During my internship with Lighting the Way: Historic Women of the South Coast (LTW) I worked on a new educational tool for the program and in the process learned important pieces of the history of New Bedford, Massachusetts through the inspiring stories of women of the city. It became clear how the city was shaped by their activism, organization, and passion to improve their communities.

Since 2018, the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s initiative LTW has highlighted women from Massachusetts’ South Coast, the region stretching from Cape Cod to the Rhode Island border. LTW seeks “to explore the impact of historical women from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds throughout history” by “unearthing remarkable stories of women’s callings that required grit, tenacity, and enduring commitment to their families, careers and communities,” (www.historicwomensouthcoast.org). With thought provoking programs, online profiles, a mobile app, educator and school group resources, walking tours, forums, public art displays, and community civic engagement campaigns, LTW invites people to learn about their local history through the stories of women.

Lighting the Way. Courtesy of New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Working with LTW coordinator Cathy Saunders, my project was to create a mobile tour driven by an overarching narrative to explore a specific theme in the city’s history. Rhode Tour, a joint initiative between Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, Brown University’s Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and Rhode Island Historical Society, will host the tour. Rhode Tour is a smartphone app and website that brings stories and tours to the palm of the user in an engaging display, (www.rhodetour.org). The platform also serves as a digital exhibit space presenting “big ideas” and telling history through multimedia, essays, and links to additional resources such as articles and videos. Joining Rhode Tour will extend LTW’s reach and mission to the thousands of users who access the website and app each year.

I began my work by identifying themes in the collection of 100 profiles of women available on the LTW website. LTW intends to connect the tour to Massachusetts civic curriculum standards. With this in mind the long tradition of women activists and organizers started to become apparent. From abolitionists to PTA members to elected officials, women have worked to improve their South Coast communities and beyond. This realization brought us to the theme for the tour – “Organizing New Bedford: The Women Who Mobilized Change.”

Creating a shortlist of potential tour stops was the first hurdle to overcome. Rhode Tour suggests 6-8 stops and with so many fascinating LTW stories it was hard to choose only a handful of women to feature. To narrow the list and meet the requirement we established a set of criteria. We looked for women who spent the majority of their careers in New Bedford, motivated others to create change, and had several types of multimedia available to help tell the story. Through conversations with Cathy and LTW advisory committee members, the list eventually met the target with 6 tour stops highlighting the work of 7 women: Elizabeth Carter Brooks, Jennie Horne, Rosalind Poll Brooker, Rosemary Tierney, Eula Mendes, Polly Johnson, and Mary Santos Barros.

The Lighting the Way website (www.historicwomensouthcoast.org) features over 100 profiles of South Coast women, education resources, and a self-guided walking tour. Courtesy of New Bedford Whaling Museum.

After selecting the women, we sought appropriate locations for each tour stop. Some were readily apparent such as New Bedford City Hall for Rosalind Poll Brooker and Rosemary Tierney, the first women elected City Councilor and mayor, respectively. Others were more difficult because the places associated with the stories no longer exist or have become private residences. The textile mill where strike leader Eula Mendes worked has been torn down, as was the community center Jennie Horne directed. We also had to consider the current status of neighborhoods and whether it was appropriate to encourage people to visit. The historic areas of the city are surrounded by active neighborhoods and we wanted to be respectful of residents’ privacy. For guidance I turned to people more familiar with the city than me.

The final step was to write each tour stop. The existing LTW profiles served as the foundation as I added new information and reshaped text to focus on the aspect of the woman’s life that exemplified our theme of organizing for change. The realities of researching women’s history were uncovered during this stage. Sources are limited, yet by looking closely at the silences stories start to emerge. We also had the great fortune of connecting with family members who provided a wealth of information about their mothers that wasn’t available otherwise.

