We received great responses to our K-12 Outreach Survey asking emerging professionals about their experiences doing outreach projects aimed towards K-12 students. Many thanks to those who responded! So many professionals are doing incredible K-12 programming, so our goal is to share these experiences with the conservation community and help inspire others to develop and/or participate in their own outreach programs. We are still interested in hearing more about your different experiences, so if you are an emerging conservator who has participated in K-12 projects, please fill out our brief survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/KKJJPL6
Our first survey response is from Bianca Garcia! Read below her favorite moments and advice in working with teachers at Balboa Art Conservation Center.
Please briefly describe the type of work or projects you did related to your K-12 programming, activities, and/or outreach, including where and what year the activity took place.
Trained teachers in conservation and cultural heritage preservation, enabling them to integrate the knowledge into their classroom curricula.
Can you describe a moment that stood out or favorite memories when doing these projects? Can you describe what was most challenging about each project?
A favorite moment was seeing how a 5th grade teacher redesigned his yearlong curriculum to include the concepts of cultural heritage, preservation, and conservation in his teaching. When his students visited our labs, they could all talk about why it is important to preserve cultural heritage and how their own cultural backgrounds are important as well.
From these experiences, what advice would you give to other conservators about doing outreach and activities with children or young adults? What worked well? What did NOT work?
Tap into teachers as a resource and partner in this type of work. Sustained learning that is connected to bigger concepts is more effective than one-off interactions. And for kids, understanding the field of conservation is easier when they have a grounding in cultural heritage that if reflective of who they are and that is not limited to art in museums.
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