Our next survey response is from a conservator who did K-12 outreach during their internship! Read more below.
Thank you to our survey-participants for such great answers! So many professionals are doing incredible K-12 programming. 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
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.
I worked on a large-scale cleaning of a life-sized ivory eagle in a historic vitrine, routine cleaning of dinosaur dioramas. I participated in a yearly Preservation fair and also Conservation in situ... the conservation project would take place in the exhibit halls, where we would frequently talk with large field trips of boy/girl scouts or schools. This was while I was an intern at Carnegie Museum of Natural History (Pittsburgh).
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?
The stop and go nature could be difficult as you could get into a good workflow and then need to interact/ answer questions. I loved telling the kids about "Light enzymatic solution" aka spit, it always received a strong reaction and the kids loved it. They always asked questions adults would never think of.
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?
Talk to children the same way you would speak with an adult for the most part... don't try to baby talk or dance around things. They want honest answers and can tell when you are not being genuine.