Education’s Busiest Spring

What does it mean to educate? There are many answers to this question, and new ones are thought of every day. To the education staff at the museum, it is always on our minds as we brace for our busy season, and look into revaluating our programs.

One thing is for sure; we are not at a loss for our student population! The Historical Museum might have its busiest spring ever. In addition to our normal school bookings, we are now a part of the Cultural Passports Program that will bring thousands of 4th graders to visit us. The 4th grade curriculum requires the local history must be taught, so what better place than the Historical Museum!

We are also still booking our Historic Visits Program, a unique opportunity offered to public school students. This program allows for students to explore certain historic sites like the Barnacle, Matheson Hammock, Virginia Key Beach and various other sites. They learn about the importance of Historic Preservation, and how South Florida fits in the bigger picture with our historic sites. They document the sites with cameras that we provide, and together with pictures, video, sketches and information that they took from our educators, the students create a book about their experiences.

As always, we are aspire to gain more docents who are looking for a unique volunteer opportunity. Our summer camp, Family Fun days and internships bring in many volunteers of all ages and backgrounds. I am proud to say that we are slowly but steadily growing out volunteer base and are looking forward to continue expanding our docent program.

As we push toward the end of the school year, we are looking forward to providing top notch programming to our public, private and home school visitors, and being involved with as many programs like Cultural Passports as we can. Our students are our largest population of visitors, and we strive to make sure that they leave our museum with a wonderful experience!

-- Gina Neureuther, Education and Docent Programs Coordinator