The content experts involved with LTW were all incredibly gracious with their time and knowledge as I worked on the project. In particular Jan da Silva (New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park), Lee Blake (New Bedford Historical Society), Mary Smoyer (Boston Women’s Heritage Trail), and Ann O’Leary (NBWM Emily Bourne Research Fellow) provided detailed notes on appropriate locations and storylines to include in the tour. Overall, I owe my positive experience to Cathy Saunders who guided me through the process and shared her public history expertise to ensure that I considered the many different factors in order to properly share these women’s stories.

Recently, one of the LTW committee members, a lifelong resident of New Bedford, shared that she loves her city and was thrilled to see this “Organizing New Bedford” tour bring long deserved attention to the work these women did to make the city a better place. I hope others from New Bedford feel the same way and that this project may inspire students to get involved in issues important to them. It was an honor to work on this project and play a small part in furthering LTW’s educational mission. Not only did I enjoy sharpening my skills as a public history practitioner, but as a student of history, it was especially impactful to learn about New Bedford through the deeds of these amazing women.

Internship, Public History Student

Internship: Cold War Cassin Young

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By Charles Borsos

Standing on the stern of Cassin Young, trying to remember the specifications and history of the specific equipment installed behind me, my teeth were chattering. Park Ranger and internship supervisor Eric Hanson Plass and I spent the morning filming all around the ship which was closed for the winter. This gave us free reign to set up our camera without fear of getting in anyone’s way. It also meant we could step over the signs marked “closed to the public” without a curious visitor trying to follow and take the camera into the spaces normally unseen.

Still image from video shot by Eric Hanson Plass, of intern Charlie Borsos at the stern of Cassin Young in Charlestown, Dec 2, 2020

Closing for the winter meant it was cold on the ship. Not just the wind coming off the harbor but the bare steel of the ship itself was cold and sucked the heat off any part of the body idly leaning against it. It reminded me of the crewmen’s firsthand accounts of serving on the ship, and their gratitude for the simple installation of tile in particular spaces in the 1950s.

 “It really made a big difference because when you got up in the morning, and slapped your flat feet out on that cold, clammy, wet steel deck in the morning, you couldn’t hardly stand up because of the condensation from everybody breathing,” said yeoman Theodore G. Johndrow, one of the last crewmen to leave the ship in 1960, interviewed in 1983. Combining interviews like these with the interpretation of the spaces within Cassin Young, allows visitors to understand the experience of the destroyer’s “being cold” instead of a simple fact.

In many ways, our winter film shoot capped hours of my research on the process of adapting a ship built to fight WWII for continued service during the much changed circumstances of the Cold War. The video, along with text, oral history excerpts and photographs, will complete the final section—“Modernizing the Fleet”—of the National Park Service’s web application, Ship of Steel, Spirits of Iron: The Stories of USS Cassin Young and the Charlestown Navy Yard.

Intern Charlie Borsos in front of “hedgehog launcher” on Cassin Young, Dec 2, 2020.

Because of the pandemic, I have conducted most of my research online, and indeed, the final product will be virtual.  We shot the film during my second visit to the ship, which I had come to know intimately on paper, but not in real life.  Despite this “remoteness,” my goal is to connect the history and the stories to the site; the opportunity to film on-site, after months of remote research and writing, has given clarity to some of the developing themes.

The documentary evidence, for example, revealed that the barbershop was the segregated quarters on the ship during the war. These destroyers were designed in the 1930s when the Navy and indeed much of the United States was segregated, and the predominantly Black and Filipino sailors of color who served on board Navy ships were relegated to serving as stewards’ mates and cooks. Experiencing the physical space onboard Cassin Young reveals that this space for their berthing, away from the main space for the white crew, is accessed from the white crew’s berthing by going through the chow line and up a set of stairs physically removed from the rest of the crew and stuck in another compartment. It reinforces within the very structure of the ship the racial separation within the Navy during WWII.

This process of thinking about the history as tied to space on Cassin Young, and also considering those spaces as areas where men worked and lived are crucial interpretive lessons that shape my continued work on text and voice overs for the video. The new equipment used to search for enemy submarines in the 1950s were not just vacuum tubes capable of hearing a certain level of decibel from a certain range. The experience of the man stationed at a radar scope in the middle of the night as Cassin Young made its way across the Atlantic on a goodwill visit to the Mediterranean attaches layers of meanings to this technology. These technologies don’t live on their own, they are part of a ship and the lives of the ship’s crew; what can seem like minutiae can be woven into a richer fabric strongly attached to the interpretive site.

