Legacy Magazine

By Marne Bariso

The nearly $28 million building renovation the Chicago History Museum (CHM) underwent during 2005 and 2006 enabled the museum’s Education and Visitor Services departments to reflect on visitor experiences. It was an excellent opportunity to reconsider teaching and learning at CHM. During the months the museum was closed, the departments formed a school planning team to think creatively about potential new experiences for one of the museum’s most significant groups of visitors: youth on field trips.

Courtesy of Chicago History Museum

We spent hours with flip charts and colored markers, prioritizing the features of high-quality field trips based on research and our own experience. Visitors should be able to make choices. Field trips should include collaboration and small group activities that relate back to the exhibitions. Hands-on experiential elements were important. Discussion, role-play, use of imagination, putting oneself in the past, and making connections were also high on our lists. And, of course, students had to have fun. We were attempting to plan the best field trip…in history.

Our planning and charts full of wish lists resulted in seven activity carts—“History à la Cart” stations—for field trip groups and families to encounter during their visits. The carts are mobile, have heaps of storage, and accommodate about a dozen participants, a number based on the guideline that visiting groups must bring one chaperone per 10 students. Plus, with inquiry-based strategies incorporated into each of the activities, a group of about 10 enables discussion and collaboration. While many topics of Chicago history were considered during development, the History à la Cart topics eventually included skyscrapers, the early Illinois prairie landscape, bridges, neighborhoods and community, and the most popular—the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Interpreter Training Program Had to Be Transformed
The cart experience for field trip groups and volunteer interpreters was a change. Previously, teachers could make reservations for 45-minute guided gallery tours on a first-come, first-served basis. Now, groups stroll through galleries, encountering activity carts located throughout the museum; up to four carts are offered each day. It is up to each group whether to stop and participate in any of the facilitated, 20-minute activities. The change of the field trip experience resulted in the transformation of our volunteer interpreter training program. At CHM, our volunteers are from all walks of life. They love history and appreciate the “cool” and “awesome” educed from young visitors, a moment just short of magical.

More than three years later and after six rounds of interpreter training, I am able to reflect on the notable changes these new offerings obliged us to make.

Significantly, we are more customer-minded. We strive to have every participant during a History à la Cart activity do something. There is potential for all students to portray a part of the John Hancock building at the skyscrapers cart; all kids at the prairie cart can compare their own heights to the tallness of Illinois prairie flowers; every fourth grader surrounding the fire cart can help “burn” the city down—and boy, do they want to. Participation is at the heart of the activity carts. Sometimes, I remind well-meaning volunteer interpreter trainees, “These are ‘activity carts’—not ‘sitting and listening carts.’”

Today, the historical content offered to trainees is less complex. We still provide volunteer interpreter trainees with background material, plus we give them a manual for each cart that contains objectives, messages, and an activity framework. Museum curators lead discussions on the cart topics, but these discussions are less academic than our previous gallery interpreter training seminars. Since the information is more broad, it highlights huge, history-altering moments—the same kinds of stories visitors enjoy learning about. What we have added is material on learning theory such as addressing various learning styles and the effectiveness of using a conversational style of interpretation.

Students on a field trip at the Chicago History Museum measure lengths of Illinois plant roots at the Prairie Landscape activity cart. Courtesy of Chicago History Museum.

Training also allows new volunteers to experience the perspective of the visitor. The ability to stand in a visitor’s shoes is precious because it is fleeting. Volunteer interpreters only feel new for a while. Soon, they will be veterans, and the interpretive material and other tools will be old friends. It is wise to capitalize on this period when new interpreters have the same perspectives as visitors. At CHM, each volunteer trainee takes on the role of participant during training. As a veteran volunteer demonstrates how to facilitate a cart activity, trainees do not merely sit back and watch. They scoot right up, get their own playing pieces, building materials, or compasses, and for a few minutes, channel the eight year old within.

Mentoring and modeling are more essential. Carts work best when staffed by two volunteers. This dynamic of pairing volunteers is new, and fortunately, volunteers report that working closely with one another is enjoyable and builds rapport. They learn from one another and pleasantly pass the time during slower periods out on the museum floor. Yet, volunteers working together at the same cart must be consistent with the activity cart objectives, messages, and framework. I pair trainees with veteran volunteers who will be appropriate role models during those first few times they are scheduled. Additionally, my colleagues and I schedule ourselves on the floor from time to time to keep ourselves sharp and to model appropriate (we hope) choices when faced with challenges that customarily arise in a busy museum, whether it be redirecting behavior, creatively managing time constraints, or offering praise to the junior history buff in the crowd.

Suggestions for Hands-on Activity Carts

Chicago History Museum volunteer gallery interpreter Marion Cohen facilitates a hands-on program at an activity cart. Courtesy of Chicago History Museum.

With each round of volunteer interpreter training, we adjusted, tried new strategies, and edited old ones, and reflected on methods for improvement. Speaking of change, we are currently revising the programming for one of our existing carts. As we embark on developing this activity, I have suggestions for those sure-to-come flip charts:

• Each activity should be inherently divided into two or three chunks that make sense together, or can stand alone. From time to time, and especially during late spring, our busiest field trip season, groups don’t have the full 20 minutes to spend with an activity. Cart facilitators should be given suggestions up front about how to accommodate these groups, while still ensuring participants get a hands-on experience.
• During the activity development phase, keep asking, “But what are the kids doing?”
• Discussion is not a very vigorous activity. Nor does every activity cart facilitator lead discussions well or briefly. Sometimes, it can be a bit uninteresting for participants. If the museum is busy, it could be difficult to lead the discussion or hear participants—especially young ones. Think very carefully before making discussion the primary activity.
• Does the activity engage more than one age group? Thousands of third graders visit CHM each year since Chicago Public Schools teach the city’s history in this grade. However, thousands of middle schoolers and high schoolers visit as well.
• What about families? Families visit the museum, and not just on the weekends. The activity carts have terrific potential to connect families to the exhibition material. We have recently convened a group of volunteer interpreters and staff to think of ways to adapt the cart activities for groups with multiple ages, including grown-ups.
• Set the activity framework so participants can get to doing something soon. You can almost feel young participants vibrating as they see objects or game pieces in front of them while the facilitator sets the scene. Minimize the set-up and get to the good stuff quickly.

Change Can be Difficult, But it is Worth the Risk and Effort
While some teachers who had been booking field trips at the Chicago History Museum for years admitted they missed the interpreter-led tours, we offered them an explanation of our new opportunities and hoped they understood the benefit of every student from each visiting school having a meaningful interaction at a cart with a facilitator. Some gallery interpreters questioned the change as well. But most have commended the creativity and hands-on nature of each cart. Some of the best evidence that students are enjoying their field trip experiences is when we presume they have returned to the museum with their families and run over to an activity cart saying, “C’mon, Mom, Dad, Sis, you gotta do this!”

Marne Bariso is the volunteer and intern coordinator at the Chicago History Museum. Contact her at bariso@chicagohistory.org.