 I've used National Parks as an example of a particular type of what I call public historiography in an enormous variety of courses. I have created and frequently taught a special seminar for new Ahevan high school teachers on the National Park system to show them how they can teach about not just history and literature and botany and biology and geology but also about art and even industrial mechanics through National Park units. How taking their students to see a park or reading about the park from a distance can help infuse their own disciplines at the high school level with a new sense of excitement while educating the rising generation to what the parks are all about. So I look at the 362 units of the National Park system as each having a unique historical and educational purpose and I look at all National Parks in any society as a door into understanding that society's values. I see them all as what I call branch campuses of the world's largest university. One of the big wraps that education is getting right now is we're doing too much passive education and not enough active education. Now where the park service is helping a lot is helping with active education because kids are learning by doing. You can see that these eggshells have two membranes. They have this inner leathery membrane. Oh look, it's a skeleton of a, is that it, oh no. That is an undeveloped, partially developed embryo that died in the egg. I look at education in general and tell you that we are an assembly line system in America. When they begin building automobile builds on the assembly line we did the same thing with students. In the first grade we'd cut their head open, pour some facts and figures in, shut it up and move them off to stage two and that won't work any longer. A successful education program needs to stimulate, it needs to encourage, it needs to light a fire. WB Yates has a wonderful quote about if you don't just want to fill up an empty vessel you want to light a fire and I think our national parks can do that. A typical scene in a national park? Perhaps not, but national park interpreters are venturing beyond the boundaries of their parks more and more frequently these days. They're joining forces with educators to create the best of both worlds using parks and their resources to spark imaginative educational opportunities. We hit upon our offsite program dealing with the ranchero period for boys and girls. Quite often we talk about exploration, it's always boys doing this and conquistadors doing this. With the ranchero period both boys and girls can become involved, it's not just a male dominated story. And we have a clothing of the period made in boys and girls sizes that somebody from the class gets to wear and talk about how it would have been like to live on a ranchero. It changed the way I teach. It made me realize that children, especially minority children who don't have a lot of experience with English language need the hands on, need to touch, feel, see to learn. I come to you, I'm a park ranger, a national park ranger with the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. The one child that I was very, very fearful could not use self control. Just reacted beautifully. He was so excited to be part of the program to experience the materials that it helped his behavior and I know it really supported his learning. We have a helmet for Christian, go ahead and walk around the class Christian. What we saw today was an experience, a physical experience for the children. It was in two languages, both of which the children understood. One they listened and the other they could use for reinforcement if they needed. I need another volunteer, I need a girl this time. This one's a little fancier than the other one, right? Yeah, so let's go ahead and put this on over your head there. So they still sometimes wear clothing like this. They used to wear like this in countries like Guatemala. Sometimes if your family was rich or wealthy you could afford to buy clothing off of the ship. Every child brings their own experience to the classroom, most of the experiences are not the same. So we need something to bring them together and that's what hands on or reality will do it. It brings them to a meeting place, we don't have to really speak the same language, we can just share the same experience. Teachers are constantly seeking ways to add a little sparkle to their lessons. I think they're looking for additional resources. Teachers today are strapped financially. Many school systems don't have the money to spend and any kind of resources that they can draw upon to excite the kids about learning and that's certainly a role that the parks can fill. Thanks for coming down. I'd like to pass this out if you all could just take a look at these new study guides. This is a finished product. Yeah, this is a finished product exactly. Okay, you all have in your hands this copy of the study guide but the packet itself consists of these three items, the film on John Brown to do battle in the land, the study guide that you are taking a look at now and also the publication on John Brown's raid. One of the things that we really were insisted upon in the development of this study guide is that it be interdisciplinary. It wasn't to be just a history lesson. How do you envision it being used in your classroom? As far as application in the classroom, the base is very broad. I see that you've got religion, you've got government, economics is there, music, the writing assignments over the controversy, all very broad. And as