April 8, 2025 • 30 mins
"I'm going to do something that's connected to the national parks or our or a state park near me so that I can use my knowledge and see the real world impact it has. And that way, I never am stuck in class asking, why is this important? Why on earth do I have to learn this?"
Notable Moments
03:02 Parks' Enhanced Virtual Learning Programs
05:30 The Value of Learning About Distant Places
12:39 Bridging Classrooms and Public Lands
17:53 Engaging Park Rangers as Educators
24:08 Enhancing Park Visitor Experience
26:14 Park Principles for Classroom Management
Connect with James
Order the Book The National Park Classroom
Resources
https://parkleaders.com/about/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/theparkleaders/
Every park holds stories waiting to be told. James Fester, an educator and former interpreter with California State Parks and the National Park Service, returns to discuss the ever-evolving connection between national parks and education.
Read the blog for more on the ways that parks have been successfully integrated into classrooms and the powerful outcomes of such collaborations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the Park Leader Show where we are changing the landscape of
leadership in parks and conservation. I'm your host,
Jody Mayberry, and if you are a long time listener of the
show, you may be familiar with the guest this
episode, James Fester. He was on the show back
in 02/2018, and we we may talk about that.
(00:24):
But James is an educator and a former
interpreter with California State Parks and the National Park
Service. And as I said, perhaps his biggest accomplishment,
accolade is a guest on the park leader show, not once, but now
twice. Hi, James. Hey, Jody. Thanks for having me back.
So 02/2018, that was quite a while ago.
(00:46):
It was. I was trying to remember when it was, and I had I had
guessed 02/2018 myself. But, yeah, that was a
a lot that you know, pre COVID, so it feels like it was not just
one but two life times ago in some ways, I would say.
Well, there's something brand new with James I I
intend to talk about mostly. But give us an update. Since
(01:07):
02/2018, what have you been up to, and what have you
seen change in the world of parks and
natural education? For sure. Definitely, a
lot of things have changed since 2018. One
thing that comes to mind almost immediately is
the the huge uptick in the amount of educational
(01:30):
resources that are available to people who cannot visit parks
physically. I think it's one of the things that kind of came out of the
COVID shutdown. It's one of the few silver linings that we can actually point to
is that in a bid to make sure that they could stay connected to the
people and the students and the learners and the teachers that really used
them, a lot of parks really upped their game when it came to their distance
(01:52):
learning offerings. And so now, I I remember beforehand, it was a handful of
places that had the know how or the infrastructure to really offer these
great virtual programs or these live ranger programs. And
now it it's many, many more that have done so because they developed
these things as a way to stay connected with people during the COVID lockdowns.
So that's one big one. It's also brought a lot of interesting questions to the
(02:14):
forefront from educators who know that these things exist, and they wanna know
how to best use them in their classrooms and and how to best
leverage them as these great experiences for students who may not
yet be able to visit these places, but as a great way of
introducing them to their public lands. And so that's one big one that I know
has has come about since 2018 for sure. That is
(02:36):
one thing that I I noticed as well. Twenty twenty,
for all the bad things about 2020, I feel like
it was a giant leap to bring the park into the
classroom because there were some places that were doing
it really well. California was one. They California
(02:56):
was really good about online education, classroom
parks in the classrooms. And now, I feel like it's everywhere.
It's nationwide because parks look for new
ways to do it and teachers looked for
what else can we do? What can we do differently? Mhmm. And it was
just a perfect opportunity for that. Yeah. No. I would
(03:19):
definitely agree with what you say there. And and, yes, California and their ports
program, which they've had running for quite some time now, it's a great
example of what can be done. And and it's not necessarily where people have
to start. So if, you know, the part your listeners who are interested in
seeing kind of what the gold standard in my mind looks like in terms of
distance learning offerings should definitely look at it, but they should also not
(03:41):
look at it and think that that's where they have to start because that program
was built up over a long period of time by some really talented people
that are also very communicative and very collaborative. So if you wanna know more
about how to really kind of enhance the offerings that you you
know, your offerings are connected to people who may not be able to physically visit,
I think that's a great place to start. But it definitely it's definitely something that
(04:02):
we saw not just in parks, but in all facets of, like, that we
really that people really did need to become really innovative and big
leaps and big chances and things were, you know, big experiment. A lot
of experimentation kinda went on. We saw it in the classroom as well as
somebody who was at that point still working very closely
with teachers in in as a teacher developer and an instructional
(04:25):
coach in classrooms, there were folks that I worked with that
just out of necessity tried things that they never would have tried otherwise
had we still been in person during that time. And so although, again, we don't
wanna downplay all of the incredibly significant negatives that came
out of those years in lockdown, there were things as well that came out of
it that I think really moved the needle forward in some important ways in the
(04:47):
area of learning, not just in schools, but also in parks as well,
for sure. Before we get to the reason I've asked
you back on the show, James, I'm gonna ask you a bigger
question that Mhmm. I don't think I intended to get into, but I'm
going to. With all of this parks in the classroom
style education, if I'm a student in
(05:09):
Peoria, Illinois, I'll pick my home hometown. If I'm a student in Peoria,
Illinois, but I will never likely
travel out west and get to go to Yellowstone or Yosemite or
Glacier or Mount Rainier. What is the benefit to
me as a student in Peoria, Illinois that those
wonderful national parks are out there? That is an incredibly
(05:32):
great question, and it's actually I'm really glad you asked it because it really
is kind of it formed in a way one of the big
open ended questions that I answer in my book. And one of the
reasons why I wrote it was to was to kind of
explore that question that even if it's a place that
even if it's a place that you may not visit yourself. And I I would
(05:53):
I would start by saying yet because you never ever really know. We
never really know where life is gonna take us. But why are these places
that are so far removed still valuable for
students to learn about? One thing that I would would start by saying
is that when I I got to talk to a lot of
park rangers and park interpreters when I wrote this book. And every single time
(06:15):
that I talked to one, especially one who was from an underrepresented
group, I would ask, like, well, what's your story? How did you get here?
And nine times out of 10, the story began with,
well, I had never really even heard about national parks until somebody made me
aware of them, and that person was my teacher. Or was this teacher or
is this, you know, youth coach or somebody. It was some somebody had had
(06:38):
an educational role. And it got me thinking about
we talk a lot about barriers to getting more kids in parks or
more people who who don't you know, who aren't outdoors folks or the ones that
we normally see in parks. How do we get them there? And it through some
of the research that I did and a lot of the anecdotal evidence that I
found, the biggest barrier is not actually the monetary
(06:59):
one or the distance one or the time one. Because before you
can even address those, the first one you have to address is awareness.
