Teaching Teachers

A blog post by Deborah Cardin, education director.

While the majority of the educational programs offered by the JMM focus on bringing school groups to our site for student field trip, providing professional development opportunities for teachers is a growing priority. Last year, we offered eight workshops on topics as varied as Holocaust education, immigration history, world religions, and making effective use of JMM resources. Together these programs reached 220 teachers from public, independent, Catholic, and Jewish schools and universities. Several programs take place here at the JMM while others take place at other museums, schools, and venues throughout the State. (Last year, my colleague Jeanette Parmigiani and I traveled as far Calvert County in Southern Maryland for a presentation on Holocaust best teaching practices at the Maryland Council for Social Studies.)

Holocaust survivor Rubin Sztajer talking to teachers
at the Summer Teachers Institute, August 2010

Teachers learning how to make journals as part of a workshop,
Teaching The Diary of Anne Frank, April 2010

Teachers at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum
during Summer Teachers Institute,
August 2010, learning about the history of
African-American / Jewish relations during the 20th century

I am currently working on two very different workshops that are taking place the first week of November. The first is in conjunction with our current exhibition, A Blessing to One Another: Pope John Paul II and the Jewish People, and, in keeping with the theme of the exhibition, focuses on the importance of interfaith dialogue among educators of diverse backgrounds as a means for promoting tolerance.

Exhibition curator, Dr. James Buchanan
leading JMM docents on a tour of A Blessing To One Another

The other is a program for Baltimore City Public School (BCPS) teachers sponsored through the Teaching American History program. This workshop’s theme is Ethnicity in East Baltimore with sessions exploring the history of the neighborhood surrounding the JMM.

Neighborhood scene, Lombard Street, 1950s

So, how do we go about planning a program that provides teachers with a balance of content knowledge and pedagogical skills for teaching a specific topic? For the Blessing-related workshop, I am working closely with Jeanette Parmigiani (director of Holocaust Programs at the Baltimore Jewish Council) who always has terrific ideas for speakers and sessions. Our opening session will include an overview of the history of “The Parting of The Way”, documenting the path leading to the split between Jews and Christians led by educator extraordinaire, Father Robert Albright. This discussion will then help set the stage for a more detailed conversation about the history of antisemitism and the role of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust. We also rely on expert teachers who help frame a specific topic by sharing teaching techniques and strategies. Local educator Allene Gutin, who teaches at The Day School at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, will lead a workshop demonstrating classroom resources for teaching about the Righteous, the few individuals who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. The program will conclude with a contemporary exploration of Jewish/Catholic dialogue since the Holocaust facilitated by Dr. Christopher Leighton, Executive Director of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies.

To plan the Baltimore City workshop, I have been working with Jennifer Frieman, who coordinates the TAH program for BCPS. The JMM has hosted three previous TAH sessions exploring a variety of themes such as immigration history and the history of religious pluralism in Maryland. The format for the TAH workshop is familiar: teachers spend the first hour listening to a scholar provide content on the given topic followed by a museum tour and review of relevant classroom resources. The afternoon is spent listening to master teachers share lesson plans on the topic that they have written that incorporate primary sources from the JMM archives. For some reason, this particular program has proven challenging to organize, and it has taken quite a few weeks to solidify speakers and participants. Fortunately, it is starting to come together thanks to the help of two of my colleagues, Anita Kassof and Deb Weiner who co-curated our Voices of Lombard Street exhibition. One of the highlights of this workshop will be a culminating panel moderated by Anita and Deb featuring former neighborhood residents of diverse backgrounds who will share their personal reminiscences of neighborhood life.

Baltimore City teachers participating in JMM workshop, November 2008

While developing the concept and organizing the myriad logistics for teacher training workshops is sometimes daunting, the benefits for the JMM are numerous. Teachers who participate in these programs become familiar with our Museum and are enthusiastic about the learning opportunities that we offer their students. Participants often become part of our Teacher Advisory Committee and serve as ambassadors to their schools and school systems on our behalf. In addition, they frequently take advantage of our programs and resources. And the education staff benefits from this opportunity to spend time with educators and to learn about the ways in which our Museum can improve the quality and relevance of our programs.

