All my summer students are gone for the year. Not that I don’t enjoy working with the other staff, but it sure is quiet around here…
This blog was set up by “my” summer students, as I affectionately call them. I really enjoyed working with these ladies. I am the collections manager around here, and I was their immediate supervisor. Of course, I have my own supervisor, so I hope that between us, we were able to provide the students with some new valuable skills. Although I was the one that kept pushing for a blog this last year, the technology was all new to me. It didn’t take the students very long to familiarize themselves with this whole thing and set it all up, though. I suppose I will have to try my best to upkeep this blog so that it can be used by next year’s students, too… Anyhow, the point I am trying to make is that they taught us just as much as we taught them. People tend to think that summer students come to a position to learn skills and gain something valuable to put on their resumes, but that is a one-sided view. One mustn’t forget the valuable skills that they bring to the employer. Each student that walked through our door this year brought their unique personalities with them. It has been my pleasure to learn from them to the same degree as they have learned from us.
Each person in this world will have a different take on one topic. Most of the time, we try to fit in, be alike, because that’s the best way to get along, or even get ahead. Occasionally, however, it is beneficial to focus on the things that make us individuals. At MSAMS we have tried to bring out the differences in the students. We were fortunate to be able to work with a group of students that had very diverse backgrounds, interests and skill sets. Between them, they spoke five different languages. Each student was studying a different subject at school. Vineet wants to become a doctor, while Cassandra wants her career to be in geography! Each student was uniquely connected within their own community, and so, each student could provide us here at the museum with new contacts to groups that we had never come into contact with before, and they made suggestions of groups that we would otherwise never have thought to contact. These new contacts were happy to participate in a variety of ways form volunteering to performing at events.
These differences that the girls brought were put to use in updating our educational kits. The kits consist of objects that have been donated or purchased by the staff, photographs and other ephemera along with historic research, lesson plans, interviews and so on. These kits can be rented by teachers, scout leaders or other persons interested in teaching children about history and heritage. The idea is that children can “touch and feel” the objects and photographs to enhance the learning experience. Since we at the museum wanted to update the existing kits, I asked the girls to contribute something to a given kit. I gave them basic guidelines of what I wanted, provided them with some basic tools and told them that these kits were their kits. I wanted each kit to have a unique flavour of whoever put them together. That way, more than one person can contribute to the same kit, as each person will have a different take on the same subject. For example, Vineet and Linda worked on the same kit, but chose two completely different topics.
The girls went all out with the idea of the kits. At the end of the summer, I now have three truly spectacular kits to add to the already existing ones, and three more are on the way. The experience was so successful that I have expanded the group of contributors to include our volunteers. We are still collecting historical objects that we can use in them, so if you, Dear Reader, would like to contribute something to them, either an object or a write up, here is your chance. Just contact me at the museum and I will make arrangements to have this happen!
-Christina
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