If you are not aware of these places, if you have never heard
of them before, or if you have no idea what to do in a national
park, which a lot of folks actually don't, they don't really know what they're for,
they don't think they're for them, You don't even get to the other
(07:22):
parts. And so the first thing that I my first answer
to your question is, well, we need these students to be aware of these places
because we don't know how deeply they're gonna be involved or
what their relationship is gonna be to them in the future. And if they don't
understand not just where they are, what they are, but most importantly, why they're
important and we're protecting, then we've lost that next generation
(07:43):
of conservationists. And in some cases, and it really is, and you
probably know this very well, that every park, state park, you know, public
land unit, national park, whatever you wanna call it, they all start with
somebody thought that it was worth saving. And interestingly
enough, there's a story that I talk about in my book that some of your
your listeners might be aware of was that in Crater Lake in
(08:04):
Oregon, one of the jewels of the National Park System would
not be there today if it wasn't for the fact that a kid in
a rural Kansas schoolhouse learned about it
one day at lunch and then decided then and there that he was
gonna visit it one day. And And that kid happened to be a guy by
the name of William Gladstone Steele who then went on to be one of the
(08:26):
most important figures in the preservation and protecting and establishing of
Crater Lake National Park. So if it's not with
if not for the role of educators or the role
of teachers and and other folks that work in an educational space, making
kids aware of these places, making young adults aware of these places, then we
wouldn't even have some of them. So I think that's my biggest answer is just
(08:48):
we we need to make sure that they're aware that they know what they are,
why they're important, and why they're worth visiting and investing in because we need them
to do that in the future when when we've all moved on and and they
are the ones that have inherited these places. James, that was a
great answer, and I purposely asked it in the way
of even though I'm never gonna go there because
(09:09):
I think a lot of kids, when they're first introduced to what's
out there, feel that or believe that that that's way out
west. I live in the city in the Midwest. Yeah. I'm never
gonna go there. But James laid it out perfectly on
why this matters, and he mentioned his book. So
let's turn to that. The National Park Classroom,
(09:32):
a Guide to Designing Project Based
Learning Adventures. This is a great book for classrooms.
It's a great book for park rangers to be aware of because I
think you can use this book to work
with local schools or not local. Mhmm. We saw that happen in
2020. Classrooms across the country teamed up with
(09:54):
parks Absolutely. And and did projects. So tell us where this
book came from and how you've seen it being used
so far. Yeah. So I've been really lucky
to have had the career that I have where I've been an educator, and
I've kind of had one foot in two different worlds. On one hand,
I was a classroom educator. I was raised by two public school teachers
(10:17):
who both kind of instilled at me at the very young age that this was
a career path that I should go into. So when people ask me what I
do, I jokingly say that I inherited the family business. But I, you know, I
was a public school teacher in California for many years. I went into instructional coaching
and teacher development. And now that's what I kinda do is work with and help
support teachers in their classrooms through different pedagogical methods, one of them
(10:38):
being project based learning. The idea that instead of
students creating work for the sake of, you know, earning a grade or
whatever it is, that what they are they learn about in the classroom, what they
learn about that's required by their states or their schools is then of
benefit to somebody else. So I'm not just learning to write things
down for an essay. I'm learning because I'm gonna create a brochure
(10:59):
that I'm gonna then give to somebody, or I'm gonna solve a problem in my
community, or I'm gonna do something that's connected to
the national parks or our or a state park near me so
that I can use my knowledge and see the real world impact it
has. And that way, I never am stuck in class asking, why is this important?
Why on earth do I have to learn this? So that's one world that I
(11:20):
operate in. But I also, for as long as I can remember,
have been very much immersed in the world of our public lands. You know, like
I said, both my parents were both old school teachers, didn't have a lot of
money growing up. So what did we do? We went camping a heck of a
lot. I actually didn't know that summer vacation could be used for something
other than camping until I think I was, like, 13 or so. I just thought
that vacation and camping were synonymous. But we would go to a lot of parks,
(11:42):
Yosemite National Park. I spent every spring break
from the time I was six until the time that I was in my twenties
with my family in that park, got to know it very well, and then also
got to engage in a lot of learning opportunities and programs. Because when you
go to parks, even if you're not aware of it, you are
going to encounter different ways of learning and building your knowledge,
(12:03):
whether it's visiting the visitor center, ranger program,
waysides, an audio tour, whatever it is. And what I saw was,
in doing both these things and then going on later on and also being an
interpreter, that there were things that I did
as an interpreter that when I did them in the classroom, I got really great
results. And there were things that I did in the classroom that when I brought
(12:25):
them into my interpretive programs and used them to engage my audiences,
I got really great results as well. And I kind of wondered why
more people weren't talking about that. I was like, I wonder why there's you know,
I would look for readings or articles about it, and there really wasn't anything out
there. And I was like, I wonder why nobody's written a book about this. And
so I decided that was what I was gonna do. And so the book is
essentially what classroom teachers can learn or how they can
(12:47):
benefit from the educational methods and resources
that are used by educators on public
lands. And so although it's kinda aimed towards classroom
teachers, one thing that I have heard because I've shared it with a lot of
folks in the interpretation world and the parks world
is that the case studies that I discuss in there, I share a lot of
(13:08):
case studies about great collaborations between classroom teachers and
parks. I talk a lot about different methods and
different strategies that can be used in a classroom that are just as effective
on some sort of ranger program or a, you know, a hike, like
a walking hike program or or a a trail program, what if you
will. There's a lot of things that can cross pollinate because I really
(13:30):
truly believe that both worlds have a
lot to offer each other. I'm kinda living proof of that
myself because my practice in both really benefited from what I did during the
weekends or the weekdays, and I really wanted to kinda provide something or
a road map for folks that were either really passionate about parks as
teachers or really passionate about working with classrooms as rangers to
(13:53):
see what they could do and have a really like, kind of a road map
for really excellent deep learning experiences.
Yeah. This is so good. And I I I wanna well, first, I should
mention, I honored I was actually mentioned in the book. I didn't know
that was coming until I saw the book, so that was a treat. Thank you,
James. And and it's not a spoiler or anything, but I will also say that,
(14:14):
like, when we met in 2018 and because I've listened to your
program for a long time, I actually the structure of the
book in a lot of ways was kind of inspired by you and by
your really succinct and very clear definition
or structure of what good interpretation is. It's
actually very much embedded in the book, and there's kind of a big reveal at
(14:36):
the end. And I'm not gonna lie I you know, people are gonna have to
check it out themselves, but I'll be very interested when you get to learn to
discuss that with you later as well. Because, yeah, it it is it is something
that definitely you and and things I listened to or heard on your show with
some of your previous guests have definitely make appearances throughout the book
and and which is hopefully really like, hopefully, it's great information I feel like
(14:56):
everybody should learn, but it was really helpful for me to hear too. So Wow.
