When a Space Is Designed to Teach Differently

We spoke with Lizzie Dilg, director of the Discovery Museum in Mt. Pleasant Michigan. We discussed how museums are designed to foster learning and how we can learn from the way informal educators approach children.

Museum Links:
Discovery Museum on Facebook
Discovery Museum Website
Discovery Museum on Instagram
STEM Passport

Music Intro: 
David Biedenbender

Other sounds: Pixabay 

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Transcript

Ashley O'Neil: 0:01

Okay, now we're recording so welcome to teach

Unknown: 0:15

our podcast hosted by Ashley O'Neal and Julie Cunningham.

Ashley O'Neil: 0:27

Let me set the scene. You hop out of the car, barely remembering to shut the door, you're too excited to wait. You run to the front using all of your body weight to heave those doors open. You enter and your ears fill with sounds. So much to do. Your feet move through the space taking in your tasks, you head to the back your favorite spot. You scan the control panels and watch as others move through the tunnels. The lights of the buttons glow as you watch someone pressed the panel and launcher delivery up to the top floor. It's a popular place to be Thank you raise up the steps of one of the tunnels. You're so high it feels like you're in outer space. And you take a minute to look at the view. What would it be like to be this tall? Are you taller than an elephant? You backtrack choosing Jesus steps again, you like the way your feet sound as you jump down the stairs. Your fingers chase the bright lights on the walls and you count the number of yellows your favorite color. Passing the rushing water you smile at someone else so excited to see their experiment in action doesn't notice as their sleeves dip into the cool water that was used last week. Good thing you weren't short sleeves today. You'll see your smiling face proudly deliver lunch to a pair seated around a campfire. You'll visit there later when you're hungry. Hopefully they'll still be cooking. You arrive at your favorite spot. See that others have already made a plan. Perfect. You use the tunnels to find a place close to the bees that hum in the walls. You love watching them. someone hands you honey gum and you send it down the chute. You're six years old, and it's another great day at the Children's Museum. Our Center has been lucky enough to learn with and from some of the staff at the Children's Museum over the past few years. The Discovery Museum here in Mount Pleasant is filled with exhibits, rocket ships and camping spaces, beehives and ant hills that are large enough for children to crawl through. Every corner of the museum is filled with thoughtful things that seemed to pique the interests and delight both children and adults. In our interview today, we're talking with museum's director Lizzy, there's so much we can learn from informal educators and how they think about teaching and learning. For sure their constraints are different from the classroom, bigger space, there's typically not an adult directly guiding those children. There's lots of ages and open ended timeframes and families are there. But there's so much crossover into their intent and their excitement and their enthusiasm is contagious, which is a shame shares some thoughtful insights into how the museum designs their exhibits, and how they think about learning and place. If you haven't visited visited the museum before this episode, you'll want to after hearing Lizzy speak, We've included links for the museum and their social media and the discounts and all the ways to connect with them in our show notes. Thanks for listening.

Julie Cunningham: 3:38

Morning, Lizzie, would you please tell us a little bit about your role and the museum?

Lizzie Dilg: 3:44

Yes. Hello, my name is Lizzie Delk. And I'm the executive director of the Mount Pleasant Discovery Museum. I've been here for about a year and a half. And it's been great so far. A little background on the museum. We opened our doors in 2012. And since then, we've seen over 500,000 guests through our front doors, which is amazing. We see just around 50,000 guests annually, which is great. And most of our visitors stem from Claire Isabella Gratiot Midland, really the whole Great Lakes Bay region. Our mission is to enhance the community by inspiring creativity, learning and curiosity. And we envision a world where educational discovery enhances the life of every child. Little Museum.

Ashley O'Neil: 4:35

That's fantastic. I'm just I don't see now I'm the one who doesn't have words to say. So my question for you is going to be what you wish more people knew and I think I'm really excited for this interview because I already I'm blown away and have learned so much about the fact that you have 50,000 people who come a year and yeah, I don't know if it's because you're in my back yard or if it's because I don't know But that number is just, it's amazing. And it's so good. And it's mind boggling. So what is something that you wish more people knew about the museum?

