MV Museum

2018 Expansion Grant

Educational Infrastructure
Award: $219,138

Mission: To inspire all people to discover, explore, and strengthen their connections to this Island and its diverse heritage.

MV Museum

Over the past year, the Museum’s Educational Programming has continued to swell with opportunities for Islanders of all ages. The classroom is the hub of all this activity and was continually transformed to house an exciting array of events and programs. Whether it was a stage, a laboratory, a forum for debate, an art studio or a place of quiet escape, our classroom has been a welcoming venue to all who stepped through the door. Building on our relationships with Island school teachers, we have seen significant growth in the number of classes engaging with our educational experiences. 86% of K-4 students experienced a Museum field trip, in which interactive activities in the classroom are an essential part. Beyond the elementary years, we have hosted both middle and high school classes on research visits to enrich their courses of study. AP African American History students investigated the exhibit, Unfreedom, while the American Sign Language I & II classes came to see They Were Heard, about the Chilmark Deaf Community. The classroom was a perfect space to host lively discussions following each one of these exhibit tours. Our child and family-centered programming is continuing to utilize the classroom in a multitude of ways. It provides a monthly meeting place for our Crafts of Yesteryear 4-H club for children ages 8-14. Over weekends or school vacations it is a versatile space for family-friendly events including Heath Hen Day, Shark Week, Discovery Days classes, Founder’s Day and Nancy Luce Day. Our classroom allows us to continue inviting our vibrant community into our Museum where they find meaningful ways to engage with Island history.

MV Museum

Education & Public Programs at the MV Museum spent 2022 broadening its reach to the Island community, and the Morgan Learning Center was critical to the success of our myriad programs.

Without our classroom, we would be hindered in our ability to host school field trips and provide hands-on learning to museum visitors. In addition to welcoming 814 students from kindergarten through college to the museum as part of our Museum Education program, our youth-centered public offerings expanded significantly and provided fun, creative learning opportunities to nearly 300 additional visitors. One of our biggest successes was a new museum storytime program that reached Islanders who had not necessarily considered the museum a resource for families with young children.

Island schools and students in grades K-8 form the bulk of our audience in Museum Education, but we continue to see incremental success in reaching preschool, high school, and college audiences. We are delighted to be building relationships with the Vineyard’s preschools and Head Start program. At the other end of the age spectrum, students from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s Project Vine again utilized our resources for their annual Lore Night research-and-creative writing assignment and subsequent performance, held at the museum. Our research librarian, Dr. A. Bowdoin Van Riper, has offered project support and assistance to six college students doing in-depth research on Vineyard subjects; he has also worked closely with students in the Deaf Studies program at Clemson University, who visited this summer.

MV Museum

The Museum met the challenges of 2021 with nimbleness and creativity providing memorable, meaningful experiences. The classroom remains one of our greatest assets and allowed us to welcome students back into the Museum as soon as public health guidance permitted. While the majority of our education programming early in the year was virtual, the classroom provided an outstanding space for our educators to deliver live “classroom visits” via Zoom, sharing artifacts and anecdotes with young learners. In-person field trips resumed in late spring, bringing students back to our campus for the first time in nearly a year.

Over the summer, the classroom became the stage for a variety of new educational programs. We taught youth ARTifact Classes (object-inspired art learning experiences), a series that will continue monthly. Additionally, the classroom hosted two Island youth art exhibits: Favela Mural and the “Colors of Us” self-portraits, demonstrating the diversity of Martha’s Vineyard.

The fall allowed us, with all due caution, to continue in-person field trips, which were revised both for safety and for content: each one is now aligned with the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework and follows a specific format to ensure that every student experiences our exhibit galleries and a hands-on activity, ranging from handling our Education Collection artifacts to synthesizing classroom learning with imaginative role-playing exercises. The high schoolers designed their own “exhibit” to display their learning. Without our classroom, none of these opportunities would exist for Island youth.