USN Escort Ship fires similar weapon, Dec 18, 1944, Court. USN
Internship, Public History Student

Internship – A Guide Through History Day: Supporting Teachers and Students

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By Lillian Nunno

Every year, grade 8-12 students and teachers across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts participate in the National History Day contest. History Day students create projects centered around that year’s History Day theme. These projects can take the form of a paper, an exhibit, a website, a documentary, or a performance. Past competition themes have included “Conflict and Compromise” and “Triumph and Tragedy.” This program allows students to learn about history they are passionate about, and develop strong research, argumentation, and analytical skills. The education department at the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) runs History Day here in Massachusetts; they organize the regional and state competitions and provide resources for students and teachers to help them along in the process.


Logo for NHD Massachusetts program. Courtesy of National History Day.org

For my internship project with the Education Department at MHS, I created a teacher’s guide for Massachusetts History Day teachers. This guide will provide teachers with materials to help guide students from topic selection through competition. Making the guide involved poring over materials developed by other states across the country to find the most useful worksheets and resources. I also looked at how other states structured their materials and what they included. At the same time,  I kept in mind the needs of students and teachers. I wanted to create a guide that wasn’t overwhelming for teachers, but covered each project stage. I tried to prioritize creating a guide that was easy to use because this guide is for teachers who are new to the History Day program.  I also wanted to choose worksheets that are useful to students and not overly long or detailed.

I also developed ideas for original materials for the guide. My research revealed that many states have a resource that highlights local history topics for student projects. So I proposed creating a Massachusetts Topic List of people and events related to the state’s history. This resource will help connect students with research materials and sources from MHS and other local institutions.   Local topics can be more accessible than national topics, as students can visit historical institutions to do primary source research. Unfortunately, while students may not be able to do that this year because of the pandemic, they may still have some digital access to these institutions and collections. In developing this list, I tried to highlight some lesser-known Massachusetts figures and events and those often absent from larger historical narratives.


Massachusetts History Day students at National History Day in Maryland in 2019. Courtesy of the Massachusetts History Day Facebook page.

I am also creating a resource for teachers to help students with “difficult history” topics. Students often want to explore complex issues and events to which they have some personal connection. Because of this, students may encounter historical topics that are upsetting and hard to process. So I reviewed materials created by other organizations that focus on helping students understand and process more complicated issues. I also consulted educational materials that focus on social-emotional learning, which are used in classrooms to help students develop self-awareness and emotional maturity. Teachers, who bring experience in these areas, are especially important resources for my work.  While History Day allows students to grapple with more difficult moments in history, which is a strength of the program, they also need tools to help them understand and confront this history.

I came to this project with some prior experience as an undergraduate, in one of the nation’s biggest History Day programs. In my two years of mentoring students and interacting with teachers, I observed the needs and challenges that arise, and I became invested in the program as I witnessed students’ work on their projects. This background has helped me in developing materials, and in collaborating with my supervisors. Luckily the need to go remote did not impact the structure of my internship, but it has made contacting teachers more challenging since they are currently dealing with a different teaching experience.  On the other hand, this remote internship has helped me keep in mind the virtual aspects of learning in today’s classrooms as I assemble the guide. Working on this project has deepened my appreciation and admiration for the History Day program.

This internship has helped me understand how historical institutions can help teachers and students in this remote and hybrid learning era when teachers are dealing with more than ever before. Historical institutions can create materials for classrooms that can support teachers by providing resources for in-depth and meaningful history education. They can also help students understand “difficult history” and connect to their communities’ pasts. As someone with an interest in improving history education from outside the K-12 classroom, this experience has shown me a possible path for my future career.


