Lisa Purcell training parent volunteers to teach an elementary school workshop on owls.
Creative approach
Four Winds currently has 1,500 volunteers working in four northeastern states. Shrewsbury resident Connie Youngstrom is one of them.
“We’ve had visits to the stream in the back of our school. Kids always get soaking wet but they love it. Their eyes light up when they get into the stream and turn over rocks to find little crustaceans and little critters under the stones.”
The program’s curriculum is designed to comply with the state of Vermont’s science standards. Four Winds charges schools $3,200 to participate. That pays for eight volunteer training sessions and the accompanying teaching materials. Staffers work hard to make the material relevant.
“We know that we want kids to be learning hands on and make discoveries in their own backyard. We’d love it to be something that they’ve walked by for years without noticing it," says Purcell. "And then we start thinking about how we’ll get kids excited about that. What will the puppet show need to include for students to understand the life of a goldenrod gallfly, for example?”
Kelli Bates, a teacher at Barstow Memorial School in Chittenden, says that creative approach is what makes Four Winds so popular with students.
“One year we were doing something with trees and the kids were actually parts of the tree - some would be the trunk and kids were actually laying on the floor being the roots - and things like that just connect these science theories in a way that they can understand.”
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25