For more information about these programs and other JMM teacher training workshops, contact Deborah Cardin, director of education, at (410) 732-6400 x236 / cardin@jewishmuseummd.org.

SAM visits JMM

This past Sunday I hosted a group of University of Maryland students from Master of Library Science program. All of the students also belong to the Student Archvists at Maryland (SAM) group -- including former BHU intern Kristin Davidson (you won't see her as she's the one taking the pictures).

Archivists in training listen to my introduction to the museum

I've never given a tour to future archivists before. This was new and exciting because it gave me the opportunity to talk about all those things that fascinate me (organization, finding aids, and pH neutral folders), but don't generally fascinate other people. We started with a look at the photo archives.

Photos, of course, are the domain of our Photo Archivist, but they are part of any talk on archives. I would guess that most of the collections we receive have both paper documents and photographs together. The photographs also gave me the opportunity to talk about various preservation techniques and our digitization plans. We are far away from being able to digitize our entire archive collection, but we have been working on scanning our photographs. Preservation and digitizing are two of 'those things' that archivists get excited about, but not everyone else does.

Me showing the photographs in their archival sleeves

From photos we next visited paper -- my collections. Besides showing off some of the items in our collection I was able to talk about the quirks of working in an archive. As with all careers, what we learn in the classroom is neat and precise, but doesn't always transfer neatly and precisely to the real world. Each archive or museum is unique and has had many unique archivists bringing their own views to the care of the collections over the years. After fifty years of collecting the JMM archives has been managed in a variety of ways that reflect the nature of the materials and the evolution of the Archives field itself.

Me (again) displaying the smallest size of our manuscript collections

Our last stop was object storage. Though most of our collections are either paper and photographs or objects we often receive collections that involve all three. Objects and historic documents work together to give each other context and to not only tell but also show history to researchers and visitors. Not only are the objects interesting to look at (and the JMM has some amazing and quirky objects including department store hangers and a shelf full of spittoons) but archivists do need to understand the basics of their care and preservation. Just because someone ends up working in an archive doesn't mean they only have to deal with paper -- objects tend to sneek into collections.

SAM members look at some of our wood-based objects

After the collections tour I took the group through our exhibition Voices of Lombard Street and left them to view the other exhibitions on their own. From my side it was a success, and I hope they felt the same way.

Secret Lives of Interns: Superkids!

A blog post by Lindsay Waskow.

Due to the fact that the SuperKids camp focuses very much on enriching the reading skills of the many Baltimore City Public School students involved, we have come up with activities that help them practice this skill. By creating scavenger hunts and activity books that relate to the synagogues and exhibits here, we are not only encouraging them to read, but are also helping them learn about new aspects of Judaism, while making sure that they are having fun at the same time.

This year the SuperKids camp began coming to the museum on Tuesday June 29th, and have continued to come with a new group of kids every Tuesday. It is a six week program, and will therefore end on this coming Tuesday, August 3rd. Since there is a new group of children every Tuesday, the activities we have created remain the same from week to week. Every week there are new counselors that come with the children and assist in leading them through the different activities. There are also three general counselors, Bridgette, Eric, and Matt, that come every week to help supervise the children’s visit and assist in helping the kids through the activities in any way they can.

Throughout the hour and a half to two hours that they are here, the children are broken into two or three groups, depending on the number of children that are there are that week, and rotate through three different activities. One of the activities includes a trip to Lloyd Street synagogue, where the children are introduced to what a synagogue is and learn briefly about the history of this particular synagogue. In order to help them understand the different parts of the synagogue, Julia and I created a “Lloyd Street Scavenger Hunt”. On this worksheet, we guide the children and help them find different objects in the synagogue such as the Ark, a specific pattern on the wall, a Menorah, the Eternal Light, a Star of David, the columns, and the stained glass windows.

