In early 2024, due to staffing changes in our education department, we will not be offering school programs from January through March. This programming pause includes both field trips to the Leventhal Center as well as outreach visits to schools. We anticipate beginning school programs again in April and opening booking in mid-winter.
Meanwhile, you can:
We look forward to reopening our partnerships for school programs again in the spring!
The Leventhal Map & Education Center offers a menu of pre-designed programs for field trips to our Learning Center, virtual class visits, or in-person outreach to classrooms. Using maps from our collection, students practice using cartographic tools to read maps and think about what maps can and can’t tell us about our relationships to places in the past and present. Programs related to our current exhibition are also available. Explore our program topics below. If you don’t see quite what you’re looking for, we are happy to work with you to create programming that works with your curriculum.
Education pairings for our current exhibition Getting Around Town: Four Centuries of Mapping Boston in Transit are available!
In early 2024, due to staffing changes in our education department, we will not be offering school programs from January through March. This programming pause includes both field trips to the Leventhal Center as well as outreach visits to schools. We anticipate beginning school programs again in April and opening booking in mid-winter.
Meanwhile, you can:
We look forward to reopening our partnerships for school programs again in the spring!
Please see our table of education program fees for information on costs. We strive to make our programs and resources available to all institutions without cost presenting a barrier.
Programs are 75 – 90 minutes long. Longer sessions allow for more discussion and inquiry. We cannot accommodate groups larger than 40 at a time. As groups larger than 20 may require that we reserve extra space, please be as specific as possible when completing our reservation form.
Please note that there is no designated lunch area for classes in the Boston Public Library.
A visit to the Map Center can be combined with sessions conducted by BPL’s Teen Services Team in Teen Central (grades 6-12), or activities with its Children’s Library Team (grades K-5). Click here to learn more about Teen Central’s tours, research skills workshops and team-building activities, or click here to discover the range of Children’s Library services provided at Central.
Programs are 60 - 90 minutes long and are intended for individual classrooms of 30 or fewer students. Longer sessions allow for more discussion and inquiry. We can accommodate larger groups over multiple program sessions.
Classrooms should have a computer and a digital projector or smartboard and space for students to work in small groups of 4 to 5 students for hands-on map inquiry exercises. We can provide a laptop and projector if necessary.