Using the premise that students learn by doing, the Western Arkansas Educational Service Cooperative (WAESC) and Arkansas Tech University’s Math and Science Institute (MSI) collaborated on a week long professional development workshop designed to teach middle school teachers how to implement the concept of an outdoor classroom. Ten teams of teachers, mostly from rural schools in the Arkansas River Valley, participated in the dual workshops entitled Science Outside the Classroom and Into the Outdoors. The teachers were given compasses, GPS units, and flip video cameras, as well as instructional materials from the workshop to use in their classrooms. The workshop instructors taught the teachers how to use the equipment in a variety of ways to enhance outdoor classroom lessons.
During the two days of Science Outside the Classroom, led by WAESC science specialist, Curtis Varnell, the teachers worked through hands-on geology and hydrology projects at Bluff Dweller’s Cave in Noel, MO. The two days of Into the Outdoors, led by MSI science specialist, Steve Zimmer, saw teachers being taught about field science research including proper techniques for data collection, tree and plant identification, identification of animal tracks and aquatic microorganisms, as well as animal behavior and outdoor safety. They then implemented these activities and their new technology into lesson plans to test on the other teachers, teaching them not only the core concepts of the outdoor classroom but how to turn those concepts into a working lesson for their students.
This workshop was funded by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation (Grant #9-0522) as part of the STEM Teacher Empowerment program at the Arkansas Science & Technology Authority.