My research is focusing on museum education and the exchange of teaching practices in both museum settings and educational settings.  Museums are often thought of as rigid institutions with set rules on how to behave and who may come in to enjoy the contents, but similar to the reconceptualization art education has faced, so too have museums.  The developments made in the art education field yield just as influential in museum education programs and there have been efforts made to increase their approach-ability to the public. Just as methods utilized in the art education field can be used in museum settings, so to can methods taught in museums be brought to more formal educational settings.

Museums offer a chance for students to become more familiar with the outside world, something I have found my students are not very aware of. Because of their disabilities, they only know the immediate world around them and not much else. Much of what they do know is information told to them by friends/family that often is biased.  But getting the chance to go to a museum and see a new perspective or even new thing altogether can be an eye opening experience and show the students that there is more to the world than just what is immediately around them. It allows for conversation of understanding other cultures and encourage open-mindedness. My recent talk with Kevin also brought up the idea of accessibility to museums and how the demographic of an area affects visitation, as well as the impact that a museum may have on a community.  These are ideas I definitely am interested in looking more into. As far as I know, the area I teach in has no museums in the immediate area, and accessing more well known museums of NYC, such as the Met and MoMA can take a while to get to (for example, the subway from Co-Op City to the Met can take up to an hour and half).