Whether they’re 3-year-olds or collegians aspiring to teach preschoolers, students learn best by doing. That motto has been a common thread in the bond between the TCU College of Education and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History’s Museum School program.

Founded in 1949, Museum School provides educational enrichment programs that include school-year preschool classes for ages 3, 4 and 5 as well as Saturday and summer sessions for kindergarten through sixth grade. It has sparked the imagination of more than 200,000 young students.

Each spring and fall it also helps spark the passion of future early childhood educators by serving as a classroom practicum site for TCU’s Introduction to Early Childhood Education course. Mary Patton, interim dean and associate professor of early childhood and urban education, helped forge the partnership in 1995. Ranae Stetson, associate professor of curriculum and instruction, took the reins when she came on board in 1996.

Though practicum partnerships with public schools sometimes experience “fatigue factor” as teachers or administrators grow weary of working around university schedules, the TCU-Museum School relationship has only strengthened over time — thanks to “meshed” philosophies.

“The teachers, the administration, the support, the philosophy — it’s all such a perfect match for what we’re trying to do with our students,” Stetson said. “It includes hands-on learning. It incorporates science and history with everything they teach, and integrates with language arts, literature and music. So it is a perfect example of integrated, hands-on learning.” (Stetson believes in the program so much that all four of her grandchildren have attended Museum School.)

Though most students in the course are early childhood education majors, it also attracts psychology, speech and deaf ed students — even a few business and nursing majors.
The course is open to 25 to 30 students in the fall and 60 in the spring. “And it’s full all the time,” Stetson said. “Most of these kids are second semester sophomores or juniors, so they can go out and work in these classrooms long before they ever decide whether or not they want to become a teacher.”

Students get elbow deep in hands-on classroom experiences.

“We did not want this to be purely an observation site,” noted Kit Goolsby, the museum’s vice president of education. “We wanted them involved. So from the very beginning, they were introduced as teachers. They had direct responsibility of interacting with the children.”

The partnership enables Museum School teachers to be aware of the latest trends coming from university education classrooms and gives them extra eyes and ears in their own classrooms. Museum School averages 15 students with two qualified teachers (no aides) in each class.

“You can’t have too many people working with children because the more individuals you have, the more one-on-one attention you can give those children,” Goolsby said.
In addition, graduates often come back and teach at Museum School on Saturdays, in the summer and even during the school year.

Erin Savage Pinnell ’01 took Stetson’s course before spending six-and-a-half years teaching second grade in Burleson schools. She remembers it as “one of the best classes” she experienced. “What made this class different was the chance we had to observe and interact in a real classroom with excellent teachers as our models and guides,” she said.
Pinnell’s Museum School experience didn’t end there. She came back to teach summer classes and — after her first son was born — began teaching at Museum School two days a week.

“The partnership between TCU’s College of Education and Museum School is an invaluable part of the pre-service experience and training that I received and that many other aspiring teachers have received over the years,” she said. “It provides a hands-on learning experience for college students, right along side little ones, that celebrates the way we all learn best. We learn by doing.”

For information: www.fwmuseum.org