Hello, everyone, and welcome back to then again, the podcast of the northeast georgia history center. I am Marie Bartlett, the director of education here, and today we are going to be talking about educational programming, specifically as an internship. So, of course, we have our summer intern Dash with us today to talk about her internship that she did with me at the Northeast Georgia History Center, all about educational programming.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk about how great of an experience I've had this summer.

So can you talk to us a little bit about why you decided to come to Northeast Georgia History Center for an internship?

It's actually kind of a silly story because history and education were both not my major in college. I was actually a psychology major, and I was getting ready, I needed to do an internship just to finish up some college credits. And I thought, I can do anything I want. I'm going to fulfill a childhood dream, and I'm going to try to work in a museum for a summer. And so I was just typing in words that I was interested in. I was typing in history. I was typing in science. And the internship here popped up, and I just went for it. I clicked on it, I applied, and I came and interviewed with you, and I planned on having magical little history summer.

And of course, you did wonderful in your interview. That's how you ended up with the position here as one of our summer programming interns. So what was your favorite part about what you did this summer? Well, let me take that back. Can you tell us a little bit about what you did this summer and some of your favorite parts of that?

So a lot of the things that we did this summer was interacting with the public in different ways, whether it was us going and teaching field trips or field trips coming to us, hosting events like family days and the night at the museum was really fun, but then also kind of backdoor. Eventually going to interact with the public stuff like doing the museum activity books that will help with future field trips was really cool just to kind of be a part of every step, not only this summer but also moving forward.

So you got to do, of course, the hands on out there with the public, but then also a lot of behind the scenes work with the museums. So obviously this is your first time really interacting with a museum in this way. So is there any behind the scenes things that you were like, oh, my gosh, I didn't realize that museums did XYZ?

I think I did not know the challenges of volunteers and how hard it is to really get people into a place at the right time and really go from having our staff and interns and volunteers all kind of flow together in a great way because you don't want to take too much of a volunteer's time. They're being really sweet. They're doing incredible things for us, so it's hard to get them, like, do you want to come practice volunteering? So it was interesting to see how many different people it takes to run things that once the public walks in, it's just, oh, wow, look how breezy this is when it really took so many people and so much planning.

I do wonder sometimes for people who listen to our podcast or come to the History Center for events, if they're not theater people, if they're not museum people, they have no idea. They have no idea how much it goes into making that production to making that event happen. So sometimes with a podcast, we get to pull the curtain back a little bit and talk about everything that went into making this or when they come in for a field trip, they don't know how many hours it took for you to make that museum booklet that essentially took all summer for you to work on. But it turned out so amazing. And I'm so excited to get to send that to kids because that's something that they get to do beforehand before they come to the History Center and also after they come to the History Center, depending on how their teacher wants to use it to either prep them or to reinforce what they learned at the field trip. But that's going to be an amazing resource that thousands of children are getting to get to experience and read and learn from. So what was your favorite event, favorite part of your internship?

I think I'm going to have to say night at the museum, the family night. It was just so interesting and incredible, and it was so different than everything we had done because the chautauquas were so cool in setting the stage for those and field trips. It was so cool to interact with so many different people with so many different interests. But Night, the museum was just so insane in amazing ways that we had so many people here, we had so many actors, so many people, like guests came in and just getting and I got to wear a historically accurate costume, which was really cool. And who gets to do that during a summer internship? So it was just such a big event. And it was right sort of towards the end of my timeline for my internship. So even though it wasn't my last thing, it kind of felt like the big like, this is what we've been talking about since day one type of thing that was just really cool to be a part of from kind of the later stages of planning all the way through cleaning up chairs the next day.

Yes, because you got to essentially become a living historian for the night, which was so fun because you had been of course, helping with all those field trips, and you gotten to see how we do the toys and games demo. And then it was so fun to see you go from observing that station to running that station at the end of the summer, which was just yay interns learning all of the good things. It's amazing. And of course, you got to wear a cool outfit, which is so much fun. Like, who doesn't love getting to wear a fun historical outfit? It's one of my favorite parts of my job. Is there anything that you found perhaps the most challenging in your internship?

I think definitely. Once again, not having come from a school history background, I'd already always loved history. I go to museums all the time. That's what all my family vacations have ever been planned around. But I had not done historically based research since high school, other than a college class here or there. So it was really kind of a major gear shift to go from MLA and all writing and psychology to history. And it was really nice that you and Leslie both really helped me and were like, okay, here's a crash course on how to do what we do, which has been really helpful because then it really went a lot faster after I learned how to do it in the right formatting.