That is Yeah. That is really cool. And it just goes to show,
you never know what you're if you are just willing to
speak up or say things you don't know who's listening,
which is true for park rangers. You don't know what kids you're
talking to and what they're going to end up doing, which ties
(15:17):
back to something James was saying earlier on awareness
is a big deal. And I was thinking about what eventually
led me to become a park ranger Mhmm. Growing up in Peoria,
Illinois. And not that that's a big city. I mean,
it's not. It is in the middle of Illinois, and
I moved out west. But it it was actually the zoo, the Glen
(15:40):
Oak Zoo that got me aware and interested in wildlife
through some of the programs they did. My interest in wildlife got me
outdoors. That got me playing at the Kickapoo Creek. The creek got me
interested in what else is out there that led to some other trips. And
my goodness, it it really came to the awareness that I
got from the zoo. But not every kid ends up going to
(16:02):
the zoo and seeing the right thing at the right moment. That's why bringing it
into the classroom is a big deal. And I like what
James has done in bringing what outdoor
educators and interpreters are doing because, really,
some of the best educators don't have that title.
Some of the best speakers are humble
(16:24):
men and women in uniform somewhere that you've never heard of.
Yeah. But they're so good at this. It's park rangers.
It's people at zoos, at museums. Tour
bus drivers are sometimes really good at interpretation,
and it really meant so this this month, James,
I'm actually giving a talk with Disney executives.
(16:47):
We're doing a workshop in Orlando, and it's all about
storytelling. And my segment, I'm doing
with the retired vice president of Disney's
Animal Kingdom. And we're combining and doing
the two types of stories that businesses
should tell. One is learned stories. That's
(17:09):
where you're taught or told something. And the other is
earned stories, and that's where you experience something. Now parks are good
at both, but themed parts are really good at the earned
stories, the experience side. Mhmm. I tell you all of that
to say my talk that I am giving
is about interpretation and Mhmm. And how how do you
(17:31):
do it, how you can apply it to business. But it works in the
classroom. It works at a zoo, at a park. I mean, this
that's why I enjoy this book so much because I really do
think some of the best speakers, interpreters, educators
are in parks. And this book helps bring some
of those methods into the classroom. Mhmm.
(17:53):
Yeah. I would absolutely agree with you. I think that if you asked anybody
who spent any time visiting these places, that they can think
of multiple instances and actually talk about a couple of that I
experienced and still remember very, very well of people who are
just excellent communicators and could take these big, complex,
or seemingly innocuous subjects and actually break them down in a
(18:16):
way that make them something that people not just learn, but then,
like, it drives them to want to learn more. And then eventually, when you
start to learn more and you start to realize how incredible this, that, or the
other is, you then become invested in these places and boom, now you are
or you're hooked, which is what we need. Because, again, at the end of the
day, it's people that really sustain these places, and it's the
(18:38):
visitors that come in and the partnerships that form between, you
know, different groups, or I'm gonna join this friends of group, or I'm
gonna come and volunteer. And these are the this is how things like this are
sustained and why it's so important. One thing I would definitely add to that
that you mentioned or it's something that you said that made me think of it
is that I think also it's a reason for teachers
(18:58):
to really engage in and look to park rangers as
almost, you know, kindred spirits in a lot of ways. Because you said like you
said, they don't have the title of educator, and I do encounter it
sometimes that when I work with teachers or I work with, you know, people
in a in a formal education environment, and I say, oh, have you
ever heard of this series of videos? Or have you ever heard of this program?
(19:20):
It's run by the National Park Service and this park ranger will do it. There's
a hesitancy because they're like, well, they respond well,
but they're not teachers. And then I then have to say, oh, but they really
are. And in fact, here is how what they do
aligns to what you do. And I kinda do that in the book a little
bit because what I need to do is take what Rangers do. I take the
(19:42):
skill of interpretation, the power of place based learning, and this
experiential model that you said, like, of earned stories of being
there and break it down and kind of talk like, break it down
into roomies so that teachers realize, like, oh, it's not
actually all that different from what I do. And that's a big reason why I
did it because I didn't wanna have to explain over and over
(20:03):
again that you don't have to have a teaching
credential in order to be an amazing
educator. I mean, like, the Wright brothers never had a pilot's license,
but, you know, they knew one or two thing about things about airplanes as it
turns out. You know, mister Rogers, hey. You never
had a credential or teaching degree of any kind, but I learned a heck of
(20:24):
a lot from him, and the same is true of Rangers. Like, I still remember
to this day, like, things that I learned in national parks. I learned about what
an igneous rock is. I learned about the role that banana slugs
play in the Olympic Rainforest. And I when I learned those
when I was still in, you know, single digits in my age, and I still
remember them to this day. And the question is why? Well, it's because of the
(20:45):
people and the methods that they used to make it so engaging and so
unforgettable that here to this day, here I am in my forties, and I still
remember these lessons. Imagine if you were a teacher and you
knew that you could use certain tactics, certain
strategies, certain methods that would make what you were teaching in your classroom
so engaging and so unforgettable that you would have people that when they're in their
(21:07):
forties, their fifties, and their sixties as your students, they still remember the things you
taught. I mean, that would be pretty incredible. And I think there's a lot of
strategies in this book that do that that are very much inspired
by what goes on in our public lands every single day. James is is
right on. That's one of the wonderful things about being a park
ranger is getting to tell those stories, educate
(21:28):
people, connect them to a place, make them aware and
interested in doing something about it. Yeah.
