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About Every museum a civic museum, LLC & sarah jencks
Why Work With Me?
I 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.
Through Every Museum a Civic Museum, my 25+ years of experience in classroom, arts, and museum education make me a valued thought partner and facilitator for your team. As co-chair of the Educating for American Democracy Community Learning Partners task force, I work with over 200 community learning partners across the country to integrate civic learning and honest history into their strategy and practice. My process gets to the heart of who you are as an organization and how best to share that with your visitors.
My deep knowledge, listening, and facilitation skills will help you create a clear vision for your organization. My time at a historic site and in the classroom give me a balanced and practical approach to museum education. My attention to detail and operations will help us collaborate on a plan to execute on the vision we've created together. Let's talk about your hopes, dreams and needs.
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.