Hello, my name is Carolyn Kovar and I am a Summer Education Intern at the National World War 1 Museum and Memorial. Although there has been lots of new things to learn, I have loved my first two weeks working there. My supervisors have done an excellent job both listening and responding to what my fellow intern and I are interested in and what we wish to achieve during our eight week internship.

Our primary roles as Education Interns have fallen into two central categories. First, working on projects, primarily the lesson plans that the museum creates to aid teachers when teaching about the First World War. For these assignments, our supervisors make notes of minor issues with the lesson plans before they are published. These issues we, the interns, go in and fix. Issues include anything from switching photos to those from our collection, to fixing incomplete bibliographies or improper citations. The other job for the interns is giving educational tours of the Museum to various school groups. In order to do this we have been learning about the Museum itself, it’s collections, and the history of the building. This has been daunting, but very interesting.

My favorite part of the Internship has been getting to shadow various tours conducted by volunteers or staff members for groups from Kindergartners to Seniors. Each volunteer or staff member that leads a tour gives their own unique spin to the common story. Listening to the tales, trivia, or facts that each member brings has been delightful. Through reading numerous tours I was able to create my own guide, so when the time came to give my first tour I felt prepared and excited. After leading a class of charming, well-behaved kindergartners, I was eager to do more tours.

Already, I have learned so much through this internship. It has been a delight to meet the various faculty members at the National World War 1 Museum- from Social Media Manager to Senior Curator- and to learn their various job descriptions. Watching how their team works helps me better understand what part I would like to play in my future museum career.