There are some people who will come and camp,
drink their beers, and go home, and that was it. And even if we provided
a great experience for them, we did good. But there are so
many more people that that come thinking they're just going to camp
(21:51):
and drink their beers, but they learn something. And then they go home and
they're curious, and they wanna know a little more. And that's the
role that we play. And if you bring that into the classroom
and it's not just about test taking and and whatnot my
wife's a school teacher, so I I hear a lot of things
about what it's like to be a teacher. And there
(22:13):
are I just I look at James' book and I
realize, gosh, there's a a lot going here. And I will tell you, James, that
even now, all these years later, if I have to
give a talk five minutes, fifteen minutes, if
someone if you were to say, hey. Can you come and talk to these people
about whatever? It is not uncommon. I will get out a note card
(22:35):
and write down my little interpretation formula, s w a
p, and then make quick notes because that's what
I learned as a park ranger. That's how you tell a story, and and
I still use it all these years later. And I'm
happy to talk more about about that because James has got me excited. But
I wanna try something I've never tried when I have an
(22:57):
author on here before. I'm going I just
randomly opened your book to a chapter, and now I'm gonna say, okay,
James. Tell us about this. I've never tried this. This could
be a a really bad podcasting idea, or James could make
me look really good by doing this. And I randomly opened
to chapter six, campfire culture. Oh,
(23:19):
okay. Interesting. Yes. So I can tell you a little bit
about that and what it was. So and your wife will probably agree with this,
that I would argue more than half of how
successful a teacher is or is not is based on the
way their classroom is managed and the culture of learning that the teacher has
built. You can have the best lesson plan,
(23:41):
you can have the most amazing multimedia resources, you can have
a whole fleet of shiny new computers. And
if your management isn't on point, if the way that
you plan, the the way that you facilitate that lesson and
the way that you prepare your learning environment is not something that
you'd consider, that lesson's gonna fall flat every single time. Doesn't matter how
(24:03):
shiny your computers are, how amazing your PowerPoint slides are, you're
you're doomed to failure. And it it was something that also when
I was thinking about parks in general and and what kinds of things teachers
can learn from parks, I started to think about visitor experience. That's a huge
area of the park experience, of park management.
It's something that I'm sure the leaders in your audience think about all the time
(24:24):
is how do we improve the visitor experience? How do we make sure that people
feel welcome and enjoy themselves and can conduct themselves the right way
so that they don't impact the the experience of others? And so I
started to learn a lot about that, visitor experience planning.
And one thing that I learned was that
there are a lot of different things, a lot of different,
(24:47):
very specific structures and tools and
methods that are used to make sure that when people enter a
park, they conduct themselves in the right way, they don't impact
or interfere with the experience of others, that they
take on a little bit of an ownership of the environment. Because in some cases,
and this is especially I think this is true in most parks, but I think
(25:09):
it's becoming more true, is that most visitors to parks don't
encounter a park ranger. Not always. Some you know, if you
drive in at the ticket booth, perhaps, but, you know, very they don't always
find a roving interpreter. They don't always jump into the visitor center and wait
in that long line to talk to the person behind the counter. So there have
to be ways of them self moderating and self
(25:32):
managing their behavior. Like, you know, don't throw
garbage on the ground, stay on the trails, you know, don't pet the
fuzzy cow. Whatever it is, there are things that parks have built in in
order to do this. And so what I do is I kinda in this chapter
especially, I start to look at frameworks
and different ways of monitoring the learning environment and
(25:52):
making sure that people are conducting themselves well and talk a little bit
about how an environment itself, how a learning environment can become
almost like an additional instructor. And I borrow a lot of
examples. So like Leave No Trace principles, for example. That's something that's really well
known. It's a very, you know, it's something that you see on on signs
in parks all the time encouraging people to leave no trace.
(26:14):
Well, I looked at those principles, and to me, with
a couple of tweaks, it was very interesting that that framework became a
great framework for self regulation of
behavior in a classroom. So I actually took that framework and I adjusted it, and
I said, here's now a way for students to be more mindful of
their own learning and how their actions impact others, which is essentially
(26:36):
what Leave No Trace is. And that's an example of a
tool of management from a park that's focused on visitor experience
that then becomes something that a classroom teacher can use and implement to help
them do the same in their own classrooms. You know, the same thing with how
an environment can be a teaching tool. You know, you go into a visitor
center, you may not see a docent or a park ranger while you're in that
(26:58):
visitor center, but you still come out having learned a
lot because of the way that the environment has been created and curated and
set up to be this welcoming place of free choice learning. Well, as
a teacher, what if you could do the same thing in your classroom where the
instruction or knowledge building didn't always depend on
you? You didn't always have to be the center of instruction that you could
(27:21):
do other things and there would still be learning taking place. And
so that's more or less what I did is I wanted to try to, like,
create some sort of I don't know. The term that I came up with was
campfire culture, but it's it's basically, like, how can we learn about
or what can teachers gain from the idea of the way that you conduct
yourself, like, in a campground, for example, or in a park while you're exploring
(27:42):
how that can be used and how those methods can be used and adopted as
tools of management and classroom culture building, yeah, for for classroom
teachers. Not only is that a interesting concept, you
did very well being put on the spot with a random
chapter. Well, it's I would hope that I could say something about the chapter given
the amount of time that I spent writing. It would be very bad if I
(28:02):
was like, oh, what chapter is that again? Please remind me. You know? That'd be
bad. Well, James, I I have to tell you, it's an
honor to be in the book. It's an honor to find out that the
park leader show played a role in in how the book was
structured and how you did it. That is wonderful. I'm glad I could
contribute in a small way. And I I highly
(28:23):
recommend as a ranger or a park
professional to get a copy of the book, The National Park
Classroom. James, where can we keep in touch with
you and find out what you're up to and get the I imagine you can
get the book any anywhere you normally buy books. And Yes.
Where where can we find out what you're up to? Definitely. So, yeah, you
(28:45):
the book is available online through all of the major retailers and
everything. So you can find that online. In fact, there's
also a small number of national and state parks that have already
agreed to carry it this summer. So, I mean, the next time you're at a
park, maybe check check out the bookstore and see if it's there. That's very
exciting, and I've been I'm really excited to know that it will actually be in
(29:07):
the places that I talk about in some cases. But if you wanna find out
more about what I do and my work, you can go to
nationalparkclassroom.com, all one word. The book in
large part was inspired by the work that's that I do with this
small group of dedicated classroom educators who are
they're we volunteer our effort. We're kind of we all came together because of our
(29:28):
shared passion for being promoters of parks and, you know,
promoters of students getting access to these places. So we do a lot of work
there, but we also we do a fair amount of work as well with different
public lands organizations as well. So if you're a park leader who's
interested in learning more about the changing landscape of education, if
you're looking to consider how to not fix, but
(29:51):
improve your current educational offerings, or if
if you're just interested in learning more about, you know,
learning getting some advice from classroom practitioners about what they're
looking for and what kinds of things that best serve their needs,
you know, that that's what our group does. We're a great resource for all park
leaders and all public lands professionals, and we're very, very passionate about
(30:13):
being partners, especially, you know, being partners to people who are looking
for experience that we happen to have. So, yeah, definitely check us out, and looking
forward to hearing from folks if they are interested in hearing more about that work.
