Quartermaster Museum program puts students in touch with past

Photo By Terrance Bell | Destinee Thomas, a fifth grader at Patrick Copeland Elementary School, Hopewell, learns about an artifact she will attempt to find while touring the U.S. Army Quartermaster Museum Jan. 29 as part of the Fort Lee facility's Touching the Past program. About 10,000 students will participate in the program this school year.  

VA, UNITED STATES

02.05.2015

Story by Patricia Muntean 

Fort Gregg-Adams

FORT LEE, Va. - About 10,000 students from the Tri-Cities and Richmond area will participate in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Museum’s Touching the Past program this school year.

More than half of those pre-K through 12th grade kids will tour the museums at Fort Lee, and roughly 4,000 will be reached through classroom visits by museum educators. The program uses guess-the-artifact games and find-the-object scavenger hunts to make it fun and engaging for youth participants.

“We’re building an appreciation for historical studies and preservation through hands-on experiences and critical thinking activities,” said Laura Baghetti, curator of education at the QM Museum. “It helps local schools achieve the Standards of Learning goals mandated by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and it gives us an opportunity to share a bit of the Army’s history – namely, the proud heritage of the QM Corps and the women Soldiers who are memorialized at the Army Women’s Museum here.”

The true success of the 8-year-old program was witnessed during a Jan. 29 visit by 5th graders from Patrick Copeland Elementary School in Hopewell. Looking apprehensive, distracted or just plain bored as they filed into the museum auditorium, the students were quickly engaged in the guessing games and exhibit fact-finding tours that grabbed attention and elicited excited conversations between classmates. Most were still asking questions and lamenting the idea of leaving at the end of the three-hour event.

“It’s a typical reaction,” Baghetti noted. “You tell kids they are coming to a museum and a lot of them aren’t enthusiastic about it, but every one of them leaves here with a smile. It’s fun, for all of us. We make it fun; we give them hands on so they can participate. It is what we do best.”

Ann Easterling has been working as a museum educator with the program for several years. She has a degree in anthropology, a master’s in museum studies and museum education, and has worked at other museums in the area prior to joining the program here.

“I think one of the reasons this program is successful is because we have five-to-six students per educator most of the time, so it establishes that immediate relationship with a young learner,” Easterling said. “We’re in there doing those hands-on activities with them; it’s really personal. And it can be structured to their interests, so if a child has a question that leads us another way, we can easily go there without distracting the other kids. I think the teachers appreciate that low student- museum educator ratio as it is fairly rare in museum programs.

“I also think the ability to touch objects, to feel them, is important,” Easterling continued. “There is so much give and take. We don’t just talk to the children, we ask them. We get their input and we guide their conversation. It’s not just one of those ‘follow me, this is point A, point B and point C lectures.’ The kids really get to participate. It’s the personal experience that makes it come to life.”

Lauren Wells, one of the 5th grade teachers from Patrick Copeland who participated in the Jan. 29 event, said she has been bringing her students to the museum for four years.

“This trip has always been very engaging for our classes,” she said. “Our children get to work hands on with many items and the lessons are very inquiry-based, which helps them form their own ideas about the past before being told directly. The information presented also allows our students to form connections to concepts they have been previously taught in both fourth and fifth grade.

“I love seeing how well they interact (with the museum staff and each other) and how excited they are about the artifacts they see in both the Quartermaster and Women’s Museums,” Wells added. “We always have the most friendly and hardworking staff during our visits. They are very knowledgeable and tie in their own experiences to what they are teaching our students. We really appreciate this partnership in education.”

The program – which costs about $30,000 a year to operate – is completely funded through donations and grants. Its main benefactor is the nonprofit Quartermaster Foundation, which operates from an office at Fort Lee. Baghetti said the majority of the money invested in the program is spent on training and paying a small stipend to the 10 museum educators who are the “core of the program and the reason for its success.”

Those who would like to contribute to the educational effort or the QM Museum itself can contact the QMF through its website at www.qmfound.com.

• Date Taken: 02.05.2015
• Date Posted: 02.05.2015 09:48
• Story ID: 153629
• Location: VA, US