a curriculum coordinator, I think that this is a very important learning tool. How will it be distributed? All the eighth grade teachers in Jefferson County will get a copy as part of our partnership agreement and then other schools across the country can purchase it from the Harper's Ferry Historical Association. Park interpreters can help teachers in a variety of ways. We can kind of learn the jargon so we can communicate effectively with them. We can learn the curriculum so that we can interface our programs with them, advertise our programs so that they know what we indeed have to offer. Marketing is a very important thing because it doesn't do much good to have a fine product if you can't get it out to your public. And of course, initially we're marketing it in our bookstore, which is located in the visitor's center, the first place that the people come when they come down into the lower town in the park. We used to come to the park, see our video, and ask about our video pack and want to buy it. The ARCH, a familiar site in St. Louis, is also the setting for some exciting educational activities. They are conducted by the staff of the Jefferson National Expansion Historical Association, a non-profit cooperating association which supports educational and interpretive activities. In collaboration with area educators, an imaginative program was developed, including both trips to the museum and school visits by park interpreters. At the museum, children re-enact the Overland Trail experience. Where are you headed for, first of all? Oregon? What part of Oregon? You're going to go up this trail? You've got enough strong men here to be able to pull all that stuff off? Yes. Okay. We've enhanced our curriculum in social studies because of many of the skills, objectives that we're supposed to be teaching, being able to come back to school and write about it or talk about it, I think that's a benefit too. To support language arts objectives, the students maintained a journal during their travels. I became a hunter and I married Harriet. We had romance on the trails too. These people got married there too. Okay, now we're going to have a spell off. How about nation? I'm a nation. Very good, very good. Okay. How about windmill? W-I-N-D-M-I-L-L. Windmill. Very good. Okay. Bucket. C-U-C-K-E-P. Bucket. Very good. A lot of the students really don't realize that they're getting these skills because they're having so much fun participating in the program. Even if you don't have the luxury of field trips, your class need not miss out on exciting learning opportunities. These are eating utensils. Has anyone ever been to Bubba's and Coise? Many parks provide educational materials to enhance classroom instruction. 10 dishes. These are 10 dishes. Well, some children learn orally, some learn visually. And I find that you can increase their learning by doing visual aids. And if you can touch it, if you can feel it, if you can even smell it, I'm going to remember what a sugar cone is in preference to putting a word on the board. From the west coast to the heartland, from the great lakes to the glades, the message is loud and clear. The natural and cultural treasures of the National Park System are truly inspirational. Students come in many forms, but there is one essential ingredient, a good working relationship with educators. And what we're doing is related to what they've been teaching in classroom. Boy, you see the smiles on the kids face. The kids feel smart. The kids feel like, hey, we really know what we're doing here. And the kids could say, hey, we talked about that in class. And the things I like to relate to the teachers is, hey, we can make you look good. We've been offering programs at the Everglades since the early 70s. We were closely with the teachers conducting workshops for them on how to conduct activities outdoors and feel comfortable about doing that when they come to the park here. I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. And I think that's the whole background about bringing children out. When you pick up algae and you feel it and you smell it and you touch it, you understand what it is about. To read it in a book, algae, the green substance, et cetera, means nothing to them. I have children who I've taught all 10 years ago, who I brought out here, who come back, who aren't college, who say, do you know the only things I remember are the things I actually did? And I think if more teachers took down those walls and exposed the children, they would learn 100% more than they are. Children parks offer unparalleled opportunity for learning, whether you're young or simply young at heart. As the population grows older and older, we want to provide interesting, exciting, challenging, enriching kinds of experiences for these folks. I think there has been a tendency in this country to say, well, I'm old, I'm over the hill, I can't learn, hang me up. I think that's something that we're combating. We want, I think that's Elder Hostel's philosophy, heck no. This is a time to blossom and grow and get excited about new learning opportunities. Richmond Battlefield is the site of just one of hundreds of Elder Hostel programs held in locations across the country. You see the thousands of soldiers standing in battle lines, preparing to meet the attacks of the Confederate soldiers. Thousands of soldiers stretch right through where we're standing now and they followed the creek pretty much. The line followed the creek around, in front of the house, down here in front of us, and then stretching out