Senior Educators from POLIN Museum Value Study Tour of SF Bay Area Museums and Jewish Educational NGOs

POLIN Educators in front of the Peninsula JCC Community Mural, where they received a special tour from Kimberly Gordon, PJCC Cultural Arts and Adult Programs Director, third from left. Photo credit: Sharon Giordano (PJCC).

During the first week of February 2015, six senior educators from POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw visited the San Francisco Bay Area to forge partnerships and exchange educational methodologies with local museums, educational NGOs, and evaluators. They began their week with a welcome reception at Easton Hall at the Graduate Theological Union, with over 50 in attendance from Jewish communal and cultural organizations, museums, and academic institutions. The educators introduced the audience to the wide variety of educational programs offered by the POLIN Museum, from youth to family to adult to the unique "Museum on Wheels" programs, to its virtual resources.

During their visit, the POLIN educators met with other educators from the Contemporary Jewish Museum, SFMOMA, the Exploratorium, and the Oakland Museum of California, as well as evaluators from WolfBrown. They participated in the museum seminar of Dr. Ari Kelman, Jim Joseph Chair in Jewish Education at Stanford University; met with donors Tad Taube (POLIN Museum Founding Benefactor) and Phyllis Cook (Jim Joseph Foundation trustee; donor to the 2013 and 2015 editions of Polin Academy Summer Seminar). They visited the Peninsula Jewish Community Center for a tour of its Community Mural. At every meeting, the Bay Area educators were impressed with the breadth and depth of the educational programming undertaken by the POLIN Museum, and the POLIN educators were equally impressed with the active engagement accomplished by the different Bay Area museums.

The POLIN educators also led a special meeting at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art & Life with staff members of Facing History and Ourselves, the Jewish Family & Children's Services Holocaust Center, Lehrhaus Judaica, the JCC of San Francisco, the Jewish Music Festival, the Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Norway, and the Koret Foundation, to exchange educational methodologies and project ideas. Among the discussion topics were how the POLIN Museum should be incorporated into Jewish study tours, how the museum works with Polish students and the Polish educational system, how educational materials are prepared based on the Core Exhibition, how the museum encourages diversity, and how it evaluates the success of its programs.

The POLIN educators then moved on to Los Angeles, where they are meeting with the USC Shoah Foundation to train in using the Foundation's state-of-the-art online archival databases. The educators will implement what they have learned from the Bay Area and LA museums and educators as they continue to serve the thousands that are coming to the POLIN Museum each week and the thousands more they reach via their virtual programs.