Lizzie Dilg: 5:10

Yeah, I, when I was reading this question, there was a lot of directions. You know, I thought I could go with this. But what I kept coming back to was, I wish I could sit down with every parent before they come into the museum with their child, and just explain to them just how much they can learn from their kids just by observing them and observing them playing in our space. I think this might connect a lot to a question a little further down about learning through play. But really, parents just had the opportunity to learn so much from their children and our space, when we have so many different exhibits that cover so many different areas of life or experiences. And they can really see what their child gravitates to what interests them, you know, what confuses them or challenges them. And I think one of my favorite things particularly is just, for example, watching parents, watching their children play in the bank exhibit. Because, you know, I think going to the bank with your parents is just an experience that every child has. And I don't really know if parents was realized, like how much kids pay attention to things, until they're watching their kid go through a full bank teller experience in our exhibit, you know, they're driving up a little car, going in ordering their money through the tube, or going up to the ATM and pushing the right buttons, going to the safe getting the money out. And just like watching the excitement and amazement on parents faces, like as their kids are doing that, I think it's just such a special thing to be able to experience. And I think parents don't always realize how much their kids are paying attention to everything they're doing, until they get the opportunity to act it out and something like that. And I just Yeah, I just wish that, you know, I could just tell parents how great their kids are and how great of a job they're doing, and that they're going to learn a lot about them when they come into play with us.

Julie Cunningham: 7:12

That's awesome. I have a new kind of already said what your favorite exhibit is to watch the children especially to watch the parents watch the children. But do you yourself have a favorite exhibit? Like if you could just play after hours? Or? I don't know.

Lizzie Dilg: 7:28

Yeah, definitely. The camping exhibit is by far my favorite. It is so cute. I think weed. So it's based off of Deerfield Park and Mount Pleasant. So the big background photo and it is the covered bridge at Deerfield. And I talk about this a little bit more too. But everything we do is we really try to group in place. So I think it's amazing that we have this beautiful mural image of Deerfield park in the exhibit. And something I tell people when I'm giving them a tour of the museum is just because we live in a rural area we're surrounded by a lot of nature doesn't always mean that our kids are getting out and playing outside and experiencing things in nature. So I think just having this opportunity to see we have all of our different animals that you might find over there in Deerfield, we recently added footprints from all the different animals that we have the kids like match up animal footprint. There's an anthill where you can put on an ant costume and climb through the ant hill, you can make dinner in the camper. It's so much fun, and so educational and such a great way to connect kids to the outdoors. And, you know, it's get them excited to be going outside. There's a microscope where they can look through different slides of fur and spiders and you know, things that they might find just outside they're outside in their backyard. So yeah, I would I would play there all night long.

Julie Cunningham: 8:52

That's awesome. I know. It's my turn, Ashley. But and this is totally tangential. And Ashley might edit this out later because it's totally tangent. But I was always the adult that would bring kids to the museum and want them to put those costumes on. And don't you think it's kind of interesting, like which kids are like, Oh, yes, please, I'll put the costume on and other kids are like, Heck no, I haven't done that. And it's not even an age thing. Right? It's just

Lizzie Dilg: 9:16

like it's just totally depends on the kid. And I think my favorite thing is that I see the parents wearing those costumes more often than I see the children

Julie Cunningham: 9:26

Okay, well that's still a heck no for me, but but I was one of the kids that what am I on because they are really cute.

Ashley O'Neil: 9:35

Was in their kids museum? No, I'm gonna go off to you. And I'm gonna go off script to you because the camping Museum is also my favorite exhibit there. We took our son not that long ago, actually. And that's where we spent the most majority of our time and ironically, we do a ton of camping. Like we camp all the time. So it's not like he doesn't have a full size camper experience. But it was fascinating to watch him. Yes. And because it was his size. He was kind of he was kind of the pair Right. And he was telling us like what to do, and where to sit and he made us dinner. And then like another child came up and was interacting with him. And they negotiated how they were going to share the camper because she had a different idea of that place. And watching it, you're right, it's funny, they do transform into like little adults that are mimicking their play, as my husband and I were sitting there around the campfire, and they were giving us hot dogs and telling us it was time for bed. I just, I it was cool to see that transformation. So it's funny you said campground, because that was also my informal education, I can hear in your voice, like how excited you are about it. And I know you and we've worked, we've had like the privilege of working together a little bit. But how did you know informal Ed, was a good fit for you.

