Holocaust Museum Houston-Eliana Streeter, Week 3


Hey guys! I hope everyone has been enjoying their internship as much as I have.

To start off last week I attended my very first staff meeting. It was so cool to see everyone in one room and hear the latest report from each department. Not only did I get to learn more about the museum and the ways in which the departments work together, but I also got to partake in a delicious chicken biscuit breakfast from Whataburger, a favorite fast food chain for many Texans. Overall, it was a super cool and informative way to start the week.


A couple days later, I got to meet with the Director of Visitor and Volunteer Services Mark Osborne, and Volunteer and Intern Program Manager Rennes McCloud. In our meeting, I got to learn more about their roles in the museum and we discussed the process of becoming a volunteer and intern at the museum. They also shared the recent increase of diversity among the volunteers as well as bilingual speakers and their importance in the museum. I was happy to share my perspective on student volunteers as I participated in three National Honor Societies during high school. I’m so glad that they were open to hearing my thoughts. I was happy to collaborate with them on providing more opportunities for students and helping the student volunteers best represent the city of Houston.

To close out the week, I met with the Senior Associate Director of Education Laurie Garcia. In our meeting, she shared her role within the museum and her passion for education. Upon first starting out at the museum years ago, she founded and created the Educator In Motioprogram that I mentioned in a previous blog. She put the curriculum together filled with moral lessons as well as what it means to be an upstander.  Now, she leads the Latino Initiative at the museum along with my supervisor and Director of Public Engagement Michelle Tovar. Both had a pivotal role in making Holocaust Museum Houston fully bilingual with panels in both English and Spanish in each exhibit. Laurie’s inspiration to educate the younger generation on the Holocaust came from her study abroad experiences in college. While she was studying history at Texas A&M University she got the opportunity to travel to both Poland and Lithuania where she was able to see history embodied by the historic sites she visited including Auschwitz-Birkenau. This is what sparked her passion for educating the youth about the Holocaust and how they too can be upstanders. 




Below are a few more photos of my museum visits from my last post. Hope you enjoy them!




 







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