Welp! Several more weeks down and I have begun working on skills associated with creating activities for students at the memorial. We have a lot of educational programs here at D Day and I was brought on to work on these events/field trips so it is REALLY neat to be working on this material. Triangulating SOL assessment, school criteria, and content has been really entertaining and insightful. Some activities are really fun to do, like create cardboard tanks and reenact a battle, but are impractical from a curriculum standpoint. Knowing when to bring out the purely ‘fun’ activities is becoming increasingly easier. I have also been working on giving the tour of the monument; which has been loads of fun. Getting to engage with the monument every single day is a dream and I learn something new each day and with each tour. Knowing what to include within your tour and what to leave out is essential to a good tour. I have been on some tours that are two and a half hours…for your information the tours are only supposed to be between fifty minutes and an hour long. I could have received college credit for some of those tours! Recently we have been working hard on the World War II in Film conference occurring this summer at Liberty University and figuring out what we want included for the scholarship program. I had the idea to have the teachers submit a children’s guide of the museum that was engaging and encompassed the ‘grown-up’ tour. I don’t necessarily agree with my supervisor on every educational decision but I have learned a lot from her. She is extremely creative and easily communicable which helps move the day along and keep the activities interesting. Kids need to be engaged in order to learn so creating activities that engage them, teach them, and meet the standards of the state is more than difficult yet somehow she does it! Of course she has help from other educators and museum educators alike but it is neat to see the close-knit community between museums and educational systems. My internship project is creating an Education Resources Database that includes lesson plans by criteria of the SOL standards. Teachers and museums will be able to simply click on a desired SOL standard and see all these activities that align with it. Ahh well back to the grind!! Until next time.