Lizzie Dilg: 10:42

Yeah. So I feel like I've always had this passion for learning education and working with children, and spent a lot of my teenage years working at summer camps and getting to experience kids learning in that space, which is where I think I really first started getting into that informal education. And then as I was kind of moving into my professional career, I thought about the things that mattered to me, you know, learning kids, nonprofits, and the museum just really ties all of that up together. I just love the endless possibilities that come from informal education. There's way fewer rules and way more what if scenarios, there's way more that we can experience from, I think we're there's way more that we can learn from our kids here in informal space, than we allow ourselves to learn from kids in a formal education space. I'm really passionate about letting every child be the best version of themselves and being supported in doing so. And I think that if informal education just really gives kids the tools to be be themselves and to experience and to get what they get what they want out of their learning experience. And this role just really allows me to have have a hand in impacting 1000s of children a year doing that.

Julie Cunningham: 12:07

Yeah, and your passion definitely comes through on in the interview. And it's exciting. What, when you started to think about what pathway this is just kind of a, I guess, a side question. But when you I think about some of the standard scholars that we work with at CMU. And there definitely are a few who are more interested in formal education than traditional classroom teaching. So when you thought about your career plan, or your college pathway, what did that look like for you? Did that look different than like, Did you always know it would be different? Or did you go the traditional route of thinking about classroom teaching education, and then Vera.

Lizzie Dilg: 12:52

So it's really funny, I came to school, you have to like pick a major before you get to CMU, before your orientation day. And I picked elementary education, though, that was, you know, where I was headed. And in high school, I had started a nonprofit. So I was pretty familiar with the nonprofit space. But I didn't know you could do anything with that in college. So I came to CMU with that formal education degree. And at my orientation day, I met the nonprofit department. And they said that, you know, you can, you can get a degree in nonprofit administration. And so before I even came to my first day of CMU, I switched from that formal education. Because I, you know, I always knew I wanted to have an impact on kids in some way in an impact on learning education in some way. And I thought the only way I was going to be able to do that was through being a classroom educator. But knowing from my experience with working with camps that are nonprofits, and all these other children's organizations that are nonprofits, I knew that I was going to be able to have the kind of impact I wanted without the need to be in that formal education space. And so I made that switch and landed here, which again, and it's just really tied all my interests up into one pretty little bow. Yeah, how fortuitous

Julie Cunningham: 14:10

that you met that department or that individual right? From the get go. You do a nice job of outlining all the opportunities in informal education. And again, I can hear the enthusiasm and the and the passion for it and your voice. Are there also some challenges that you think you would want to talk about on the podcast with informal education?

Unknown: 14:32

Yeah, definitely. So this is something I experienced a lot when I was working on my PBL unit, that you know, we just we don't have the we don't have the opportunity to have access to the same group of kids over and over very often. And we know that when working with kids, repeat experiences, getting to go back to the same place learning from the same people is all something that that, you know, really helps learning matter and sink in to these kids. And normally, you know, classrooms come to visit us once a year. So it's hard to get that kind of repeat experience and make that like long term meaningful impact on kids, when you're not seeing them every day. But there are ways that we have addressed that and gotten around that, like, our education coordinator, during her PBL experience, made some pre and post videos and appearances to classrooms. I've had the opportunity to partner with the school and have their children bussed to the museum every other week, and me make multiple visits to the school to let the children get comfortable with me and learning from me, and learning from our educators. So it's been, you know, it's hard because we don't always have the access to kids consistently. But there are ways that we kind of get around that. And this one is a bit obvious. But a challenge that comes from having this amazing exhibit floor is that if there's any instruction that needs to happen pre or post playtime in the museum, it's really tough to get 31st graders to look away from the giant beehive five feet away from them. Which is great. We want them to be excited and excited about learning. But we do have some programs and educational pieces that do happen in the classrooms. And sometimes it can be hard to hurt your brain that is. But yeah, like I've talked about throughout this interview, there are some challenges, but there's really just amazing benefits from being in this informal education space. E very child learns differently. And for some children, a space like the museum is what they need to be enabled to have that educational breakthrough. It's a space that is designed to teach differently than is taught in classrooms, where they are every day, you know, we encourage hands on learning trial and error thinking outside the box creativity, and just giving kids the freedom to learn at their own pace. And, you know, they parents and teachers just get to see a whole different side of their kids sometimes. I remember sharing this with Ashley a few weeks ago, but a lot of teachers like to tell us before they have their classrooms come in, like you know, Susie has a really hard time listening and she's probably not going to work very well in this group might have to address that, you know, but then we get Susie and Susie is engaged and leading her group and thinking outside the box and being so creative. And it's because Susie's in a whole different environment where you know, this thinking outside the box is is the norm here, you know, and it might not be the norm and in the classroom. And just like really empowering the children to be able to have those kinds of experiences, I think just it means so much to the kids. And I think it means so much to the adults when they get to see that too. And so I told Ashley that we love teachers, but we are them when it comes to that space. Because we don't want our educators coming in with any preconceived notion of these kids, we just, we want to be able to experience them, you know, authentically,

