Ilanit Zada

Professor Adams

10-14-2013

There were two readings assigned for this week. Both readings were very interesting, however, there was one that I felt I could really identify with. “Learning in Your Own Backyard: Place-Based Education for Museums” by Janet Petitpas, discussed the importance of place-based education and how every community, rural or urban, can provide its residents with some sort of an (informal) education. I found this to be an eye-opener; I was under the impression that the most important thing for an informal education was the wilderness (obviously museums are also an option, but I did not think that buildings in a city could play any role in it.) Maggie Russell-Ciardi then writes an excerpt entitled “Lower East Side Tenement Museum” where she specifically writes about Manhattan and the way in which it can serve as an educational setting.

Ciardi states that no matter when the immigrants came to America, most of them found their home in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As soon as I read this statement, a light bulb went off in my head. My mother is an immigrant and she too settled in the Lower East Side when she first arrived in America. That alone piqued my interest in what was going to be said, which in Surrounded by Science would be considered “connecting talk.” When an immigrant’s son/daughter walks into the Tenement Museum, they automatically think back to the place their parent lived when he/she came to the United States. As that son/daughter sees the different things the museum has to offer, he/she makes connections to the stories told by his/her parents and is automatically interested in what they are viewing. For example, if I were to enter the museum, I would think back to the place my mother used to live, a place that she took me to visit, and I will want to learn more and delve into all the information the museum has to offer.