Students & Teachers

Overview

The National Park Service (NPS) continues to provide the public with opportunities for enjoyment and inspire the highest quality visitor experience of parks as possible. This page provides you with a variety of outstanding links and resources for teachers to help supplement your curriculum, and students to assist with great information for your assignments!

Vision

Interpretation and education is a primary organizational purpose of the National Park Service, essential to achieving our mission of mission of protecting and preserving our nation's natural and cultural resources. We envision a national park system that is recognized as a significant resource for learning, where people and organizations collaborate on teaching and learning about the interconnections of human culture and nature, natural systems, the values of America's diverse heritage, and the principles of democracy. Parks are an integral part of the nation's educational system, providing unique and powerful individual learning experiences that help shape understanding and inspire personal values.
~ National Park Service
June 20, 2002

The NPS Interpretation and Education Division has chosen the theme of Connecting People to Parks to help focus on this goal. Four key education program recommendations from this division are as follows:

• Expand the relevance of the National Park System to diverse audiences
• Increase Connections between the NPS and educators
• Increase the skills of NPS employees and the effectiveness of programs
• Help build a national ethic of stewardship

As declared in the "Renewing Our Education Mission" report, the educational programs within the NPS are designed to enrich and enhance learning, nurturing people's appreciation for parks and other special places, and therefore helping preserve America's heritage. To accomplish this, the NPS, will continue to develop - and partner with others to create - interpretive and educational programs according to the following eight guiding principles. National Park Service programs are:

1. place-based;
2. learner-centered;
3. celebrate diversity;
4. widely accessible;
5. based on sound scholarship content, methods, and audience analysis;
6. help people understand and participate in our civil democratic society;
7. incorporate ongoing evaluation for continual program improvement and effectiveness;
8. collaborative.

Building capacity, creating opportunities, and expanding partnerships and outreach are three primary goals to help us strengthen this framework of guiding principles. Additionally, national strategic actions are in progress to help us advance the renewal of our education mission.

Examples include asset mapping, identify strategic education partners, design and produce a business plan for education, recognize and share best practices and program evaluation. Other significant priorities include significantly expand use of the Internet, expand State NPS education program guides, develop a communications strategy and showcase our successes. Meeting the needs of students and educators at all levels is an essential ingredient of achieving our goals.

"Park-based learning is powerful - and transformative. People more readily retain information, grasp meanings, and adopt new behaviors and values when directly involved with cultural and natural heritage resources and sites. Park Service education informs uniquely about the civic experience of our country and the complex, diverse ecology of our world. It encourages respect for our experience, as a nation, and invites stewardship. It is an organizational function that nurtures an aware citizenry, engaged to a greater extent in American public life. It is a mission of high national purpose. The National Park Service is committed to extend its leadership in education, to build on what is in place and to pursue new relationships and opportunities to make national parks even more meaningful in the life of the nation."
~ Fran Mainella, Director, National Park Service