April

The past few weeks have been filled with a lot of writing, I am working on putting my experience with the docent tours into a meaningful piece of writing. The title for my work has been giving me a bit of trouble but hopefully Dr. Johnson will have some suggestions for me. The writing has helped me process my time with the docents and realize that my views on museum education and museums in general have changed after getting a more intimate look at how they work. The docents themselves are a collection of diverse individuals who make public education their passion in retirement (generally), I feel that those who seek out the position of museum docent are highly motivated people who were committed to their various careers and in retirement they turn that commitment to their tours. While they are all extremely different and have different career backgrounds they all have common elements that make them successful docents. Prior to the project I had never taken a tour with a docent, I felt that I could gain all the information an exhibit had to offer on my own. Once I started taking tours I realized how much information the docents add on their own, mostly due to their own research and interest, and how valuable they are to museums. I will continue writing about and analyzing the docent experience and expect to end up with a well thought out piece to turn in to Dr. Johnson.