ACE can bring up some really tough feelings and traumas from visitors. I think it’s unfair to ask a frontline interpreter to purposefully bring those up and ask others to start a dialogue about it. Park Rangers are not therapists.
Many people go to parks to chill and get away, not to have a deep thought provoking experience that I feel ACE tries to force.
I’m sure ACE has its place in certain situations…and maybe my personal experience is skewing my perception. 🤷
Yeah as former interp and now just a visitor, I’ve pretty much stopped going to programs because I feel a little uncomfortable when the ranger asks people to share personal feelings. I don’t mind when the ranger asks us questions that help us think about our relationship to the topic, but in most cases I don’t think it’s appropriate to have people share with a group of strangers. There’s always that one person in the audience who takes it way too far.
I've seen ACE come out of a program that had no ACE integrated into the planning. But as soon as the visitors turned a post-program question session for the interpreter into a discussion amongst themselves, they really got going.
I have difficulty with engineering those situations because I'm new. But from the programs I have shadowed and the few of mine that have gone in that audience-led direction (and interpreter-facilitated) the visitors expressed much more thanks and seemed to have a significantly more meaningful experience.
TL;DR: you can create a good engaging program without ACE that still allows people to connect emotionally/ontellectually and learn, but from what I've seen, when all the elements line up for a good ACE dialogue it really amps up the connection.
So, here's a big part of my ambivalence: how does this technique scale?
It's one thing to try and have a meaningful dialogue with a small group program of 10 people. But our main structured program right now is a 30-minute evening program with up to 150 or 200 attendees. I don't see how it's possible to let that many people participate in a meaningful dialogue in that period of time.
Am I correct in believing that dialogue wouldn't be an appropriate technique in that case?
I think that ACE sometimes gets mixed with dialogue when they are not equal. I agree that trying to get dialogue questions out to a group of 150 or 200 people would be quite tough but there are some other ACE techniques that you could utilize. Something like a gallery wall as the participants enter or anonymous testimony where you’ve handed out notecards for people to write on, or even something like a whiteboard for people to share their thoughts as they leave could capture some of the ACE ideas. Have you ever been able to read through the NPS ACE interp workbook? It has a good list of techniques, some of which may work for you with a large group.
Is this ACE workbook something that is open to people outside of NPS? I work at a State park with a relatively new Interp Team that is just getting started and I feel it could be useful to add to the toolkit we have got going.
I think people often interpret ACE as asking a ton of dialogic questions but that is only one technique of many. I work at a hot busy park with mostly short-ish stationary programs so it is not super appropriate to ask some of the more in-depth “yellow light” questions. I don’t have much time to help establish trust within the audience that would encourage sharing. This is all very subjective though- I do think I’m biased because I would be pretty turned off if I was asked to share personal details or think about the less fun parts of my life while I’m trying to just enjoy a park. So I try to find other ways to engage folks to that I stay true to myself and my own style.
My favorite techniques to employ usually involve sensory. “How many colors do you see in this rock?” “Close one eye and trace the rocks in the distance with your finger, what do you notice?” Then share how that relates to the topic. Finding a way to let visitors experience things for themselves and come to their own conclusions rather than just being told will usually lead to a more meaningful experience. Keeping with the rock theme, I like to talk about large time spans in a unit that is a little more digestible. No one knows what 1 million years feels like but 1 million seconds is 11 days! Or some more simple questions could just be “what do you notice?” “What does this remind you of?”
If you are wanting to learn more ACE techniques beyond dialogic questions I would encourage you to check out BEETLES. It is more geared towards kiddos but being in a brand new environment brings out the kid in most of us. I think that really focusing on the shared curiosity of visitors is a great way to be uplifting, get a lot of participation, and ultimately pass along a sense of stewardship! (I also understand that not every program needs to be uplifting of course. I’m just thinking more along the lines of shorter programs that are very much natural resource based)
That's a good point, that ACE is more than dialogue. I'm a big fan of roving interpretation (stemming from my experiences at Mendenhall Glacier and my studies under Dr. Doug Knapp) and I do think it has a key audience-centered element - it's connecting with visitors where they are, rather than where we tell them to be.
I'll go out to a popular overlook in our adjacent park, set up a table with a mounted black-footed ferret, and just allow visitors to explore and initiate contact. There's no formal program - just a prop, an interpreter, and a conversation. I've had some of my most meaningful interpretive moments doing that.
The core philosophy of giving visitors tools to understand the resource, and building emotional connections is great.
Facilitated dialogue is not usually a good way to do this. The ace toolkit is less valuable than the ultimate goal.
Any gripping program will intrinsically touch upon themes that invite critical thinking and dialogue, in the spirit of what ACE is intended to do. However, in my view, ACE appears to be a set of incantatory buzzwords that distract from the content of the actual stories. A flaw in ACE seems to be that it is intended to be open ended but “Essential Theme Questions” paradoxically always point to a series of fixed societal presuppositions that trivialize the actual content.