Well, thanks for coming back, James. And maybe next time, we won't wait
so many years to have you back on the show, but I'm I'm glad
that you've got this book out and you were willing to come back and talk
(30:34):
with us. Absolutely. Thank you very much. It was great being here, and I hope
so too. I hope you'd be back soon. Thank you. And thank you for listening
to the Park Leader
show.
Welcome to the Park Leader Show where we are changing the landscape of
leadership in parks and conservation. I'm your host,
Jody Mayberry, and if you are a long time listener of the
show, you may be familiar with the guest this
episode, James Fester. He was on the show back
in 02/2018, and we we may talk about that.
(00:24):
But James is an educator and a former
interpreter with California State Parks and the National Park
Service. And as I said, perhaps his biggest accomplishment,
accolade is a guest on the park leader show, not once, but now
twice. Hi, James. Hey, Jody. Thanks for having me back.
So 02/2018, that was quite a while ago.
(00:46):
It was. I was trying to remember when it was, and I had I had
guessed 02/2018 myself. But, yeah, that was a
a lot that you know, pre COVID, so it feels like it was not just
one but two life times ago in some ways, I would say.
Well, there's something brand new with James I I
intend to talk about mostly. But give us an update. Since
(01:07):
02/2018, what have you been up to, and what have you
seen change in the world of parks and
natural education? For sure. Definitely, a
lot of things have changed since 2018. One
thing that comes to mind almost immediately is
the the huge uptick in the amount of educational
(01:30):
resources that are available to people who cannot visit parks
physically. I think it's one of the things that kind of came out of the
COVID shutdown. It's one of the few silver linings that we can actually point to
is that in a bid to make sure that they could stay connected to the
people and the students and the learners and the teachers that really used
them, a lot of parks really upped their game when it came to their distance
(01:52):
learning offerings. And so now, I I remember beforehand, it was a handful of
places that had the know how or the infrastructure to really offer these
great virtual programs or these live ranger programs. And
now it it's many, many more that have done so because they developed
these things as a way to stay connected with people during the COVID lockdowns.
So that's one big one. It's also brought a lot of interesting questions to the
(02:14):
forefront from educators who know that these things exist, and they wanna know
how to best use them in their classrooms and and how to best
leverage them as these great experiences for students who may not
yet be able to visit these places, but as a great way of
introducing them to their public lands. And so that's one big one that I know
has has come about since 2018 for sure. That is
(02:36):
one thing that I I noticed as well. Twenty twenty,
for all the bad things about 2020, I feel like
it was a giant leap to bring the park into the
classroom because there were some places that were doing
it really well. California was one. They California
(02:56):
was really good about online education, classroom
parks in the classrooms. And now, I feel like it's everywhere.
It's nationwide because parks look for new
ways to do it and teachers looked for
what else can we do? What can we do differently? Mhmm. And it was
just a perfect opportunity for that. Yeah. No. I would
(03:19):
definitely agree with what you say there. And and, yes, California and their ports
program, which they've had running for quite some time now, it's a great
example of what can be done. And and it's not necessarily where people have
to start. So if, you know, the part your listeners who are interested in
seeing kind of what the gold standard in my mind looks like in terms of
distance learning offerings should definitely look at it, but they should also not
(03:41):
look at it and think that that's where they have to start because that program
was built up over a long period of time by some really talented people
that are also very communicative and very collaborative. So if you wanna know more
about how to really kind of enhance the offerings that you you
know, your offerings are connected to people who may not be able to physically visit,
I think that's a great place to start. But it definitely it's definitely something that
(04:02):
we saw not just in parks, but in all facets of, like, that we
really that people really did need to become really innovative and big
leaps and big chances and things were, you know, big experiment. A lot
of experimentation kinda went on. We saw it in the classroom as well as
somebody who was at that point still working very closely
with teachers in in as a teacher developer and an instructional
(04:25):
coach in classrooms, there were folks that I worked with that
just out of necessity tried things that they never would have tried otherwise
had we still been in person during that time. And so although, again, we don't
wanna downplay all of the incredibly significant negatives that came
out of those years in lockdown, there were things as well that came out of
it that I think really moved the needle forward in some important ways in the
(04:47):
area of learning, not just in schools, but also in parks as well,
for sure. Before we get to the reason I've asked
you back on the show, James, I'm gonna ask you a bigger
question that Mhmm. I don't think I intended to get into, but I'm
going to. With all of this parks in the classroom
style education, if I'm a student in
(05:09):
Peoria, Illinois, I'll pick my home hometown. If I'm a student in Peoria,
Illinois, but I will never likely
travel out west and get to go to Yellowstone or Yosemite or
Glacier or Mount Rainier. What is the benefit to
me as a student in Peoria, Illinois that those
wonderful national parks are out there? That is an incredibly
(05:32):
great question, and it's actually I'm really glad you asked it because it really
is kind of it formed in a way one of the big
open ended questions that I answer in my book. And one of the
reasons why I wrote it was to was to kind of
explore that question that even if it's a place that
even if it's a place that you may not visit yourself. And I I would
(05:53):
I would start by saying yet because you never ever really know. We
never really know where life is gonna take us. But why are these places
that are so far removed still valuable for
students to learn about? One thing that I would would start by saying
is that when I I got to talk to a lot of
park rangers and park interpreters when I wrote this book. And every single time
(06:15):
that I talked to one, especially one who was from an underrepresented
group, I would ask, like, well, what's your story? How did you get here?
And nine times out of 10, the story began with,
well, I had never really even heard about national parks until somebody made me
aware of them, and that person was my teacher. Or was this teacher or
is this, you know, youth coach or somebody. It was some somebody had had
(06:38):
an educational role. And it got me thinking about
we talk a lot about barriers to getting more kids in parks or
more people who who don't you know, who aren't outdoors folks or the ones that
we normally see in parks. How do we get them there? And it through some
of the research that I did and a lot of the anecdotal evidence that I
found, the biggest barrier is not actually the monetary
(06:59):
one or the distance one or the time one. Because before you
can even address those, the first one you have to address is awareness.
