![]() “I never really called myself a ‘teacher.’ In my mind, I was a facilitator. “Ever since my student teaching in Hamilton, I've had this burning idea about how curriculum should work,” Marshall says. After her retirement, she also started a new career at Ivy Tech, where she enjoyed working with non-traditional adult students. Starting her MAEd at George Washington University in D.C., she completed her graduate work at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.Īfter her husband’s discharge, the couple moved to Muncie, where Marshall spent decades teaching elementary students from underprivileged homes. Yet envisioning the possibility of bringing one closer to home didn’t seem remote for Marshall, who had already become a forward-thinking advocate for hands-on and student-centered learning.Īfter graduating from Miami University in 1962 with a degree in elementary education, Marshall taught in Indianapolis, her home, and then in Arlington, Virginia, where her husband was stationed nearby as a Naval JAG Officer. “At that time, there were no hands-on museums in the Midwest,” she says. Nowhere near where Marshall spent her days as an elementary school teacher using her “hands-on” methods. However, before the Muncie Children’s Museum opened, very few existed, and only in far off metropolitan areas like New York City, Boston, Florida, and San Francisco. We were talking about a museum where the kids could explore, experiment, have an adventure, and touch absolutely everything.”Ī 21 st century teacher in a 20 th century society “I gave talks about what we were planning, and it was purely an idea that they were investing in, and it was a fairly peculiar idea,” she says. The kind of place Marshall had in mind would be different. That was over 40 years ago - before Marshall would successfully help establish the Muncie Children’s Museum as one of the nation’s first hands-on learning centers to feature immersive and interactive activities for children of all ages.Īt the time, many children’s museums featured static exhibits, Marshall recalls, with dead bugs pinned to foam boards, dusty collections of old rocks, or motionless stuffed animals adorned with signs that said, “Don’t touch.” So read Marshall’s prophetic quote, which was once used to energize community support around what, at the time, would be a novel way to awaken the natural curiosity and wonder of children. They become enriched and, finally, they make a meaningful contribution to their community." They become stimulated by their environment. "Children's museums are not built in a day,” Liz Marshall ‘62, a lifelong educator, once wrote. ![]()
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