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Back to School - in America's National Parks

by
Bill Whorton

Teachers across the Chesapeake Bay watershed have a new tool to help them engage their students in classroom and place-based learning.

This month, the National Park Service launched a new online service for teachers that brings America’s national parks into neighborhood classrooms. The new “Teachers” section of the National Park Service website at www.nps.gov/teachers provides a one-stop shop for curriculum-based lesson plans, traveling trunks, maps, activities, distance learning, and other resources. All of the materials draw from the spectacular natural landscapes and authentic places preserved in America’s national parks.

The national website is searchable by location, keyword, and more than 125 subjects, from archeology, to biology, to Constitutional law. Teachers will, for the first time, be able to rate National Park Service-provided content. In addition to park-created content, the site also features educational materials created by National Park Service national programs like the National Register of Historic Places and its award-winning Teaching with Historic Places series of 147 lesson plans.

“Chesapeake” and “War of 1812” are just two of the search terms that will lead educators to lesson plans and other materials focused on the Star-Spangled Banner and Captain John Smith Chesapeake national historic trails developed by National Park Service and partners throughout the Chesapeake Bay region. This new National Park Service educational initiative complements existing resources such as the VIEWS of the National Parks series on the Chesapeake Bay, War of 1812 curricula on the Thinkport community, and place-based opportunities along the Captain John Smith Trail. Through the National Park Service Chesapeake Bay Teacher-Ranger-Teacher program, three Maryland and Virginia teachers will be creating additional materials for the National Park Service education portal.

The website is just one part of the National Park Service’s ongoing commitment to education. Every year, national parks offer more than 57,000 educational programs that serve nearly 3 million students in addition to 563,000 interpretive programs attended by 12.6 million visitors. The National Park Service is working with partners and educational institutions to expand programs and encourage the use of parks as places of learning. The National Park Service has partnered with the Department of Education to integrate national park resources into core curriculums. Each summer, teachers across the country are hired to work in parks to develop curriculum-based programs based on park resources through the Teacher-Ranger-Teacher program.

To learn more about the National Park Service’s education programs, visit www.nps.gov/teachers.