If you are not aware of these places, if you have never heard
of them before, or if you have no idea what to do in a national
park, which a lot of folks actually don't, they don't really know what they're for,
they don't think they're for them, You don't even get to the other
(07:22):
parts. And so the first thing that I my first answer
to your question is, well, we need these students to be aware of these places
because we don't know how deeply they're gonna be involved or
what their relationship is gonna be to them in the future. And if they don't
understand not just where they are, what they are, but most importantly, why they're
important and we're protecting, then we've lost that next generation
(07:43):
of conservationists. And in some cases, and it really is, and you
probably know this very well, that every park, state park, you know, public
land unit, national park, whatever you wanna call it, they all start with
somebody thought that it was worth saving. And interestingly
enough, there's a story that I talk about in my book that some of your
your listeners might be aware of was that in Crater Lake in
(08:04):
Oregon, one of the jewels of the National Park System would
not be there today if it wasn't for the fact that a kid in
a rural Kansas schoolhouse learned about it
one day at lunch and then decided then and there that he was
gonna visit it one day. And And that kid happened to be a guy by
the name of William Gladstone Steele who then went on to be one of the
(08:26):
most important figures in the preservation and protecting and establishing of
Crater Lake National Park. So if it's not with
if not for the role of educators or the role
of teachers and and other folks that work in an educational space, making
kids aware of these places, making young adults aware of these places, then we
wouldn't even have some of them. So I think that's my biggest answer is just
(08:48):
we we need to make sure that they're aware that they know what they are,
why they're important, and why they're worth visiting and investing in because we need them
to do that in the future when when we've all moved on and and they
are the ones that have inherited these places. James, that was a
great answer, and I purposely asked it in the way
of even though I'm never gonna go there because
(09:09):
I think a lot of kids, when they're first introduced to what's
out there, feel that or believe that that that's way out
west. I live in the city in the Midwest. Yeah. I'm never
gonna go there. But James laid it out perfectly on
why this matters, and he mentioned his book. So
let's turn to that. The National Park Classroom,
(09:32):
a Guide to Designing Project Based
Learning Adventures. This is a great book for classrooms.
It's a great book for park rangers to be aware of because I
think you can use this book to work
with local schools or not local. Mhmm. We saw that happen in
2020. Classrooms across the country teamed up with
(09:54):
parks Absolutely. And and did projects. So tell us where this
book came from and how you've seen it being used
so far. Yeah. So I've been really lucky
to have had the career that I have where I've been an educator, and
I've kind of had one foot in two different worlds. On one hand,
I was a classroom educator. I was raised by two public school teachers
(10:17):
who both kind of instilled at me at the very young age that this was
a career path that I should go into. So when people ask me what I
do, I jokingly say that I inherited the family business. But I, you know, I
was a public school teacher in California for many years. I went into instructional coaching
and teacher development. And now that's what I kinda do is work with and help
support teachers in their classrooms through different pedagogical methods, one of them
(10:38):
being project based learning. The idea that instead of
students creating work for the sake of, you know, earning a grade or
whatever it is, that what they are they learn about in the classroom, what they
learn about that's required by their states or their schools is then of
benefit to somebody else. So I'm not just learning to write things
down for an essay. I'm learning because I'm gonna create a brochure
(10:59):
that I'm gonna then give to somebody, or I'm gonna solve a problem in my
community, or I'm gonna do something that's connected to
the national parks or our or a state park near me so
that I can use my knowledge and see the real world impact it
has. And that way, I never am stuck in class asking, why is this important?
Why on earth do I have to learn this? So that's one world that I
(11:20):
operate in. But I also, for as long as I can remember,
have been very much immersed in the world of our public lands. You know, like
I said, both my parents were both old school teachers, didn't have a lot of
money growing up. So what did we do? We went camping a heck of a
lot. I actually didn't know that summer vacation could be used for something
other than camping until I think I was, like, 13 or so. I just thought
that vacation and camping were synonymous. But we would go to a lot of parks,
(11:42):
Yosemite National Park. I spent every spring break
from the time I was six until the time that I was in my twenties
with my family in that park, got to know it very well, and then also
got to engage in a lot of learning opportunities and programs. Because when you
go to parks, even if you're not aware of it, you are
going to encounter different ways of learning and building your knowledge,
(12:03):
whether it's visiting the visitor center, ranger program,
waysides, an audio tour, whatever it is. And what I saw was,
in doing both these things and then going on later on and also being an
interpreter, that there were things that I did
as an interpreter that when I did them in the classroom, I got really great
results. And there were things that I did in the classroom that when I brought
(12:25):
them into my interpretive programs and used them to engage my audiences,
I got really great results as well. And I kind of wondered why
more people weren't talking about that. I was like, I wonder why there's you know,
I would look for readings or articles about it, and there really wasn't anything out
there. And I was like, I wonder why nobody's written a book about this. And
so I decided that was what I was gonna do. And so the book is
essentially what classroom teachers can learn or how they can
(12:47):
benefit from the educational methods and resources
that are used by educators on public
lands. And so although it's kinda aimed towards classroom
teachers, one thing that I have heard because I've shared it with a lot of
folks in the interpretation world and the parks world
is that the case studies that I discuss in there, I share a lot of
(13:08):
case studies about great collaborations between classroom teachers and
parks. I talk a lot about different methods and
different strategies that can be used in a classroom that are just as effective
on some sort of ranger program or a, you know, a hike, like
a walking hike program or or a a trail program, what if you
will. There's a lot of things that can cross pollinate because I really
(13:30):
truly believe that both worlds have a
lot to offer each other. I'm kinda living proof of that
myself because my practice in both really benefited from what I did during the
weekends or the weekdays, and I really wanted to kinda provide something or
a road map for folks that were either really passionate about parks as
teachers or really passionate about working with classrooms as rangers to
(13:53):
see what they could do and have a really like, kind of a road map
for really excellent deep learning experiences.
Yeah. This is so good. And I I I wanna well, first, I should
mention, I honored I was actually mentioned in the book. I didn't know
that was coming until I saw the book, so that was a treat. Thank you,
James. And and it's not a spoiler or anything, but I will also say that,
(14:14):
like, when we met in 2018 and because I've listened to your
program for a long time, I actually the structure of the
book in a lot of ways was kind of inspired by you and by
your really succinct and very clear definition
or structure of what good interpretation is. It's
actually very much embedded in the book, and there's kind of a big reveal at
(14:36):
the end. And I'm not gonna lie I you know, people are gonna have to
check it out themselves, but I'll be very interested when you get to learn to
discuss that with you later as well. Because, yeah, it it is it is something
that definitely you and and things I listened to or heard on your show with
some of your previous guests have definitely make appearances throughout the book
and and which is hopefully really like, hopefully, it's great information I feel like
(14:56):
everybody should learn, but it was really helpful for me to hear too. So Wow.