Ashley O'Neil: 18:23

and they get like a fresh start to it right? Like they get a fresh start in a fresh space with a fresh adult. I love that. So we talk a lot about this in our space. And I know you and I have talked about this too. But museums specifically are designed with place in mind. And yes, place based education. But I'm also talking about like the physical space, it does a lot of the heavy work of the learning versus having an instructor kind of lay out how a beehive is structured. The actual beehive explains how the beehive is structured. So I'm curious a little bit about the process for designing and exit an exhibit with that kind of learning in mind.

Lizzie Dilg: 19:01

So this is something that I've been learning a lot about in my year and a half of being the director so far. And something that's really helped me and guiding you know, where we go next is I've been developing a learning framework for the museum. And so this learning framework really outlines how we want learners to experience our space or what we expect learners to get from our space. So we think of things like what sensory inputs are each exhibit. Giving children is that light, sound, touch smell, and things like that. So we like to keep that in mind and make sure we don't we have a bit of a rating scale of what sensory experiences or how much sensory experience kids won't have in one space. We also, you know, think about things like is this going to allow for open ended play? What areas of STEM learning does this cover? How, you know, just really how well All children kind of interact in or families interact, you know, does this sparking interest in the adults as well? Will they want to be involved in playing with their child. So we kind of you know, think about all of this When, when, conceptualizing a new exhibit. We also utilize a lot of input from our members and guests, they know their children the best. And so we want to know from them what they think would be beneficial in our space. And we always keep that in the back of our mind. And we have running member surveys that are utilized by our guests. Recently, we were determining what exhibit we wanted to bring in next. And we examined kind of a matrix of what all of our exhibits focused on. And something that we realized we were missing. But with some piece of technical or trade work, or really highlighting experience that isn't maybe a college path to be an astronaut, or an engineer or something like that. And when we were thinking about all of the needs of our museum, and going back to how we like to be rooted in place, Michigan is well known for our cars. So we decided that a mechanic exhibit would really meet all of our needs, it would allow kids to have that technical trade experience, and maybe ignite some passion there, it would inspire multi generational connections, because parents and grandparents who work in the car industry will be able to play with their children. And it just is something unlike what else we have in the exhibit right in the exhibit floor right now. So we're bringing in Mid Michigan mechanics, we've recently reached the halfway goal for funding for the exhibit. And we're looking at installing that early next year. And we're really excited about, um, kind of impact that that's going to have on our learners. And we're really excited to be covering, you know, a new area of learning as well.

Ashley O'Neil: 22:05

Okay, that is, that is so cool. I, when you said destiny, as you said mechanic shop, I'm like that is the perfect fit. That is the perfect fit. And it gives lots of opportunities to like, tinker with things and to like, look at parts and identify. I think it's interesting to how you think about how different people will experience museum my husband and I were talking about this, when we're at the Discovery Museum, there's so much to explore and see, when we were there with our son, I don't think we got to every exhibit or if we did, we did like a cruise by but kind of focused on the things that he was really into. But when we left him, we were talking on the way home, there was definitely you notice that I didn't even see. And then there were stuff that my son was chatting about that really like meant a lot to him that I had kind of like noticed but hadn't really resonated, my husband will read like, if you've got a sign there, he's going to read it. If you've got like a set of cards, he will flip through every single one. And we're like, yeah, read those for you. And my son did a lot of like the sensory details and like the role playing stuff. And then I was really excited about the garden exhibit up front. So I, I love that you're thinking about how different people experienced Museum, having a little something for everyone. And then also looking at the needs of your community. Let's just say you love to play with tools to intentionally Yeah, but so our center has been doing a lot of work. And thinking a lot about learning through play, we have a new homeschool group, that our younger group is dancing in the shallow waters of that learning through play. We work with a class here on campus with some undergrads who are going to be early childhood educators who are learning through play. So we would like our podcast audience to consider, or what would you like our podcast audience to consider about using play as a tool to learn and I know we've talked about this a little bit, but are there examples about learning through play that stand out to you or anything that you think would be helpful to share?

