Getting paid to play… a childhood dream come true!

Our guest blogger today is Sherry Marshall, Director of the Oklahoma Museum Network, a network very similar to the Arkansas Discovery Network, both funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.

As a child, no one ever explained to me that you could get paid to play.  Or that by taking my old telephone apart, I was developing critical job skills.  It seemed to me the logical thing to do at the time.  For my parents, not so much.  But I think they appreciate it now.

While exploring the laws of physics, visitors to 3-2-1 Blast break the boundaries of our atmosphere as they dock with the International Space Station in specialized simulators.

As Director of the Oklahoma Museum Network funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, I get the chance to tell kids just that.  The Oklahoma Museum Network is a partnership of five museums dedicated to bringing relevant discovery experiences throughout our state.  Fortunately, the Arkansas Discovery Network initiative helped pave the way for us.

WeatherWorks takes you into the complexities of weather

Working with our Oklahoma partner museums, we develop new strategies to help serve our community.  We get to build new traveling exhibits, provide workshop opportunities for teachers, and help our museums be the very best in providing exciting adventures for everyone.  We even have a mobile museum, Science Matters Mobile Museum.  Hopefully it can come to Arkansas to visit soon!  The network really is pretty awesome, because we get to spread the value of play, investigation, and curiosity.

For some swirling fun, you can step inside the Ride the Tornado booth at WeatherWorks.

I didn’t always know how to follow my dream.  It was a museum that helped me.  When I was young I loved coming to the science museum.  I mean, I looooooooooooooved it!  Where else could I discover how things worked, and what those colored wires in my telephone could do?  I even wrote a paper in fifth grade about the science museum and how awesome it was.  It was that museum that made me comfortable with science.  After finishing a physics degree I realized that hmmm, somebody has to actually work there, it isn’t just a place to go, but it can be a place to, WOW, work!!  Seventeen years later I am still schlepping science at the museum and love it as much as day one.

Science Matters is a traveling exhibit vehicle that presents powerful learning experiences, providing discovery learning in areas of the Oklahoma where museum facilities do not exist.

So what does this have to do with anything?  No matter what age you are, look around at what you love.  Somebody has to actually do something with that, why not you?  Do you like nature?  Think about all the opportunities out there that you can surround yourself with nature!  As you look at that acorn on the ground, take it apart and see what’s in it.  Open up the seed, figure out what all that stuff is.  Do you like space?  You could be the first human on Mars!  The little steps we take, asking questions, being interested and exploring, lead to bigger steps of finding answers and developing the skills we need to better understand the world around us.

So take the time to play, get dirty, experiment, question, and above all tinker around!  There are great resources around that can help.  Check out instructables.com or Make magazine.  You may think it’s playing, but it is really valuable job training!