That is Yeah. That is really cool. And it just goes to show,
you never know what you're if you are just willing to
speak up or say things you don't know who's listening,
which is true for park rangers. You don't know what kids you're
talking to and what they're going to end up doing, which ties
(15:17):
back to something James was saying earlier on awareness
is a big deal. And I was thinking about what eventually
led me to become a park ranger Mhmm. Growing up in Peoria,
Illinois. And not that that's a big city. I mean,
it's not. It is in the middle of Illinois, and
I moved out west. But it it was actually the zoo, the Glen
(15:40):
Oak Zoo that got me aware and interested in wildlife
through some of the programs they did. My interest in wildlife got me
outdoors. That got me playing at the Kickapoo Creek. The creek got me
interested in what else is out there that led to some other trips. And
my goodness, it it really came to the awareness that I
got from the zoo. But not every kid ends up going to
(16:02):
the zoo and seeing the right thing at the right moment. That's why bringing it
into the classroom is a big deal. And I like what
James has done in bringing what outdoor
educators and interpreters are doing because, really,
some of the best educators don't have that title.
Some of the best speakers are humble
(16:24):
men and women in uniform somewhere that you've never heard of.
Yeah. But they're so good at this. It's park rangers.
It's people at zoos, at museums. Tour
bus drivers are sometimes really good at interpretation,
and it really meant so this this month, James,
I'm actually giving a talk with Disney executives.
(16:47):
We're doing a workshop in Orlando, and it's all about
storytelling. And my segment, I'm doing
with the retired vice president of Disney's
Animal Kingdom. And we're combining and doing
the two types of stories that businesses
should tell. One is learned stories. That's
(17:09):
where you're taught or told something. And the other is
earned stories, and that's where you experience something. Now parks are good
at both, but themed parts are really good at the earned
stories, the experience side. Mhmm. I tell you all of that
to say my talk that I am giving
is about interpretation and Mhmm. And how how do you
(17:31):
do it, how you can apply it to business. But it works in the
classroom. It works at a zoo, at a park. I mean, this
that's why I enjoy this book so much because I really do
think some of the best speakers, interpreters, educators
are in parks. And this book helps bring some
of those methods into the classroom. Mhmm.
(17:53):
Yeah. I would absolutely agree with you. I think that if you asked anybody
who spent any time visiting these places, that they can think
of multiple instances and actually talk about a couple of that I
experienced and still remember very, very well of people who are
just excellent communicators and could take these big, complex,
or seemingly innocuous subjects and actually break them down in a
(18:16):
way that make them something that people not just learn, but then,
like, it drives them to want to learn more. And then eventually, when you
start to learn more and you start to realize how incredible this, that, or the
other is, you then become invested in these places and boom, now you are
or you're hooked, which is what we need. Because, again, at the end of the
day, it's people that really sustain these places, and it's the
(18:38):
visitors that come in and the partnerships that form between, you
know, different groups, or I'm gonna join this friends of group, or I'm
gonna come and volunteer. And these are the this is how things like this are
sustained and why it's so important. One thing I would definitely add to that
that you mentioned or it's something that you said that made me think of it
is that I think also it's a reason for teachers
(18:58):
to really engage in and look to park rangers as
almost, you know, kindred spirits in a lot of ways. Because you said like you
said, they don't have the title of educator, and I do encounter it
sometimes that when I work with teachers or I work with, you know, people
in a in a formal education environment, and I say, oh, have you
ever heard of this series of videos? Or have you ever heard of this program?
(19:20):
It's run by the National Park Service and this park ranger will do it. There's
a hesitancy because they're like, well, they respond well,
but they're not teachers. And then I then have to say, oh, but they really
are. And in fact, here is how what they do
aligns to what you do. And I kinda do that in the book a little
bit because what I need to do is take what Rangers do. I take the
(19:42):
skill of interpretation, the power of place based learning, and this
experiential model that you said, like, of earned stories of being
there and break it down and kind of talk like, break it down
into roomies so that teachers realize, like, oh, it's not
actually all that different from what I do. And that's a big reason why I
did it because I didn't wanna have to explain over and over
(20:03):
again that you don't have to have a teaching
credential in order to be an amazing
educator. I mean, like, the Wright brothers never had a pilot's license,
but, you know, they knew one or two thing about things about airplanes as it
turns out. You know, mister Rogers, hey. You never
had a credential or teaching degree of any kind, but I learned a heck of
(20:24):
a lot from him, and the same is true of Rangers. Like, I still remember
to this day, like, things that I learned in national parks. I learned about what
an igneous rock is. I learned about the role that banana slugs
play in the Olympic Rainforest. And I when I learned those
when I was still in, you know, single digits in my age, and I still
remember them to this day. And the question is why? Well, it's because of the
(20:45):
people and the methods that they used to make it so engaging and so
unforgettable that here to this day, here I am in my forties, and I still
remember these lessons. Imagine if you were a teacher and you
knew that you could use certain tactics, certain
strategies, certain methods that would make what you were teaching in your classroom
so engaging and so unforgettable that you would have people that when they're in their
(21:07):
forties, their fifties, and their sixties as your students, they still remember the things you
taught. I mean, that would be pretty incredible. And I think there's a lot of
strategies in this book that do that that are very much inspired
by what goes on in our public lands every single day. James is is
right on. That's one of the wonderful things about being a park
ranger is getting to tell those stories, educate
(21:28):
people, connect them to a place, make them aware and
interested in doing something about it. Yeah.
There are some people who will come and camp,
drink their beers, and go home, and that was it. And even if we provided
a great experience for them, we did good. But there are so
many more people that that come thinking they're just going to camp
(21:51):
and drink their beers, but they learn something. And then they go home and
they're curious, and they wanna know a little more. And that's the
role that we play. And if you bring that into the classroom
and it's not just about test taking and and whatnot my
wife's a school teacher, so I I hear a lot of things
about what it's like to be a teacher. And there
(22:13):
are I just I look at James' book and I
realize, gosh, there's a a lot going here. And I will tell you, James, that
even now, all these years later, if I have to
give a talk five minutes, fifteen minutes, if
someone if you were to say, hey. Can you come and talk to these people
about whatever? It is not uncommon. I will get out a note card
(22:35):
and write down my little interpretation formula, s w a
p, and then make quick notes because that's what
I learned as a park ranger. That's how you tell a story, and and
I still use it all these years later. And I'm
happy to talk more about about that because James has got me excited. But
I wanna try something I've never tried when I have an
(22:57):
author on here before. I'm going I just
randomly opened your book to a chapter, and now I'm gonna say, okay,
James. Tell us about this. I've never tried this. This could
be a a really bad podcasting idea, or James could make
me look really good by doing this. And I randomly opened
to chapter six, campfire culture. Oh,
(23:19):
okay. Interesting. Yes. So I can tell you a little bit
about that and what it was. So and your wife will probably agree with this,
that I would argue more than half of how
successful a teacher is or is not is based on the
way their classroom is managed and the culture of learning that the teacher has
built. You can have the best lesson plan,
(23:41):
you can have the most amazing multimedia resources, you can have
a whole fleet of shiny new computers. And
if your management isn't on point, if the way that
you plan, the the way that you facilitate that lesson and
the way that you prepare your learning environment is not something that
you'd consider, that lesson's gonna fall flat every single time. Doesn't matter how
(24:03):
shiny your computers are, how amazing your PowerPoint slides are, you're
you're doomed to failure. And it it was something that also when
I was thinking about parks in general and and what kinds of things teachers
can learn from parks, I started to think about visitor experience. That's a huge
area of the park experience, of park management.
