After launching Educating Children Outdoors in Arizona in 2019 we quickly realized that there was a desperate need for environmental education program offerings for teens. So to help fill in the gap and make sure youth in the 14-17 year old age range were also being exposed to environmental education we piloted a Teen Naturalist program in 2020 and had huge success. The teens worked and learned in the field for over 70 hours over the course of the school year. They volunteered with local organizations, participated in community science and stewardship projects, became budding botanists, collected and analyzed data, and more. They even launched their own community science initiative and worked with NASA Develop on a research project. In addition to science topics they also covered history, geography, math and language arts.After launching Educating Children Outdoors in Arizona in 2019 we quickly realized that there was a desperate need for environmental education program offerings for teens. So to help fill in the gap and make sure youth in the 14-17 year old age range were also being exposed to environmental education we piloted a Teen Naturalist program in 2020 and had huge success. The teens worked and learned in the field for over 70 hours over the course of the school year. They volunteered with local organizations, participated in community science and stewardship projects, became budding botanists, collected and analyzed data, and more. They even launched their own community science initiative and worked with NASA Develop on a research project. In addition to science topics they also covered history, geography, math and language arts.After launching Educating Children Outdoors in Arizona in 2019 we quickly realized that there was a desperate need for environmental education program offerings for teens. So to help fill in the gap and make sure youth in the 14-17 year old age range were also being exposed to environmental education we piloted a Teen Naturalist program in 2020 and had huge success. The teens worked and learned in the field for over 70 hours over the course of the school year. They volunteered with local organizations, participated in community science and stewardship projects, became budding botanists, collected and analyzed data, and more. They even launched their own community science initiative and worked with NASA Develop on a research project. In addition to science topics they also covered history, geography, math and language arts.After launching Educating Children Outdoors in Arizona in 2019 we quickly realized that there was a desperate need for environmental education program offerings for teens. So to help fill in the gap and make sure youth in the 14-17 year old age range were also being exposed to environmental education we piloted a Teen Naturalist program in 2020 and had huge success. The teens worked and learned in the field for over 70 hours over the course of the school year. They volunteered with local organizations, participated in community science and stewardship projects, became budding botanists, collected and analyzed data, and more. They even launched their own community science initiative and worked with NASA Develop on a research project. In addition to science topics they also covered history, geography, math and language arts.
In this presentation we will share what our program objectives were, our successes, curriculum we utilized, and answer any questions you may have about running a program specifically geared for teens.