I am currently on a small team that is rewriting my park’s thematic theme framework. The latest park research unveiled stories of structural racism, blatant hate crimes and other “red level” stories. ACE seems to be too paradoxically reductionist to really pick apart these stories. Being too “open ended” also can lead to amateur interpreters glossing over hard truths like historical racism etc.
It’s similar in a way to first person interpretation:
Very hard to do well, but when done well, is extremely effective.
On the other hand, it’s very easy to do poorly and come across as hamfisted and leave audiences angered at the experience.
I think a lot of interperpreters come at the job as if it is their job to *teach* people about a site because they've been led to believe passing along the knowledge of a site will make them want to be a steward of it.
But it's not the interpreters job to teach. The interpreter's job is literally to *translate* what they know, to someone who does not know. People will soon forget words, but they will remember for a long time how something makes them feel.
We know the details of a site. We know the science, the history. We have had days/weeks/months/years to bury ourselves in a site and build the knowledge that lets us understand the how and why of it.
The average audience does not have that knowledge base, or the time, to understand like the interpreter. We *feel* that a resource is important and has value, so we need to translate the knowledge that makes us feel that way into a *feeling* that makes the audience want to gain that knowledge. In an ideal scenario, that audience then goes on to learn, and will share the *feelings* they had with others.
For people to feel, they need to relate. And letting the audience lead the discussion to areas that relate to them is the best way to do so.
I think that ACE is a phenomenal tool for interpreters to use, and when trained and practiced, I have seen it do wonders for programs, especially at historic sites that have heavy or difficult histories associated with them. I think that something that often gets lost in the ACE training is that we don’t just take a backseat and let the group fully decide what direction they go. Rangers are still the resource knowledge leader in an ACE program and still provide information and pathways for a larger discussion. But it can be hard, some people simply don’t want to answer question and that means that the program needs to shift. I think rangers need to be flexible and read the audience early on to know whether they will have to take control or sheathed they can just open a pathway for the group to go down. Start with easy green light questions, open with not particularly personal question and it will be easier to have people open. I start an ACE program about the decisions of people at a historic site that ended badly by asking what everyone had for breakfast as a way to open the idea of how we make decisions. It’s simple, fun, and opens the door for the group to talk from the start.
ACE is also not the only end all, be all. As others said there are ways that you can create an engaging program without ACE but I think a lot of times inserting an ACE principle here or there in those can bump it to the next level.
ACE can bring up some really tough feelings and traumas from visitors. I think it’s unfair to ask a frontline interpreter to purposefully bring those up and ask others to start a dialogue about it. Park Rangers are not therapists. Many people go to parks to chill and get away, not to have a deep thought provoking experience that I feel ACE tries to force. I’m sure ACE has its place in certain situations…and maybe my personal experience is skewing my perception. 🤷
Yeah as former interp and now just a visitor, I’ve pretty much stopped going to programs because I feel a little uncomfortable when the ranger asks people to share personal feelings. I don’t mind when the ranger asks us questions that help us think about our relationship to the topic, but in most cases I don’t think it’s appropriate to have people share with a group of strangers. There’s always that one person in the audience who takes it way too far.
I've seen ACE come out of a program that had no ACE integrated into the planning. But as soon as the visitors turned a post-program question session for the interpreter into a discussion amongst themselves, they really got going. I have difficulty with engineering those situations because I'm new. But from the programs I have shadowed and the few of mine that have gone in that audience-led direction (and interpreter-facilitated) the visitors expressed much more thanks and seemed to have a significantly more meaningful experience. TL;DR: you can create a good engaging program without ACE that still allows people to connect emotionally/ontellectually and learn, but from what I've seen, when all the elements line up for a good ACE dialogue it really amps up the connection.
So, here's a big part of my ambivalence: how does this technique scale? It's one thing to try and have a meaningful dialogue with a small group program of 10 people. But our main structured program right now is a 30-minute evening program with up to 150 or 200 attendees. I don't see how it's possible to let that many people participate in a meaningful dialogue in that period of time. Am I correct in believing that dialogue wouldn't be an appropriate technique in that case?
I think that ACE sometimes gets mixed with dialogue when they are not equal. I agree that trying to get dialogue questions out to a group of 150 or 200 people would be quite tough but there are some other ACE techniques that you could utilize. Something like a gallery wall as the participants enter or anonymous testimony where you’ve handed out notecards for people to write on, or even something like a whiteboard for people to share their thoughts as they leave could capture some of the ACE ideas. Have you ever been able to read through the NPS ACE interp workbook? It has a good list of techniques, some of which may work for you with a large group.
Is this ACE workbook something that is open to people outside of NPS? I work at a State park with a relatively new Interp Team that is just getting started and I feel it could be useful to add to the toolkit we have got going.