a mile and a half beyond where we are now. During one part of the program, the group retraced the action at Cold Harbor. It's one place to come and reflect on their sacrifices, the courage that was shown by those soldiers. These are powerful places. These fields and woods and they still hold those images of sacrifice. I have one last letter for you. It was written again by a Texas soldier and he's writing home, he says, yesterday, we was in one of the hardest fought battles ever known. I never had a clear conception of the horrors of war until last night. I could hear on all sides the dreadful groans of the wounded. I am satisfied, he said, not to make another charge, for I hope, dear Ann, that this battle will have some influence in terminating the war. I assure you that I am hardly sick of soldiering. He got choked up reading a letter that was very powerful and it choked me up and I could sense the people in the audience there. They too were moved by that. There's something he's probably read 100 times and yet it moved him and it moved us. You could just see the look on these people's faces. This is powerful. You can sit at home and be an armchair reader and get to know a lot of facts but to get it out like we did today and walk over the area and have just visualized where those tropes were and to think that you were walking over sort of like a hollered ground where so many people gave up their lives. More than just pretty places, parks such as Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area bring to life the diverse cultural legacy of our nation. And you know what, the name of the Indians we're going to learn about today? Shumash. Right, the Shumash. You guys choose the Shumash names today? Okay. Line up over here. But the Shumash call this an up, A-P, up. Can you all say that? Up. Louder. Up. This is called Satweewa. Let me hear a big Satweewa. Satweewa. All right. See that mountain over there? The Shumash believe that that was a very and believe that that's a very spiritual mountain. I'm here with my daughter Adriana who is in the fourth grade and I had no idea that we were going to be out in nature and learning so many specific things about the Shumash Indians. For example, the guide was telling us that the Shumash had lived here for 35,000 years. Interpreters are reaching out beyond their boundaries and finding support in unexpected places. And strengthens the bond between parks and the communities that surround them. Partnerships I think are really important for us to accomplish our goals. Again, parks are not isolated units for our education program. We have donations of things like the abalone shells. We have buses that are paid for by a partnership group that pay for the schools that cannot come out for their own buses. A friends group, the friends of Satweewa who support the activities out here. They have been a great help in developing the program. We made the holes in this shell by using a tool that the Indians used and then we put the string around it so this is a momentum of the day that will treasure. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel good because now you don't feel like it's your park, you feel like it's everybody's park. All these people participating come out and say, boy I'm glad to see this, I like this. I feel good about it, I feel like it's part of my community. The Imagine Yellowstone Arts Festival encourages lifelong appreciation of natural environments like Yellowstone and involvement in preserving the values that natural parks like Yellowstone represents. Tri-State Student Designs was conceived as an educational outreach project in designing and producing communication media on science topics. Each of the schools selected to design and produce exhibitry for the Yellowstone Window on the Earth project took different tax in the actual production of their modules. Cody Junior High School, rather than taking an entire school approach, took a classroom approach, but then that classroom turned around and engaged the entire community in the production of their module. We have had about 30 students involved off and on throughout the project, seventh, eighth and ninth graders, which makes an interesting combination. The seventh graders don't have the leadership but they have the desire and sometimes not the ability, and so some of the older kids have provided a lot of leadership. I learned a lot about Yellowstone that I never knew before and I think it was really fun working on it and meeting all the people. I thought it was great, we had lots of problems, we had a few people spilling some paint and getting nails going in wrong, but it was great, I thought it was a really good experience. This has probably got to be a lot more effective in many ways, not only learning about the specific things that they're studying, the thermal features, but in learning how to work within the community, learning about the support that's available from various organizations and groups and an excellent example, I think, is the museum here in Cody that has donated time and material support. I think that's really a valuable lesson to realize that people are willing to help if you ask. They had lots of ideas, a lot of good ideas and some not so good ideas, so what we did was set up a model. We put their ideas incorporated in the model and then bring it back to them. And we have a boardwalk at the very end and it's just to help keep that subconscious message that you are in a geyser basin and walking on the boardwalk and have to be very cautious. One of the things we