Summit Highlights

Connecting Youth Through Education

Create a public-private learning community of national park education program providers to:

Identify strategic opportunities (administrative, legislative) to connect directly with schools (students and teachers) and leverage resources to reach 25 percent of America’s schoolchildren
Present a compelling first voice case that speaks to the full potential of national parks as educational assets
Learn from one another to scale and replicate successful efforts around program delivery and educational technology
Interface with the leadership of the NPS and bridge the relevant functional areas of the National Park Service (natural resources, cultural resources, interpretation, partnerships)

Integrate resources from the public and private sectors to expand successful National Park education programs like Teacher-Ranger-Teacher (teachers spend their summer in national parks helping with curriculum and interpretation) and bring that experience back to their school community and their students. Teacher-Ranger-Teacher presents a natural opportunity to scale – if you captivate a teacher you can reach every student they teacher in their career.

What Do You Think?

Help us shape an action plan for the national parks’ second century. Please let us know whether we captured the right actions from the summit discussions and whether any are missing. Also please indicate which actions are of the highest priority and which actions the group you represent is willing to take on as a priority.

tetonteacher

June 26, 2012

I am part of a group that brings highschool teachers, students, university faculty, undergraduates and grad students from around the country together for biology research and exploration in Grand Teton and Yellowstone each year. The HS students and some participants pay their own way, which is difficult and greatly limits the scope of the project, while others are partially funded through NSF. We would like to extend the basic data collection to broader science education and beyond to integrate other disciplines such as creative writing. Can anyone suggest possible funding sources to offset costs of such educational workshops?

Anonymous

February 22, 2012

Disability and age related difficulties are a common denominator in today’s world; therefore all programs concerning national parks and their educational segment need to consider making accessibility a priority. Though many changes and improvements have been made within the national parks, their use is minor because accessibility changes are not being promoted properly if at all. This information should be made available when one is preplanning a visit whether educational or for pleasure. In connecting youth (or anyone) with a disability through education, accessible areas of all the parks need to be the starting point and as the points of interest become less accessible, then video or other means of bringing the non-accessible areas to them where it can be visually experienced. Being in a national park while viewing non-accessible areas will have more of an impact then just remaining at school and viewing the educational material without the surrounding environment of a national park.

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Summit Highlights

Connecting Youth Through Education

What Do You Think?

tetonteacher

Anonymous

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