I am primarily interested in looking closer at museums and the impact that can play in engagement of learning and education. Currently, along with being an art teacher, I also am a museum studies teacher. Having taken a Museum Studies Course in Undergrad, I am aware of some of the ways that museums can present themselves, as well as see how they can function, both positively or negatively.  Further reading of Fenech’s “City Museums and Park Museums” encouraged me in my own thinking of how museums have the ability to communicate and array of ideas and beliefs to a wide audience, and also can play an important part in a community.

As a part of a community, museums can serve as an interesting tool for further learning for students. When visiting museums, students’ knowledge, be it new or old, is expanded and they are also encouraged to think more about the world around them. Given the environment I work in, going to a museum may be the first exposure to the outside world (aka outside of the Bronx/NYC metro area) that the students may experience. It is important to thus not only understand the information being shown, but also see how such information is presented.

Each museum takes different approaches and I believe that better understanding the ways that museums do so can better inform me as a teacher also in new ways of teaching students, be it through simply observing different practices presented to he public, to attending PD’s/physical teaching experiences provided by such institutions. I have previously attended to two PD’s offered exclusively from two NYC museums- the Children’s Museum of Manhattan and the Met. These two institutions, while both have the purpose of serving as a place of learning to the public, take two completely different approaches in their interactions with the visitors they receive, as well as the teacher’s that attend the PD’s. Understanding these differences, as well as why they choose to enact such differences, proves extremely useful in thinking about my own approaches in teaching, as well as considering different ways to combining the two methods to further engage my students.