It's hard not coming from a history background to know exactly how history research kind of goes down. And where are all of the sources that you can get? All of the really nice places online that are available, the books that we immediately go to, you just don't know. But that's one of the wonderful things about having an internship here at the History Center. We take you under our wings and we show you how to do it. Now, how do you think this internship has impacted you and your future career?

It has impacted me so much because, like I said earlier, I really thought this was just going to be oh, magic. A little summer, and then I'll go back to psych research, but probably about June. So a month in, I started looking at history jobs and museum jobs just because I really loved it and I loved the atmosphere here and the people, which was a huge selling point, but also just the work in general. So I started looking at history education master's programs, and I started looking at education in museum settings, jobs, and all those different things. So it has completely changed my career goals in every way imaginable.

That's a pretty exciting thing for us to hear, that our internships were so exciting and interesting that that's something that you want to then pursue. Would you mind telling our listeners about some of your exciting news about your career?

So actually, in the last couple of weeks, I have both accepted and started a job at the Fernbank Natural History Museum in Atlanta, which is really cool. I'm working as an educational facilitator, and it is so interesting how much of this internship transfers. And even though it's not people history and cultural history like we do here, it's natural history. The pure basics of what the two jobs are when it comes to interacting with the public and programming and how to control crowds and how to deal with kids that are Riley on field trips, that sort of stuff that's so crazy that I just kind of like clicked into place there. And then I also just accepted another job because they're both part time at the moment at Zoo Atlanta. To be an educator, which is the same sort of thing that's kind of plug and play with those skills that even though that's not even history, that the same skills that I learned here from being able to talk. To people and programming and how to deal with the public and all those really core basic things of the educational programming internship have put me on top of lists for jobs I've applied to. So it's really exciting.

That's amazing. Wow. Can you walk us through a little bit about some of those basic skills that you use on a daily basis?

I think one of the major ones is understanding different age levels of kids and what they're able to learn and their reading levels, which actually creating the museum activity book really helped with because I was going through and I was like, what's a second grader's reading level? Like, who am I writing to here? And really learning those things. And then also having the upfront experience with the actual field trips that came and getting to see, okay, they described these kids as seven to twelve. I now know what seven to twelve year olds, how long they focus, what they act like, what they care about. So those sort of things of just understanding children and what they're capable of was really important and I think will carry on through the rest of my life in anything I do because children are everywhere. But it was really cool to see that transfer over so well. I also think just kind of the structure of education that kind of goes through to it can be in a classroom teaching or here or anywhere else. That the kind of structure that you write out for a program of. These are the main points we're talking about, and here are the Georgia Standards of Excellence. And those sort of things also just overall educational things when it comes to here's how you would teach this to a person, here's how you could explain it if they don't get it, and kind of learning those skills of if this isn't working for you, let me try. This was really helpful. And I really built that up here because I had never taught anything before other than a four year old not to grab crayons off a table when it wasn't their turn. So it was really cool to learn those interpersonal skills with both managing children but also adults sometimes and really being able to carry those over.

That's amazing because a lot of what we do here at the History Center is very much interactive, hands on learning. We try to make it as interactive as possible. Sometimes, of course, we do lecture series and more lecture based things like chautauqua or our forums, and those are usually more for our older crowds and older audiences. But our homeschool days, our family days, our homestead days that are more family focused, we try to make it approachable, especially for young children. I would say generally it's geared towards elementary age children, but we try to make it fun for adults and teenagers, too. Sometimes I think the teenagers I was like, you're actually enjoying this. You're just pretending that you're too cool and that you're not actually going to enjoy this, but if you just forget about being too cool for school, you'll have a good time. Because I think for what we do, we try to make it very adaptable of, okay, well, this craft will be okay for younger children. Some of the really young children are going to need their parent to help them. But it's a family day. It's a home school day. Their parent is going to be there versus when we have our field trips. That is a whole different ballgame because you have far less family units, parental involvement, because we're going from a one on one situation to zone defense of a ten to one ratio with our volunteers and the parent volunteers for being chaperones on the field trip. But you got to see all of that this summer because, of course, we had some field trips, which is not completely unusual for summer, but is a little bit more rare than during our school year because school is out of session. So when we have summer field trips, usually it is camps. Like, we had several camps from Gainesville City come and experience our field trip programs. We also went to a summer camp in Milton and performed a field trip there. It was kind of like a field trip to you situation. You also got to see a presentation at the Gainesville Newcomer Club. That was actually one of your first events here with us that you got to observe. So yeah, you got to do a whole lot this summer. We had the family night field trip chautauqua.

Yeah, I got a taste of everything, I think just about I don't know.

