We educate and inspire. We come alongside our hard-working formal education partners to create unique child-led experiences that allow children to explore, play, and discover during those critical out of school hours.
The Association of Children’s Museums hosts our annual conference, InterActivity, every year which is one of the highlights of mine. This year the conference was held in Madison, Wisconsin. The Madison Children’s Museum was our wonderful host and helped to create an outstanding professional development opportunity for the 1,000+ attendees from all over the world. The theme was FLOURISH! which is the opportunity we provide our guests every day. Of all the wonderful moments that the conference provided, perhaps it was the East African phrase from the Masai that stuck with me the most. When greeting someone, the Masai ask the question, “Kasserian Ingera?” which means, “And how are the children?” This simple, but profound question gets to the root of a community. If our children are not well, our village is not well. Unfortunately, some of the statistics that Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings shared in her keynote speech indicate that nationally, our children and our broader village, are not well.
Last year enrollment in state-funded preschool nationwide decreased by 18%.
Math and reading scores declined in most states during the pandemic. No state saw an improvement in scores between 2019 and 2022.
During the 2019-2020 school year, 1 in 6 Hispanic, 1 in 5 Black, and 1 in 4 American Indian/Alaskan public-school students did not graduate on time.
The U.S. spends 2.7 times as much (per person) on incarceration as it does on education.
Dr. Ladson-Billings shared an uplifting thought with the field: children’s museums are an act of love for our children. We educate and inspire. We come alongside our hard-working formal education partners to create unique child-led experiences that allow children to explore, play, and discover during those critical out of school hours. One of kidSTREAM’s many goals is to be able to answer the “Kasserian Ingera?” question with the traditional response of “All the children are well.”
Thank you for helping us to ensure that we can answer that question positively.
Michael Shanklin
Executive Director, kidSTREAM Children's Museum
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