Massachusetts History Day students with their project in 2019. Courtesy of the Massachusetts History Day Facebook page.
Going Virtual: Museum Education During COVID-19
Internship

Going Virtual: Museum Education During COVID-19

Jessica Colati Leave a comment

By Kaylee Redard, Public History

Garden view of the exterior of The House of the Seven Gables. The house was built in 1668 by John Turner, a wealthy Salem merchant. Courtesy of The House of the Seven Gables website.

The House of the Seven Gables, a non-profit historic site in Salem, Massachusetts, is dedicated to preserving the past and continuing the American story.  It is both an international tourist attraction as well as a community resource, particularly for the immigrant population in Salem.  Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 the historic houses on site are closed to the public and, like many other museums, they are limited to running a few programs virtually in summer 2020.  This has made my internship an interesting and challenging experience.

The global pandemic greatly influenced and shaped my internship, both in content and practice.  I was tasked with evaluating remote museum education programs during COVID-19, and to use this data to propose redesign of a Gables face-to-face school program–Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers—as a virtual program.

Some of the items used in the on-site Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers program, including a cone of sugar. Courtesy of The House of the Seven Gables website.

Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers is a school program for grades two through five that is designed to engage students in learning about colonial life during a visit to The House of the Seven Gables.  Traditionally, this program begins by introducing three 17th century children: Jehoden Palfrey, the daughter of one of the original colonists of Salem, John Turner II, who was the son of a wealthy Salem merchant, and an Irish indentured servant named Joan Sullivan.  The students are then divided into groups to do activities, directed by historical interpreters, around the historic site.  These activities include a brief tour of The House of the Seven Gables, a wool carding activity, learning about colonial food, and lastly, playing with colonial toys.  Once the students have gone through all the activities they regroup for a concluding discussion.  The entire program is very hands-on and makes use of the entire site to accommodate large groups of children.  My job was to propose a way to make this hands-on, face-to-face program into an engaging virtual experience. 

To do this I needed to become more informed about the current state of the museum education field and learn about remote school programming.  First, I reached out to the museum education community to see how other sites were adjusting their programs in response to COVID-19.  I contacted eleven different museums and historic institutions, including Historic Beverly, Salem Maritime National Historic Site, and the USS Constitution Museum, and asked if they would be willing to share how they are doing programming during COVID-19.  I received enthusiastic responses and quickly arranged meetings over Zoom or phone with everyone who was available.

In these meetings, I posed four questions:

  • What programs did you run before COVID-19?
  • Have you changed any of these programs to make them accessible during the pandemic?
  • What feedback have you received about these programs?
  • Did your institution work with teachers when making changes to their education programs?  

Everyone was planning different ways to engage with their visitors of all ages.  Most programs were geared toward students and families, but a few have been for the general public.  Since my focus was on school programs, I tried to keep the conversation on those, but I was excited to hear everyone’s plans.

Every professional colleague had imaginative ideas on how to reach out to their community.  These conversations helped me envision the program I wanted to build.   Discussions on how to present content in an engaging way while on the other side of a screen, or which platform has worked best for connecting with students, were helpful in determining which way my project went.

Undertaking my internship during COVID-19 was challenging, but it offered me unexpected and rewarding opportunities. I had not expected making such broad connections with professionals in the field during an internship—I came to look forward to each of these meetings not only because it was a chance to talk to someone in the midst of quarantine, but because of the opportunities for professional development and building a network of colleagues.

I also learned the importance of flexibility. To communicate with colleagues and my site supervisor, I had to make sure that my schedule was as flexible as possible to accommodate the different forms of communication and time boundaries of multiple hectic schedules.  With the weekly, if not daily, change in regulations surrounding COVID-19, many museums, including The House of the Seven Gables, have had to change guidelines without much notice.  This can drastically alter staff schedules and limit contact time. I have learned two other crucial lessons from this internship: the importance of patience, with people and technology, and time management, because you never know what will come next during this pandemic. I am looking forward to hopefully implementing my proposal for a virtual Naumkeag Settlers to Salem Shippers program and the potential for other remote programs that result from this experience.