Lizzie Dilg: 23:56

Yeah, so I think just in general, adults really tend to undervalue what play can do for children. A quote we hear hear a lot is plays the work of childhood and we take that very seriously. Allowing children time to play in unstructured and open ended scenarios is really crucial to their development. Children play to practice skills to try out possibilities to imitate experiences in life, and to discover challenges all which lead to deeper learning and understanding. Play allows children to communicate ideas and to understand others through social interaction. This really paves the way to build deeper understanding and more powerful relationships in their life. In the museum, like I said, we see children learning through play every single day, every minute of the day that were open. And I think another one of my favorite examples, really of this learning through play is by experiencing what our field trip presentations are like. So when kids are here on a field trip Right, they have the opportunity to sit through a presentation, I'm gonna focus on our B presentation this time. So during our V presentation, kids learn about the lifecycle of B, how the inner workings of a beehive work, you know what these go through in their daily life, a different roles that these have within the hive. And then after the presentation, they get set loose to the exhibit floor. And we get to watch every single one of them run directly to the beehive exhibit, they run right inside to see our live observation hive. And then they all get to work right away, practicing all those different roles, sending honeycombs up to the top burning through the stone of the flowers. And that is really what makes the learning stick. Because if they would have just sat through that 30 minute be presentation, all of that information would have been out of their heads before they even walked out of our doors. But they listened to the presentation and then immediately get to go practice and act out and imitate what they just learned. So now that is ingrained in their head in a whole different way. So they actually got to walk through the process of what they just learned about in the classroom. And I just think it's, it's so crucial for adults to remember that, you know, that hands on piece, that open ended experiential piece of learning is so crucial to getting kids to understand and develop their learning in that way.

Ashley O'Neil: 26:33

Yeah, I love that too. And I think about some of those kids, maybe I was one of them in the museum presentation, I'd be like, but how does that work? And I may have questions, but I wouldn't have asked them in a million years. And my questions that I had would have been answered by experiencing Oh, that's what she means when she said this, or this is what they meant when they when they told us that the the worker bees work like this and getting in the hive, seeing the actual bees, maybe putting on the bee costume we'll see. But then moving the honeycomb up and down those pulleys and seeing how the how the group work had to go. You can't explain that experience. You have to feel that experience. And

Julie Cunningham: 27:08

I love your use of that term practice as well. Because I think how often we we know that we want to practice to learn things like a musical instrument, right, or some type of sport or things we just think of course you practice that right to learn how to do it or to learn to be better at it. But to think about practicing to learn, you know, something that's a little less maybe tangible, or a little bit less that feels like repetitive right is a great way to think about it. So lazy besides attending the museum as a patron? Are there other ways that listeners can interact with the museum? And I think you've talked about this a little bit, but if you if there's anything else you can elaborate on that would be great.

Lizzie Dilg: 27:54

Yeah, um, one thing is that we're super active on our social media. And we share a lot of interesting things. And we'd love for anyone to check us out. We're at MP Discovery Museum on Instagram, tik, Tok, Facebook and YouTube. We post lots of educational things, lots of silly things, lots of just general good information and resources for families in Isabella County and the surrounding area. You can also find out more about any of our programs, exhibits or events by checking out our website at MP Discovery Museum got work? Yeah.

Julie Cunningham: 28:31

You just don't take sorry, Ashley do so. Can people volunteer regularly with you? Is that Yes.

Lizzie Dilg: 28:41

Yes, definitely. So we have lots of volunteers that come in throughout the week and help out on our exhibit floor. We also have many different event volunteers that we have coming up on October 20th. We have a Halloween carnival that will have lots of volunteers for So yeah, that's a great way to be involved.

Ashley O'Neil: 28:59

And you can have a membership to the Discovery Museum, but you can also just pay to come once, right? So if you don't want to make that big investment, and you just want to check it out. You can pick one or the other right?

Lizzie Dilg: 29:08

Yep, you can pick you can visit for $8 A person or we have discounts for individuals with SNAP EBT or week. That's $3 a person for up to four people.

Julie Cunningham: 29:20

Well, people could check out this Great Lakes Bay region Alliant stem passport, right? Yes,

Lizzie Dilg: 29:24

the stem passport is a wonderful way to come visit. We also offer local reciprocals monthly so around Michigan every month, our members can use their membership at a different museum throughout the month, and then also if you buy our traveller membership that connects you to a reciprocal program of museums all around the country. So you you'll be able to visit museums in every state which is great