MV Museum

In early 2020, the Museum was dynamic as hundreds of students bounced between studying artifacts in the classroom and exploring the galleries. We hosted a party in the classroom for over 100 friends and family of “Big Brothers, Big Sisters” celebrating the opening of “The Big and Little Art Show” in an adjacent gallery. After March 13, the education team pivoted, updating our website with 15 activities for homeschooling parents; these were downloaded over 1,700 times! On campus, we used the outward facing windows of the classroom to exhibit student voices in “The Race Card Project” - an installation of 6-word sentences about race. We also partnered with the Boys & Girls Club summer program and delivered 6 weekly “History Art Kits” for kids to explore all summer, at no cost. Come fall, Museum educators turned the classroom into a Zoom studio using large photographic backdrops and artifacts ranging from very large (a 6’ x 6’ hay rake) to very small (quartz arrowheads, ½” long.) The result is a visually rich environment that teachers project on their smart boards enabling students to look closely and analyze. The classroom allowed us to meet guidelines for safe, socially-distanced learning. Though we can only teach 7 students at a time, the quality of the learning remains excellent. Both Charter School and MVRHS Project Vine students have come for field trips. Now more than ever, the classroom is an essential tool to ensure thatthe Martha’s Vineyard Museum inspires all people to discover, explore, and strengthen their connections to this Island and its diverse heritage.

MV Museum

Throughout 2019, the Museum’s education team has been busier than ever before - hosting 115 classes and creating unique experiences for 1,574 Island schoolchildren. Cornerstone classes on topics like lighthouses and Grey's Raid are now fully integrated into the public schools' curricula. Our educators are also getting more creative as we settle into the new campus, responding to requests from the high school’s English Language Learner program and Theater Department, Smith College and the Tisbury School. The Museum is now able to create meaningful connections for students by allowing them to touch the past and play in the present, in the hopes that they will shape a vibrant future. Having a classroom in the Museum is a game changer for our Education Program. In the past our educators had to go out to the schools to teach a class, limited by what they could bring with them. Now students come to us and the galleries themselves have become centers for learning and youth engagement. Imagine how learning can truly come alive when a lesson about prisms includes standing in front of the fully restored 1854 Fresnel Lens! Or when a lesson on habitat change includes kneeling down and looking into the eyes of an actual heath hen! We look forward to continuing to build partnerships around the Island to ensure that every child on Martha’s Vineyard has a chance to visit the Museum with multiple times with both their schools and with their families.

MV Museum

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2018 has been a year of transformation at the Martha's Vineyard Museum, as we successfully completed the renovation of an 1895 building into a new first-class campus in Vineyard Haven.

Despite all the changes, the Education department had a record year, working with over 70% of the Island’s schoolchildren. All classes are hands-on, blending art, history and culture to bring students memorable, fun learning experiences. During the summer, learning continued with Discovery Days twice a week providing children with focused lessons on topics such as whaling journals and Vineyard animals. During the summer, we also had 24 lucky kids who shared in the excitement of the new museum as they toured the classroom during construction. After exploring architectural details they sketched their discoveries in notebooks as a keepsake.

In 2019, all classes will take place in the new Museum classroom! Our first big project is on January 23rd when we will welcome the entire 2nd grade of Oak Bluffs Elementary for the first annual Heath Hen Day! Students will be greeted by a special banner hanging outside the classroom and then proceed to rotate through five learning stations sprinkled throughout the galleries. The classroom will act as “home base” to start the day but also at the end to share what they learned about extinction, oral histories, habitat and art. All Island schools will be invited to have their own Heath Hen Day throughout the year, as a signature event.

MV Museum

PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT: The MV Museum was awarded $219,138 to equip a classroom dedicated to youth education in the Museum’s new location at the Marine Hospital campus in Vineyard Haven. The Classroom will host visiting groups from Island schools and preschools, as well as the Museum’s summer programs for children, serving as a nucleus for the study of Island history. MVYouth funds will purchase furniture and shelving, IT, audio and visual equipment and other materials necessary to transform the Classroom into a teaching and learning space.

MVYouth Advisory Board members and Trustees praised the Museum’s education programs, which currently engages children through classroom visits to the elementary, middle and high schools and on field trips to their Edgartown campus. The Museum’s education programs have built effective collaborations with Island schools, preschools and other non-profits to deliver state-mandated curriculum to children PK-12. The Museum’s education staff work closely with classroom teachers to support grade level requirements while teaching Island history.

Museum educators teach over 200 classes per year to Island school children, reaching 1,150 students annually, free of charge. Additionally, through summer programming and community partnerships, the education programs reach another 175 seasonal children. The Museum projects expansion of their education programs in the new space, with expanded numbers of school field trips and collaborations with other Island non-profits. Their goal is to reach each of the 1,800 students in the Island school system.