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About Every museum a civic museum
Sarah Jencks, Founder
Sarah Jencks started Every Museum a Civic Museum to support museums that want to connect more deeply with their communities and the larger world through program and learning experience development, interpretive and educational planning, planning for America 250, and activating authentic civic strategy.
More about Sarah: Through Every Museum a Civic Museum, her almost 30 years of experience in classroom, arts, and museum education make her a valued thought partner and facilitator. As co-chair of the Educating for American Democracy Community Learning Partners task force, Sarah works with over 300 community learning partners across the country to integrate civic learning and honest history into their strategy and practice. Her process gets to the heart of who you are as an organization and how best to share that with your visitors.
Her deep knowledge, listening, and facilitation skills will help you create a clear vision for your organization. Her time at a historic site and in the classroom gives her a balanced and practical approach to museum education. Her attention to detail and operations make possible collaborations to execute on your vision.
Brook Gesser, Museum Education Consultant
Brook Gesser is a museum educator and civics advocate dedicated to helping institutions embrace their roles as vibrant sites of civic engagement. At Every Museum a Civic Museum, she collaborates with museums to deepen their connection to the public and amplify their community impact.
With experience working as an exhibitions educator at the New York Public Library and a museum educator at the Tenement Museum, Brook has designed educational programs that encourage visitors to examine our shared history and explore the cultural forces shaping our world. Her work at Every Museum a Civic Museum is informed by her many years serving as senior advisor to U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, shaping policies in education, health, and the arts. This combination of public policy expertise and museum practice allows Brook a unique perspective to navigate the intersection of cultural engagement and civic responsibility.
Brook holds an MSEd in Museum Education from Bank Street Graduate School of Education, a JD from Fordham University School of Law, and a BA from Vassar College.
Leadership: Educating for American Democracy
The Educating for American Democracy roadmap is a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded, cross-partisan initiative to improve the teaching of history and civics. As co-chair of the Community Learning Partners task force and a member of the K-5 pilots subcommittee, I help guide an ecosystem of more than 200 museum (and adjacent) educators through becoming familiar with and making use of the Roadmap's themes, design challenges, and hundreds of civic and history driving questions.
Expertise: Building Belonging through Place-Based Learning
Learning in and through places, and learning using local history as a point of entry to larger stories, are central to my practice. Whether using Ford's Theatre as a way to understand Civil War Washington (as I did for many years), or finding sites and stories in your community that can open up bigger topics, place-based learning grounds history in a sense of belonging that we now know is crucial to the science of learning. Using place to teach requires pedagogies that are rigorous and specific, I can help your site develop programs and exhibitions that use these techniques.
Expertise: Learning Science of Play
In the last ten years, researchers have become increasingly clear that guided playful learning experiences are the most effective way for young people to learn. Researchers like Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff have offered a clear call to schools and communities to change the way we do school. Museums are well positioned to lead the way in creating playful learning experiences, and understanding the research makes it much easier to advocate for play in exhibitions and programs.
Leadership: Advocating for Teaching and Interpreting Accurate History
Stemming from my service as co-chair of the 2022 program committee for the American Association for State and Local History, I have worked with a network of colleagues to advocate for the teaching and interpretation of honest, or whole, history - in particular those stories that have long been untold - whether ignored or hidden. Working with descendants and in archives, we find and shine light on their stories. I do this work in my personal life through board service with Literacy InterActives and the National Council for History Education, as well as in my professional life with EMCM.