tried to stress and really show to them was color, the color schemes, how colors worked, which colors detract, which add to the exhibit, things like that. We acted as coaches. We tried to reassure them that their ideas were okay. I knew that people were going to be coming this summer because this is a tourist attraction and I knew that they'd be looking at my exhibit and I didn't want people to be laughing at our exhibit. I wanted them to be saying, gee, look what these seventh, eighth and ninth graders did. They did a great job. We went to Capitol High School in Helena, Montana, took an entirely student direction in the production of their mountain building shaping module. The exhibit we're building is on mountain building. They deal with volcanism and glaciation and different characteristics of Yellowstone. Here in the front we have the topographical map with three boards for the text for the topographical map. And here in the center, the TV screen, which will show the audio-visual computer animation. Then I talked to the art teacher, the drafting teacher, the chemistry teacher to try to get kind of a bigger group. I ended up with two kids from drafting. So it started out with four kids, two boys and two girls. And from there they just kind of brought people in as they needed each other. I just wanted the kids to put together what they'd learned and what they could find out and just do it on their own, see what they'd come up with. This is the undrawing of alkenic gark mountains. The parallel lines indicate sedimentary rock. The curvy lines indicate metamorphic rock. And this is the end picture for folding with the sinkline and the anticline. It's two continents. One continent goes underneath another one. And at one point a valley forms and then mountains start to rise. And on the side from the rock melting here, a volcano is formed. It was time-consuming but at the same time it was kind of fun. It's also kind of neat that you go to school and learn stuff in math and geoscience and biology. And you always wonder when you're going to apply it. And this project had a lot to do with what we learned in school. Knowing some of the kids personally, one of the biggest benefits for them was although they may not recognize it yet, learning to get along and work in a big group. I like seeing more girls take the sciences. A lot of girls won't take science. A lot of girls won't take my honors class because it's too tough. They've always been told girls can't do math, girls can't do science. I think it's changing but it's not changing as fast as I'd like to see it change. I hope I'm a good model for them. I try to be. They know that I really love what I'm doing. The science teacher Mike Winston established a teacher-sponsor group consisting of not only teachers from the sciences but also our teachers, industrial art teachers, theater teachers and writing and English teachers. In most of the schools I've been in, they try and use sports as a morale booster, as a spirit booster in a school. And as much as I like sports, I'm not seeing any success from that. And so as we jumped into this, we said, well let's use something else. Let's start developing talents and drawing on resources that are normally not drawn on it. They're not the athletes. They're not the cheerleaders. They're not the top science students. They're not the students but very talented kids. And as they've responded and as they've developed it just seems to have raved them around the whole school. I learned that I can do something this big, this magnitude, and go out and accomplish it that I have. I can do pretty much anything I put my mind to do. The thing that surprised me most about the Yellowstone project was in the process of learning English and using our English skills, how much we learned about science. That was exciting. It goes through and it says, the geology talks about the main reason why the park is there, the hotspot, the caldera, and that's the two main topics on geology. It has drawn from all resources, art and English, their composition, photography skills that I'm not even sure of. There's just been a lot of people and a lot of different departments in the school that's worked together on this. You don't come into the classroom and see students sitting in desks lined up copying things out of a book. You may have students in the library, you may have students on the telephone making contacts, you may have somebody over here in the computer lab, a couple of kids in the wood shop working on the techniques there, and again, some students who are writing on the computer is whatever it might be. It's a totally different setting. What we're going to do is the chicken wire and everything is up over here because we're going to spray polyurethane foam over entire things. So we have to use plastic and block off the parts that we don't want the foam on. What surprised me the most probably was the fact that so many people, not just students, but adults were interested in supporting this kind of a project. It had been done on a professional level, of course, many, many times, but to have high school students actually come up with the ideas and then to find out how to make them work. So it's been a big problem-solving experience for them. I think we've just caught a vision of what education can be, and I think that other schools, when they see what's happening with this exciting Yellowstone project, they too can get the fun and the motivation back in for their students through projects like this one that was developed by the Park Service.