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Catherine, 
We use the rolling bins with great success. Approx one to two buses
(same school) use one bin so this could be a lot of bins for your
organization. The bins could be rolled to a selected area by staff or
retrieved by the lead teachers to be brought to the kids at lunch.
Christine
Nauticus
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-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Catherine Paisley
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 1:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Ideas for Student Lunch Storage etc

ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
************************************************************************
*****

Hi,

I have a question about providing good customer service for brown
bagging school groups and am hoping to hear that others have implemented
some good ideas in this regard.  

Some background: We have large numbers of school groups visiting daily,
with slower days being approx 800 students and busier days 2000+. The
majority of them bring their lunches instead of purchasing food in our
cafeteria.  Our Centre has three (connected) buildings on different
levels and is laid out in such a way that the entrance and lockers are a
fair distance from the exhibit halls and
program spaces. Over 80% of our groups do something besides just visit
the exhibit halls, so an itinerary for a group on any given day could be
that they have a workshop in one building, a film in another, and an
exhibit hall visit in a third.

While we have one brown-bag lunch area near the school
entrance/check-in, it seats only about 150 students. There are other
areas in the Centre where groups congregate to eat and some outdoor
areas (good only in two or three of the school months), all of which are
a good distance from the entrance/lockers. This means that
students/teachers have the option of either carrying their lunches with
them as they explore the exhibit halls and take workshops; or they leave
their things in the lockers and return to the front of the building to
each their lunches while they sit on the floor. This is not ideal for a
number of reasons - the main ones being that the floors get quite dirty
after kids enter the building in the morning and that it's not OK to
have an important visitor group feel their
only option is to sit on the floor.  While we've not had complaints
about this from teachers, we're uncomfortable that we haven't been able
to do more. 

Besides putting lockers throughout the building (which would not be
great operationally or aesthetically) or building new spaces (not viable
at this time financially) are there other thoughts on how we could best
service this special visitor group at lunch? I've heard of carts that
hold coats and knapsacks that are then rolled to another place when
needed at lunch. Has anyone tried this? Is it
labour intensive? (using volunteers is not an option for us as we are in
a unionized environment).  Other ideas? 

many thanks, 
Catherine


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Catherine Paisley
Director, Science Education
Ontario Science Centre
416-696-3295
www.ontariosciencecentre.ca


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Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.

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