by Caroline Gabsewics
Staff Writer
A year ago Paula Lynn never thought she would be packing her bags, leaving a job and a town she has called home for the past six years. But, she is and for a good reason. Lynn is off to Harvard University this fall.
Lynn currently is the assistant director of education at the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art. After a lot of thought, Lynn applied to one of Harvard’s graduate programs to earn her masters of education in arts in education.
“I never thought I would be attending Harvard,” she said. “Even now, I’ve known for two months and I am still baffled. I worked very hard and my experience at the museum is what really helped me.”
A native of Jacksonville, Lynn left Florida in 1996 for Rutgers University where she received bachelor degrees in studio art and psychology and a minor in art history in 2000. She came back to Jacksonville after graduating not knowing what she wanted to do. Lynn applied at JMOMA and was hired as a museum educator.
“For the first three years I worked out of the building and that was while we were in storage,” she said. “I worked outside of the museum doing programs in schools. I was the fun museum visitor.”
Lynn worked at various Duval County schools and taught art classes at an after school center.
Three years later, JMOMA moved to its current location on Laura Street and in 2004 Lynn was promoted to her current position.
“Allison (Graff, director of education at JMOMA) and I work amazingly together,” she said. “She brought a method into the museum called Visual Thinking Strategies or VTS.”
VTS uses an inquiry-based method to discuss art. From that point on, Lynn became interested in studying and working in schools that incorporated VTS. Little did she know, her work with VTS would lead her to Harvard.
“I had to get trained in VTS and I was out in San Francisco with Philip Yenawine (co-founding director Visual Understanding in Education),” said Lynn. “We had some informal discussions about my (future) plans, because you can’t move on in the museum business without a masters.”
Yenawine told her to look into Harvard’s program. Lynn found herself becoming more interested in education thanks to her work with VTS and at JMOMA. She did research with North Shore Elementary School where she found connections between VTS and improved literary skills.
“VTS is a method that uses art and images to help teach other everyday skills,” said Lynn. “The process of thinking is not taught and that is one of the things VTS can help do.”
Lynn used VTS with the students and her studies showed that VTS does help with a child’s thinking process. By the end of the study, students were no longer giving one-word or short sentence answers, they were writing pages on one image.
“The students’ descriptive and observation skills were much more advanced,” she said.
From that point on Lynn wanted to try and find a way to make a difference in schools. After she completes a year of course work at Harvard and works as a researcher at the school’s Project O, Lynn has a few ideas regarding her career.
“In an ideal world I would continue to research and help find ways to improve the education system by reintegrating art into the necessary curriculum,” she said. “Art is incorporated into everyday learning skills.”
Lynn added she wants to bring the concept of VTS into classrooms, but she knows she will be exposed to other ideas at school.
“I don’t know what else is out there, so I want to see what else I can add to it,” she said.
The road to Harvard wasn’t the easiest and the road ahead looks just as tough financially, she said. It has been a little less than year since Lynn took her first trip to Harvard and spoke with administrators in the art education program. She spent about four hours a day, three days a week studying for the GRE. Her application was sent off and Lynn continued to apply for scholarships to help pay for Harvard.
“On April 1 I got an e-mail in my inbox telling me I got accepted and I was looking for it in the actual mail,” she said. “A few weeks later I got a big packet in the mail.”
Lynn has about two months left at JMOMA where she said she will miss her co-workers and impacting childrens’ lives. Her last day at the museum is July 28. She leaves Jacksonville Sept. 1 and classes start Sept. 18.
The one thing Lynn said she will miss the most is making an impact on the kids.
“When they fill out an evaluation after a tour and it says ‘I didn’t realize art was cool’ or ‘I didn’t know what abstract meant,’ it makes you think that you helped create more productive citizens,” said Lynn.