Since having the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama last year, Andrea Jones has been excited to use what she learned and to work with more and more museums to integrate Social Emotional Learning into programs, exhibitions, and staff culture. Social Emotional Learning is a term used most often in formal education, but museums are perfect platforms for helping the public to build much needed skills in self-awareness, empathy, and ethical decision making.
She wrote a blog about this new emphasis in my work and the movement towards SEL in education here.
- I worked with the National Museum of the American Indian to create a new school tour, called Bridging Differences, to help students identify their own personal values relate with others who have differing perspectives.
- Last month I facilitated a 3-day workshop series on empathy skill-building at Eastern State Penitentiary for front-facing staff who face challenges in finding common ground with those who make insensitive comments about incarceration.
- I’m currently working on interpretive planing for an exhibit at the Mattatuck Museum (Waterbury, CT) that will use historical context to help individuals manage life’s big transitions as they face loss and reinvent their identities.
- This month I start a year-long project with the Anacostia Community Museum to create a new framework for school programs that prioritizes Social Emotional Learning, and that serves the emotional needs of Anacostia youth.