It's something that I'm sure the leaders in your audience think about all the time
(24:24):
is how do we improve the visitor experience? How do we make sure that people
feel welcome and enjoy themselves and can conduct themselves the right way
so that they don't impact the the experience of others? And so I
started to learn a lot about that, visitor experience planning.
And one thing that I learned was that
there are a lot of different things, a lot of different,
(24:47):
very specific structures and tools and
methods that are used to make sure that when people enter a
park, they conduct themselves in the right way, they don't impact
or interfere with the experience of others, that they
take on a little bit of an ownership of the environment. Because in some cases,
and this is especially I think this is true in most parks, but I think
(25:09):
it's becoming more true, is that most visitors to parks don't
encounter a park ranger. Not always. Some you know, if you
drive in at the ticket booth, perhaps, but, you know, very they don't always
find a roving interpreter. They don't always jump into the visitor center and wait
in that long line to talk to the person behind the counter. So there have
to be ways of them self moderating and self
(25:32):
managing their behavior. Like, you know, don't throw
garbage on the ground, stay on the trails, you know, don't pet the
fuzzy cow. Whatever it is, there are things that parks have built in in
order to do this. And so what I do is I kinda in this chapter
especially, I start to look at frameworks
and different ways of monitoring the learning environment and
(25:52):
making sure that people are conducting themselves well and talk a little bit
about how an environment itself, how a learning environment can become
almost like an additional instructor. And I borrow a lot of
examples. So like Leave No Trace principles, for example. That's something that's really well
known. It's a very, you know, it's something that you see on on signs
in parks all the time encouraging people to leave no trace.
(26:14):
Well, I looked at those principles, and to me, with
a couple of tweaks, it was very interesting that that framework became a
great framework for self regulation of
behavior in a classroom. So I actually took that framework and I adjusted it, and
I said, here's now a way for students to be more mindful of
their own learning and how their actions impact others, which is essentially
(26:36):
what Leave No Trace is. And that's an example of a
tool of management from a park that's focused on visitor experience
that then becomes something that a classroom teacher can use and implement to help
them do the same in their own classrooms. You know, the same thing with how
an environment can be a teaching tool. You know, you go into a visitor
center, you may not see a docent or a park ranger while you're in that
(26:58):
visitor center, but you still come out having learned a
lot because of the way that the environment has been created and curated and
set up to be this welcoming place of free choice learning. Well, as
a teacher, what if you could do the same thing in your classroom where the
instruction or knowledge building didn't always depend on
you? You didn't always have to be the center of instruction that you could
(27:21):
do other things and there would still be learning taking place. And
so that's more or less what I did is I wanted to try to, like,
create some sort of I don't know. The term that I came up with was
campfire culture, but it's it's basically, like, how can we learn about
or what can teachers gain from the idea of the way that you conduct
yourself, like, in a campground, for example, or in a park while you're exploring
(27:42):
how that can be used and how those methods can be used and adopted as
tools of management and classroom culture building, yeah, for for classroom
teachers. Not only is that a interesting concept, you
did very well being put on the spot with a random
chapter. Well, it's I would hope that I could say something about the chapter given
the amount of time that I spent writing. It would be very bad if I
(28:02):
was like, oh, what chapter is that again? Please remind me. You know? That'd be
bad. Well, James, I I have to tell you, it's an
honor to be in the book. It's an honor to find out that the
park leader show played a role in in how the book was
structured and how you did it. That is wonderful. I'm glad I could
contribute in a small way. And I I highly
(28:23):
recommend as a ranger or a park
professional to get a copy of the book, The National Park
Classroom. James, where can we keep in touch with
you and find out what you're up to and get the I imagine you can
get the book any anywhere you normally buy books. And Yes.
Where where can we find out what you're up to? Definitely. So, yeah, you
(28:45):
the book is available online through all of the major retailers and
everything. So you can find that online. In fact, there's
also a small number of national and state parks that have already
agreed to carry it this summer. So, I mean, the next time you're at a
park, maybe check check out the bookstore and see if it's there. That's very
exciting, and I've been I'm really excited to know that it will actually be in
(29:07):
the places that I talk about in some cases. But if you wanna find out
more about what I do and my work, you can go to
nationalparkclassroom.com, all one word. The book in
large part was inspired by the work that's that I do with this
small group of dedicated classroom educators who are
they're we volunteer our effort. We're kind of we all came together because of our
(29:28):
shared passion for being promoters of parks and, you know,
promoters of students getting access to these places. So we do a lot of work
there, but we also we do a fair amount of work as well with different
public lands organizations as well. So if you're a park leader who's
interested in learning more about the changing landscape of education, if
you're looking to consider how to not fix, but
(29:51):
improve your current educational offerings, or if
if you're just interested in learning more about, you know,
learning getting some advice from classroom practitioners about what they're
looking for and what kinds of things that best serve their needs,
you know, that that's what our group does. We're a great resource for all park
leaders and all public lands professionals, and we're very, very passionate about
(30:13):
being partners, especially, you know, being partners to people who are looking
for experience that we happen to have. So, yeah, definitely check us out, and looking
forward to hearing from folks if they are interested in hearing more about that work.
Well, thanks for coming back, James. And maybe next time, we won't wait
so many years to have you back on the show, but I'm I'm glad
that you've got this book out and you were willing to come back and talk
(30:34):
with us. Absolutely. Thank you very much. It was great being here, and I hope
so too. I hope you'd be back soon. Thank you. And thank you for listening
to the Park Leader
show.
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