At the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, I am one of two interns working to create educational tools that will assist Folklife magazine’s efforts to become more of an educational resource utilized by teachers in K-12 education. The portion of my internship I have enjoyed the most are the interviews I have conducted with Smithsonian employees. These interviews have framed my own understanding of my Folklife assignment. One of my first tasks is to create a lesson plan template that can be reused by Folklife staff to create more lessons. For instance, I met with Jen Mellizo, a contracted educator with a BA in Music Education, and Logan Clark, a PhD in Ethnomusicology. These two individuals work for the Smithsonian’s independent music label Folkways Recordings. Folkways Recordings was given a grant to finance the creation of educational resources. Mellizo and Clark determined that it would be a missed opportunity for Folkways to not use the amazing music catalog it has at its disposal as the basis for educational experiences. Consequently, they developed an educational resource titled Folkways Music Pathways.
According to their site, Folkways Music Pathways is “an integrated, thematic, and fully customizable journey of discovery that places music from the Smithsonian Folkways collection and other Smithsonian Institution primary resources at the center of the educational experience.” Mellizo and Clark’s goal was to create a curated experience that incorporated songs in a meaningful way for teachers. The first couple of lessons were constructed by Mellizo who has a music educator background. Later lessons relied on the expertise of musicians and content experts.They are currently retooling their created lessons for districts within DC Public Schools. The creator would be a cultural music artist working jointly with Jen. The lessons would be vetted by a content expert (PhDs) for accuracy, educators and educational PhDs for pedagogical purposes.
By talking to Mellizo and Clark, I was reassured that my thought process regarding the conceptualization of my lesson plan template was correct. I determined that it would be best to use the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards as the foundational standards for Folklife lesson plans. Due to the fact, social Studies is multidisciplinary, it serves as an excellent basis for creating lesson plans as so many subject matters can be interconnected with each other.
To create further positive experiences like this, I can reach out to speak to more individuals to discuss any revisions I should make for my project. Additionally, I have come to realize that I find it easier to work with another person to conceptualize a project. My internship supervisor has thus far given me and my “co-intern” free reign to conceptualize and develop our project with as many resources as we need from Folklife Magazine. The issue was that Folklife covers so much content that it was difficult to narrow down to a specific topic that could be transformed into an educational resource. We decided to narrow down our topic to immigration and migration. The problem was that immigration and migration is still an extensive topic . As a result, I felt stuck on the next steps to take in order to fully develop a lesson plan for it. After speaking to my co-intern, we decided it might be best to start with a foundational lesson on culture that could then lead into the heavier topic of immigration and migration. This was the best solution as it helped us draft an outline for a lesson plan introducing culture to middle schoolers to eventually lead into a major lesson on immigration and migration.

The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH)’s mission is to use culture as a tool for building understanding, strengthening communities and reinforcing the shared humanity of the human race. CFCH functions as a research center and educational subdivision of the Smithsonian Institution. CFCH prides itself on understanding and maintaining cultural heritage across the United States and the world. The Center is in charge of many different initiatives. These initiatives include the “Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the Cultural Vitality Program, exhibitions, documentary films and videos, symposia, publications, and educational materials.”  

Folklife Magazine, a digital platform, is one of the many publications managed by the Center. The magazine’s goal is to explore how culture shapes our lives by publishing stories about music, craft, language, celebrations, activism, and the individuals and communities who sustain these traditions.”  However, the magazine is having difficulties being utilized as an educational tool. As an intern, I am expected to work with the Center’s communications, editorial, and curatorial teams to review Folklife Magazine content in order to build out a series of new web pages or other digital tools to aggregate content for K-12 educational purposes. 

Objectives associated with my role include: 

• Reviewing and developing understanding of the Center’s existing cultural education resources. 
•  Deepening understanding of cultural heritage by engaging with content from a wide range of heritage practices and communities.
•  Gaining knowledge of the Center’s core work areas.
•  Developing relationships with colleagues from across the Center’s departments (expanding professional network).
•  Working on an interdisciplinary team of editors, content producers, curators, and collaborating partners.
•  Organizing existing content for K-12 educational purposes.
•  Working with the Center’s web content management system, laying out web pages utilizing HTML coding.
•  Building presentation skills by providing a brown bag presentation about work to the Center’s staff.

I was selected by the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage because of my background as an educator. I have taught for five years and I have both a Bachelor’s Degree in History and a Master’s of Arts Degree in Teaching. I currently teach 8th grade US History. As a result, I am assigned to assist in curating Folklife magazine into an educational tool. I am most excited about being able to receive firsthand experience in the development of content for the Smithsonian. Typically,  when I practice creating educational content I become more enthusiastic about teaching. I think it is due to the fact that I am able to be creative and experiment with different educational tools.