Abbie Hitzemann

Abbie Hitzemann is the Project Manager for the Creating Portraits of Community project and is passionate about collaborating with museum educators and teachers in rural and urban communities to build interdisciplinary curricula, learning resources, and communities of learning that foster belonging in the classroom.

Abbie Hitzemann will be speaking at the Museums & Schools Summit 2026 :

Telling Students’ Stories with the Creating Portraits of Community Project

Three Smithsonian museums, two affiliated museums, and teachers across the U.S. worked together to develop Creating Portraits of Community, a four-part curriculum that teaches students how to create multimedia portraits of community members. The curriculum empowers students to tell their stories and create their own history, equipping them with visual literacy and interview skills.

Join Smithsonian museum educators as they recount the collaborative development process of building Creating Portraits of Community, and hear from teachers who helped shape the curriculum about their experiences implementing and evaluating the lessons.