+ What is the Stewardship Program?
The primary goal of the Stewardship Program is to increase awareness, ownership, and responsibility of students toward their natural environment; stewardship. The Program will provide students with increased access to outdoor and environmental education through existing programs and by helping to integrate environmental education curriculum into students’ regular curriculum.
The Stewardship team recognizes the need to connect learning with state standards. With increased accountability being placed on schools and classroom teachers to ensure that students meet state standards, it is increasingly important that any supplementary education programs teach to those same standards.
Outdoor and environmental programs have historically not lived up to their full potential largely because they have not made direct links between their curriculum and state standards. High quality standards-based instruction is the foundation of the Stewardship Project. The connection between outdoor education and the standards-driven world of classroom teaching is the missing link between students and an enduring understanding of what stewardship is.
The Stewardship Team will provide links to a variety of different programs including: traveling site-based day programs, pre and post in-class science education support, and site-based education programs, as well as at school and community area stewardship programs.
+ Why did we start the stewardship program?
After a review of the existing outdoor and environmental education programs in the Southern Oregon region, we found that there is a fragmentation of environmental education services available.
Currently there is a lack of coordination of available programs and the funding sources for those programs.
There are over 70 available outdoor and environmental education programs in the region. As is the case in so many professions and organizations, these programs tend to exist in “silos” where they rarely interact with one another.
As a result, there is much inefficiency in the way these various groups operate and overlaps in the services they provide.
The result is a need for coordination of effort which would be best achieved under a common cause, stewardship.
The Stewardship Team’s goal is to address the fragmentation of environmental education services as well as the lack of connection between classroom learning and environmental education through providing high quality, standards-based education with an emphasis on stewardship.
+ What is the role of the liaison?
As we have learned from our previous experience, building and maintaining strong relationships is the key to any successful endeavor. That is why we will be providing each participating school with a designated liaison. The liaisons will serve as a resource to the teachers connecting them to programs available in the region as well as opportunities for in-class instruction, school stewardship programs, and opportunities to obtain grant funding.
The Stewardship Team liaisons will provide teachers with a “menu” of potential opportunities. The menu will include a listing of all the participating outdoor environmental and outdoor education organizations and the services they provide. These opportunities will include both on and off site opportunities.
The liaisons will also provide classroom teachers with increased access to curriculum on environmental topics. For example, if a teacher is doing a unit on birds, the liaison will be able to direct them to a variety of curriculum and programs about birds.
Another resource the liaisons will help to connect classroom teachers to is grant funding. The Stewardship Team is always researching what grants are currently available for environmental education. Often times there are grants only available to classroom teachers who are often unaware that they exist. The liaisons will be constantly updated with this information and have it available to share. In many cases the Stewardship Team will be able to assist the teachers in completing these grants
Lastly, the liaisons will serve as a general resource for the classroom teachers for any outdoor or environmental questions or projects.
+ What is the role of the Curriculum Coordinator?
To ensure that these initiatives are grounded in sound educational practices the Stewardship Team has a curriculum coordinator who will ensure that the liaisons, schools, and KOSS instructors are provided with high quality, standards-based curriculum that is in alignment with the Oregon State Standards.
This will ensure that the Project does not slip into an “activity mania” but rather remains focused on sound education in stewardship. The Curriculum Director will coordinate the cataloguing of environmental education services and maintain the link between those services and state standards.
+ What do you need to do?
Let us help you. It really is that simple. There is no cost or obligation required to participate in the Stewardship Program.
Depending on what types of programs you want your students to participate in there may be costs. However, there are many programs that are either no cost or nominal cost. Many of these programs are already funded through grants or other sources (government, agency, university, etc).
For more expensive programs, there are also many opportunities for scholarships and grants which we might be able to help you obtain.
