Friday, January 26, 2018

National Park Service offers summer teacher fellowships at Acadia National Park and Saint Croix Island International Historic Site

Acadia Teacher Fellow participants learn about eelgrass monitoring. 
CREDIT NPS Photo

The National Park Service (NPS) is recruiting six Acadia Teacher Fellows to spend the summer learning about Acadia National Park’s diverse natural and cultural resources, and ways to protect them. Teachers will be selected to work on Mount Desert Island and at Schoodic Point. In addition, the NPS will select one teacher to work at Saint Croix Island International Historic Site in Calais.

Acadia National Park invites full-time, K-12 public classroom school teachers to apply online by March 1 at

For more information on the Acadia Teacher Fellowship program (Mount Desert Island and Schoodic Point), please call 207-288-1312. For Saint Croix Island International Historic Site in Calais, Maine call 207-454-3871.

The Acadia Teacher Fellowship program strives to connect teachers and students to national parks. Priority is given to classroom teachers from public schools with students who are underrepresented, economically disadvantaged, or have limited access to parks. Priority is also given to teachers from Maine schools who do not requiring housing. “Many classroom teachers dream about living in and learning about our national parks,” said Superintendent Kevin Schneider. “Acadia Teacher Fellowships are helping make those dreams come true.”

For six weeks during the summer, teacher fellows will engage in a variety of activities that will vary depending on location. Teachers may interact with park visitors on public programs, along carriage roads and on hiking trails. They may attend ranger-led interpretive programs, be given place-based training, participate in citizen science activities, interact with park professionals, and much more. Teacher fellows will be asked to create a lesson plan related to Acadia’s resources to take back to their classroom and share with other educators. In addition, they will learn about turning their schoolyards into outdoor learning environments.

Newly acquired, first-hand knowledge of our national parks will enrich the teacher’s classroom curriculum throughout the school year and, in particular, during National Park Week in April during which teacher fellows can introduce a larger student audience to the important mission of the National Park Service.

Acadia Teacher Fellows will receive weekly stipends, teaching materials from Eastern National, the park’s bookstore partner, and shared park housing as available. Additional benefits include a free class field trip to Acadia or a national park site near their school, plus assistance with designing an outdoor classroom at their home school.

The Acadia Teacher Fellowship program at Acadia National Park is generously funded by Friends of Acadia. Additional funding from Dawnland, LLC has allowed the NPS to expand the program to Saint Croix Island International Historic Site.

For more information, please visit www.nps.gov/acad or call 207-288-3338. Join online conversations on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AcadiaNPS), Twitter (twitter.com/AcadiaNPS), and Instagram (www.instagram.com/acadianps).

www.nps.gov

About the National Park Service: More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America's 417 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Visit us at www.nps.gov, and on Facebook (www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice), Twitter (www.twitter.com/natlparkservice), and YouTube (www.youtube.com/nationalparkservice).