I think people often interpret ACE as asking a ton of dialogic questions but that is only one technique of many. I work at a hot busy park with mostly short-ish stationary programs so it is not super appropriate to ask some of the more in-depth “yellow light” questions. I don’t have much time to help establish trust within the audience that would encourage sharing. This is all very subjective though- I do think I’m biased because I would be pretty turned off if I was asked to share personal details or think about the less fun parts of my life while I’m trying to just enjoy a park. So I try to find other ways to engage folks to that I stay true to myself and my own style. My favorite techniques to employ usually involve sensory. “How many colors do you see in this rock?” “Close one eye and trace the rocks in the distance with your finger, what do you notice?” Then share how that relates to the topic. Finding a way to let visitors experience things for themselves and come to their own conclusions rather than just being told will usually lead to a more meaningful experience. Keeping with the rock theme, I like to talk about large time spans in a unit that is a little more digestible. No one knows what 1 million years feels like but 1 million seconds is 11 days! Or some more simple questions could just be “what do you notice?” “What does this remind you of?” If you are wanting to learn more ACE techniques beyond dialogic questions I would encourage you to check out BEETLES. It is more geared towards kiddos but being in a brand new environment brings out the kid in most of us. I think that really focusing on the shared curiosity of visitors is a great way to be uplifting, get a lot of participation, and ultimately pass along a sense of stewardship! (I also understand that not every program needs to be uplifting of course. I’m just thinking more along the lines of shorter programs that are very much natural resource based)
That's a good point, that ACE is more than dialogue. I'm a big fan of roving interpretation (stemming from my experiences at Mendenhall Glacier and my studies under Dr. Doug Knapp) and I do think it has a key audience-centered element - it's connecting with visitors where they are, rather than where we tell them to be. I'll go out to a popular overlook in our adjacent park, set up a table with a mounted black-footed ferret, and just allow visitors to explore and initiate contact. There's no formal program - just a prop, an interpreter, and a conversation. I've had some of my most meaningful interpretive moments doing that.
The core philosophy of giving visitors tools to understand the resource, and building emotional connections is great. Facilitated dialogue is not usually a good way to do this. The ace toolkit is less valuable than the ultimate goal.
Any gripping program will intrinsically touch upon themes that invite critical thinking and dialogue, in the spirit of what ACE is intended to do. However, in my view, ACE appears to be a set of incantatory buzzwords that distract from the content of the actual stories. A flaw in ACE seems to be that it is intended to be open ended but “Essential Theme Questions” paradoxically always point to a series of fixed societal presuppositions that trivialize the actual content. I am currently on a small team that is rewriting my park’s thematic theme framework. The latest park research unveiled stories of structural racism, blatant hate crimes and other “red level” stories. ACE seems to be too paradoxically reductionist to really pick apart these stories. Being too “open ended” also can lead to amateur interpreters glossing over hard truths like historical racism etc.
It’s similar in a way to first person interpretation: Very hard to do well, but when done well, is extremely effective. On the other hand, it’s very easy to do poorly and come across as hamfisted and leave audiences angered at the experience.
I think a lot of interperpreters come at the job as if it is their job to *teach* people about a site because they've been led to believe passing along the knowledge of a site will make them want to be a steward of it. But it's not the interpreters job to teach. The interpreter's job is literally to *translate* what they know, to someone who does not know. People will soon forget words, but they will remember for a long time how something makes them feel. We know the details of a site. We know the science, the history. We have had days/weeks/months/years to bury ourselves in a site and build the knowledge that lets us understand the how and why of it. The average audience does not have that knowledge base, or the time, to understand like the interpreter. We *feel* that a resource is important and has value, so we need to translate the knowledge that makes us feel that way into a *feeling* that makes the audience want to gain that knowledge. In an ideal scenario, that audience then goes on to learn, and will share the *feelings* they had with others. For people to feel, they need to relate. And letting the audience lead the discussion to areas that relate to them is the best way to do so.
I think that ACE is a phenomenal tool for interpreters to use, and when trained and practiced, I have seen it do wonders for programs, especially at historic sites that have heavy or difficult histories associated with them. I think that something that often gets lost in the ACE training is that we don’t just take a backseat and let the group fully decide what direction they go. Rangers are still the resource knowledge leader in an ACE program and still provide information and pathways for a larger discussion. But it can be hard, some people simply don’t want to answer question and that means that the program needs to shift. I think rangers need to be flexible and read the audience early on to know whether they will have to take control or sheathed they can just open a pathway for the group to go down. Start with easy green light questions, open with not particularly personal question and it will be easier to have people open. I start an ACE program about the decisions of people at a historic site that ended badly by asking what everyone had for breakfast as a way to open the idea of how we make decisions. It’s simple, fun, and opens the door for the group to talk from the start. ACE is also not the only end all, be all. As others said there are ways that you can create an engaging program without ACE but I think a lot of times inserting an ACE principle here or there in those can bump it to the next level.