While some of the directions only aid the children to find the specific object, there are also questions that ask them to count how many of a certain object they can find. In addition to the different questions we ask, we also provide them with a black and white picture of the object to further assist them in finding them. Although I have never supervised the Lloyd Street synagogue activity, I have heard from Lois and Elena, who have taken turns supervising it, that it continues to be a success as it not only helps the children learn about the different parts of the synagogue, but also encourages much discussion among them. This is particularly true with our new idea to laminate the scavenger hunt, which eliminates the need for the children to write their answers down with pencil, and instead promotes more conversation and discussion.




A second activity in which the Superkids participate is a scavenger hunt of the “Voices of Lombard Street” exhibit. Julia and I usually lead at least one of the broken up groups through the exhibition with the help of a scavenger hunt. Before the group enters the exhibit, we usually give them an introduction and let them know the kinds of things they are going to see as well as hear. We also ask them and make sure they know what the terms “immigrant” and “synagogue” mean, as these words are important in understanding the exhibit.

After this introduction, we then ask the children to find a partner, and each pair gets a clipboard with a scavenger hunt attached to it as well as a pencil. Each pair usually goes around the exhibit with a counselor to help them, or if there are not enough counselors, then sometimes we have a counselor take two or more pairs through the exhibit. Either way, the counselor makes sure the two children take turns reading and writing down the answers to the questions. Since the children who come are usually going into 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade, the questions are fairly simple, but do allow the children to practice their reading skills. While some of the scavenger hunt asks direct questions that the children can answer by reading the panels in the exhibit, some questions allow the children to be more creative. For example, when they enter the house, the children are asked to play with the cooking utensils on the table and then have to write down what they pretended to make. They also get to draw their own interpretation of the gefilte fish in the bathtub after seeing the bathtub and reading the panels above it that have to do with this story.

One of the other aspects that the SuperKids like in the exhibit is going into Attman’s, playing with the pretend food, and then writing down what they pretended to order. In my opinion, the scavenger hunt seems to be the perfect length for these children and does a good job at highlighting what life was like one hundred years ago on Lombard Street.



The final activity that the SuperKids partake in is “The Golden Land” station. Julia and I usually lead this section for all of the groups and in my opinion, it seems to be the most fun of the stations for the children. After asking them about their visit to the “Voices of Lombard Street” exhibition and reviewing the terms “immigrant” and “synagogue”, we introduce the station and tell them that they will have a chance to act out what they saw in the exhibit. Julia and I then break the group into three smaller groups to go to three separate activities within the room.

Making a pretend "Shabbat dinner."

Before letting them go to their first station, we explain all of the stations in general. We usually talk about the pretend food on the back table first and explain what a Shabbat dinner is to them and encourage them to make their own. We then address the box of clothes, shoes, and vests on the floor and invite the children to dress up like people dressed one hundred years ago. Finally, we explain to the children that they will all be getting an activity book about “The Golden Land” that they will be able to color.

Dressing up!

We then send them to their first stations, and after about ten minutes send them to their next stations, and ten minutes later send them to their final stations. Throughout these three rotations, Julia and I usually supervise the coloring activity and make sure the children write both their first and last names on the front page, while the other counselors split up and monitor the other two activities. I like watching the children color and find it interesting to see what color marker they decide to color in each object. (For example, I’ve seen some children color in the faces of the people blue and color their skin green.) When time is up, and the children have completed both the scavenger hunts of Lloyd Street Synagogue and “Voices of Lombard Street” as well as the three activities in “The Golden Land”, they all go outside with their counselors to the courtyard to eat snack while they wait for the bus. Julia and I usually take some snack for ourselves as well, which the counselors do not mind at all!

Coloring in Golden Land.