Internship at Historic Newton: Putting Education into Practice
Internship

Internship at Historic Newton: Putting Education into Practice

Violet Caswell Leave a comment

By: Laurie L. Kearney

In September of 2017, I started my Public History internship with Historic Newton as an Education Collection Interpretation Intern. Historic Newton has a very active presence in their city. They were founded in the 1950s and today run two museums, The Jackson Homestead & Museum and the Durant-Kenrick House & Grounds. They also maintain the town’s historic cemeteries, offer many educational programs to their community including programs for adults and school children, and have online programs that include exhibits, historical information and teacher resources. Their mission is to illuminate their city’s history in the context of the nation’s history.

Jackson Homestead, 527 Washington Street, Newton, MA

Historic Newton is dedicated to providing educational opportunities, not only for Newton residents, but for the broader community via the world wide web. Historic Newton offers many educational programs for school age children, and these programs were the focus of my role as intern. In recent years, Historic Newton has developed a daylong lesson on old burying grounds in conjunction with Newton’s middle school teachers. Their two museum spaces feature multiple exhibits on Newton’s history, including sections on slavery and the Underground Railroad, and the domestic life of a Newton family spanning over a century. Online visitors can find exhibits on the Charles River, Newton artists, penny postcards, and the Underground Railroad. Currently, Historic Newton is writing a new curriculum on immigration and has several new programs in the works for the community.

Capt. Edward Durant House, 286 Waverley Ave, Newton, MA

Over the last thirty years, museum education has become an integral part of exhibit planning. Before the 1960s, museums were spaces where people went to simply look at exhibits. In the 1970s, museums began to be thought of as nontraditional learning spaces (versus a traditional classroom setting) and history museum staff began developing exhibits with learning objectives in mind. As a result, there has been a shift from passive to active learning. Today, when people visit a museum they expect to learn something new from an exhibit, a community program, a walking tour, or an activity; most likely, a museum educator had a hand in its development. Museum educators are a vital component of a well-staffed museum. They are specialists who assist institutions in achieving their educational goals.

Museum educators may work with a variety of people, whether they are in-house professionals, community residents, or local public school teachers, to develop programs that are both engaging and informative. Working with teachers on developing curriculums, results in lessons that are meaningful to students, respond to the curriculum, and that teachers are eager to teach. This kind of collaboration creates ownership for the project, which helps the community value the exhibit or program. Through collaboration and exhibit design, museum educators create meaningful programs, lessons, and exhibits for their participants.

One of my responsibilities as an intern was to create a “please touch” table for our museum visitors.

As the Education Collection Interpretation Intern, it was my turn to put these ideas and theories into practice. My responsibilities included updating the existing program “If You Lived in the Jackson Homestead” to make it more participatory for young audiences; creating a new exhibit for the “Please Touch” table in the Historic Newton Gallery; and researching items in their education collection for further use in Historic Newton’s educational programs. My goal was to create hands-on activities that allow young children to encounter the past in meaningful ways and engage them in age-appropriate historical thinking.

The “If You Lived at the Jackson Homestead” program is one of Historic Newton’s much loved and older programs, but both staff and visiting teachers identified the need to make it less lecture-based and more participatory for its young audiences. Feedback from teachers indicated a need for more resources for use in their classrooms to support this program. My initial observation of this hour-long lesson for children ages 4 to7 revealed the need for a new approach – these young children spent 30 minutes listening to the presenter deliver information before they had an opportunity to participate in a hands-on activity. My challenge was to figure out how to incorporate participatory elements into the 30-minute information-based session, to make it fun and meaningful for the children. I came up with several ideas then refined them with the help of Newton Public School teachers and Historic Newton staff. In addition, I revised objectives, artifacts, instructions, and follow-up for the existing artifact-handling activity, devising a game that allows children to practice comparing past and present through images of objects of the past and their versions in the present. This new approach to the activity and the other additions to this lesson added a strong participatory component, which better engaged the children.