How will WestEd’s educational program for the Courage Museum enhance high school students’ museum experience and support teachers?
Lauren Trout, Senior Program Associate, WestEd:
One of the bigger guiding principles in the design of our educational programming for the Courage Museum is the idea that the conditions for courage come from community. That they come from relationships. And so, we are spending a lot of time thinking about and designing around that idea, right? How do we build and hold relationships? How do we strengthen relationships that are already in place? And how do those serve as a resource for not only of museum and field trip experience, but for sustaining courage. So, we’re thinking a lot about inside of this guiding principle, courage living inside of community, what it means to have community in a way that, again, that precedes the museum experience.
So, some of that has been looking like professional development that we’re designing for educators, that we’re calling professional learning institutes. Some of that will look like learning activities and curricular pieces that will be free resources online at the Courage Museum’s website. And then early stage thinking that we are are doing around this idea of youth engagement, what does it mean for young people to see the museum as a resource and a hub for connection or activism around the things that they care about? All of that has really been a big part of our design thus far as we kind of get parallel to the museum’s finishing and building.