Virtual Programming for Schools
By Angelica Walker, Museum Experience Leader
In these unprecedented times, the way museums and educators engage with technology, education, and each other has had to change and adapt. As an effort to continue collaborations with the community and the local schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lynchburg Museum System offered a virtual education program for 6th-grade students at Paul Laurence Dunbar Middle School for Innovation in May 2021.
Over the course of three weeks, students were given a series of miniature lessons. Each lesson lasted about 30 minutes and the students were given access to artifacts and museum staff, along with alumni from when the campus served as the city’s all-Black high school. At the end of each lesson, students were given time and space to ask questions either about the museum or the lesson they had just completed.
Museum Experience Leader Angelica Walker and Curator Emily Kubota discussed artifacts with students. Assistant Curator Christian Crouch handled the technology. (Lynchburg Museum, 2021)
The three lessons were:
A lesson on artifacts featuring items from the museum’s Dunbar Collection. Artifacts included the high school newspaper, the Dunbarian, along with several yearbooks. The newspaper was scanned and each child was given a copy to handle and keep.
An interview with two alumni, Robert Goins (also known as “DJ Mad Lad”) and Ben Jones, from Dunbar High School, conducted by museum staff.
A brief history of the school and campus, given by museum staff.
Museum Experience Leader Hannah Kintzel gave a breakdown of the history of Dunbar High School while Assistant Curator Christian Crouch handled the technology. (Lynchburg Museum, 2021)
The lessons were held through Google Classroom, which allowed access to several of the classrooms at once. From there, students could see museum staff and engage with them by raising their hands or typing a question into the comment box.
Dunbar Middle School for Innovation has not always been the middle school it is today. In 1923 its campus was home to Dunbar High School, the city’s only all-Black high school. Until being disbanded in the early 1970s Dunbar High School was a pillar for the Black community beyond terms of education. The school provided a place of community and opportunity for Black people throughout the city of Lynchburg. The school’s rich history is often not spoken about in-depth, so this was a great opportunity to share with students the history of the campus on which they are educated today.
Today, Dunbar is a middle school for innovation, offering hands-on learning styles and unique educational opportunities. The school stands on the corner of 12th and Polk Streets. It has a very historic exterior, but on the inside, it is a lively, 21st-century school with 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade students ready and willing to learn. Languages such as French, Latin, Spanish, and German are offered at the middle school. Hands-on opportunities like the Dunbar news studio, WDMS, and the herpetology center, which includes a touch tank, are all housed within the middle school.
The history of the school is complex, and we felt it was important for current students to know what the building and the grounds had been through and what they meant to the community. These virtual lessons laid the groundwork for other museum programs such as a guided walking tour of the Dunbar campus offered to the community. This was an opportunity for the museum to grow as well, mixing the mediums of virtual education and hands-on experiences. Even though we could not physically be in the same place we could all experience the same things that helped the lesson become memorable. Students still got a take-home experience although they were not able to visit the museum.
Students engaged with the artifact lesson. (Lynchburg Museum, 2021)
As an educator who is fairly new to virtual programming, from an educator's perspective, I can say that this experience did require me to use skills I did not expect. Setting up cameras, microphones, and lights is not something an in-person museum program usually requires. It can be hard to connect with students you have never met and even harder to do it through a screen, but the students from Dunbar made it easy. Their attentiveness and their questions helped replace the feedback that I would usually get just by looking at one’s facial expression, which I could not see in this virtual format. As an educator, this virtual experience will shape the way I engage with programs in the future. Ensuring that programs are accessible, with virtual and digital options, and easy to connect with will be a priority for many future programs. Although I regularly give walking tours of the Dunbar campus in person, if for some reason it had to be switched into a virtual program, I now know of some better ways to share that information and experience with the public.
The Lynchburg Museum System hopes to continue delving more into virtual education opportunities for both local schools and the community at large. Technology has helped to make museum exhibits and programs more accessible to people who may not have had the ability to visit the museum before or who may not be comfortable visiting in person.