Were you here because you started in late May? Were you able to oh, actually you were here for our Homeschool History Club. And you were here for our homeschool. History Club.

Wax Museum.

Wax Museum. Yes. Which was like our last homeschool day. So you did get to technically see a homeschool day, even though that was a slightly different format than we do. But coming up in, what is it just next week, you'll get to see our fashion show and you're helping with our fashion show and our first homeschool day of the season, which is the founding of Georgia, which will be so cool. And then you'll get to see those events as well. Even though I think that pretty much the structure of Family Night and the planning of Family Night, even though the execution was very different, the planning was very similar of we have these people, they need to be here. This is where people need to park. This is how people are going to do the show, essentially. Right? But yeah, it'll be really exciting for you to get to see those last couple of things, because even though your internship has technically ended, we're very excited that you are continuing to volunteer with us. It's amazing. Do you have any other questions or things that you learned that you wanted to share?

I think that it is important just because my personal experience that anyone who wants to get into this line of work, whether it be directly here at Northeast Georgia or if it's at any other sort of historical center or museum, that it's really important to start with internships and volunteering to get your foot in the door. And if you work hard enough and you do those things and you really put yourself out there and give it your all, it doesn't matter what you did before, it doesn't matter what you majored in, that if you just show up and show that you're passionate. That that can get you a lot further than what you spent four years reading out of books.

Absolutely. Just about everyone who works here had either volunteered, did an internship, worked here part time before coming full time. Because it's one of those things where you really just have to get your.

Foot in the door.

With the museum business, I mean, obviously people can just apply cold and make it happen. But a lot of times people, when they are looking for at your application, at your resume, they want to see experience, either volunteer experience or internship experience, preferably both. If you have no prior work experience in this field, those volunteering and of course, internships are absolutely huge in this field. And of course, I assume a lot of people who are listening to this podcast are probably interested in interning. Maybe interested in volunteering. Of course, besides get an internship, get a volunteer, go and volunteer. What would you say to someone who's considering becoming a volunteer trying to get an internship? What would your advice be once they get that or once they get their foot in the door?

I think it's really important to show that you're passionate. Don't worry about seeming goofy. Don't worry about seeming nerdy. Weekend before my interview, I actually came to the museum on Family Day.

Yes. This got you Irish Heritage Day.

And I came dressed so different than I was going to my interview, and I was like, undercover.

I didn't recognize you. There you go. I was very undercover works.

And I just tried to learn everything I could about the museum because apparently I had been listening to the podcast before I knew it was where I had the internship, which was weird.

And then you just heard our voices and you're like, oh, my gosh, yeah.

It was really strange.

Now you're on the podcast.

No, I'm on the podcast. That's going to be even weirder. And I came and I just tried to learn everything I could about the museum because I had researched a lot, but you can only get so much from the Internet. So being in the museum and being able to know what I was talking about. And then I was big about the things that I thought were interesting when I had been here a couple of days before in the interview that I showed that I really cared about this period of history, I really am interested in this, even though I never straight up studied it in a college course that I was okay with being overly goofy. And we talked about American Girl dolls in my interview. And just really showing who you are and that you're passionate is so important, not only in the interview, but as you go forward. I have made great connections with everyone here and in a lot of different ways that I feel like I have really good friendships with you all, but then also really good working relationships as well. We would agree as well.

So I am so excited that you decided to become an intern here at the Northeast Georgia History Center and that you did such a wonderful job this summer and continued to do great things as you go out and go to other museums and carry what you learned here with you as you go and work at the Fern Bank Science Center or Zoo, Atlanta. So if anybody goes to those different ones, make sure you say hi to Dash. She's a Northeast Georgia history gal. So it's so excited to see how you're going out and representing us in the community and being such a wonderful spokesperson for just get a history internship and it'll change your life.

It really will. Well, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for raising me in the last four months and taking me from a weird psych lab research nerd into, hey, that history nerd part of you, it can do things, too, that you really taught me so much these last four months, and it's been really special to me, not only career wise, but also personally. I've really grown as a person, and a lot of that is thanks to you.

That's so sweet. I'm going to cry now. All right, well, thank you, everybody, for listening here at the Northeast Georgia History Center to then again, it is such a wonderful time to get to chat with Dash and also just to well, we don't actually get to talk to listeners, but you get to listen and we would love to hear from you. If you would like to go ahead and send us an email about what you love about the History Center or what you would love to hear about on our podcast. We always love to hear from our listeners. So until next time, everybody take care.

Then again is a production of the Northeast Georgia History Center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by Andrews Glass. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the Ada May Ivester Education Center. Please join us next week for another episode of Then Again.