The National Parks Classroom

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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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

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,

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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

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 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.

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 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 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 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? 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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.

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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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.