IslandWood in Your Classroom

Overview

Through the School Partnerships Program, IslandWood is able to provide seamless opportunities to:

• Establish ways to effectively communicate and build strong, effective relationships with schools and local communities.
• Link student academic skills and knowledge taught in the classroom to the outdoor education residential experience at IslandWood.
• Translate the students' IslandWood experience back to their local communities.
• Support schools in the implementation of quality community learning projects.

To schedule an orientation for your classroom(s) and a post-visit to your school, or to talk about a community learning project for your school, contact the School Partnerships Coordinator, Randy Komatsu. E-Mail: randyk@islandwood.org Telephone: (206) 855-4373

Establish ways to effectively communicate and build strong, effective relationships with schools and local communities.

In order to deepen and extend the learning that happens during the School Overnight Program (SOP), the School Partnership Program supports teachers, students and families prior to, during and following participation in the SOP at IslandWood. This is accomplished by:

a. Conducting "Connecting Our Classroom to Yours" programs for teachers participating in the SOP.

b. Providing an IslandWood liaison to each school participating in the SOP.

Liaisons play a key role in:

- Orienting the SOP instructors to the schools and their surrounding communities

- Providing school-based presentations to teachers, parents, and students in order to inform them about the IslandWood campus and the SOP curriculum

- Providing on-site support to schools while at IslandWood

c. Making visits to local community centers to share information about IslandWood in order to build effective partnerships to help support schools participating in the SOP.

d. Meeting the cultural requirements held by the various cultural groups attending the School Overnight Program.

Link student academic skills and knowledge taught in the classroom to the outdoor education residential experience.

Efforts have been made to align the School Overnight Program curriculum with the Washington State Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALR's) that enhances preparedness for the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL).

A majority of the SOP Instructors are also students in IslandWood's Graduate Residency in Education, Environment, and Community .The residential course of study provides graduate students the opportunity to immerse themselves in graduate coursework and to teach in the School Overnight Program. This opportunity allows graduate students the opportunity to practice effective teaching strategies to meet the needs of diverse learners.

To support teachers in a variety of areas, educators are given the opportunity to attend Professional Development Workshops offered during one of the days that students are participating in the SOP. These workshops provide teachers with more ideas of ways to connect the learning that happens at IslandWood back into the classroom and align with the EALR's.

Translate the students' IslandWood experience back to their local communities.

Prior to the residential experience at IslandWood, schools are visited by their appointed liaison. During this visit, the liaison takes the opportunity to visit with teachers to learn about their curriculum goals and to visit the local community. Through this process, IslandWood is able to build an effective partnership with the school and the local community to optimize the learning experiences of the students.

To assist teachers, the Make a Difference Project has been developed. The Make a Difference Project provides classroom teachers with a framework to integrate the knowledge and skills gained during the four-day SOP experience with the learning being done in the classroom and ultimately into the everyday actions and decisions of the students. In addition, the Make a Difference Project provides a framework that assists IslandWood in achieving its mission of inspiring stewardship in students that attend its residential program. IslandWood defines stewardship as "actions that arise from caring, informed relationships within one's natural and cultural community."

Support schools in implementation of quality community learning projects.

Each classroom of students identifies, designs, and implements a community learning project that utilizes the learning gained at IslandWood and benefits the school or community. IslandWood liaisons work with teachers in response to their self-identified needs and support them to empower students to be community stewards. Currently, examples of community learning projects by some of IslandWood's participating schools include water quality monitoring, garden restoration projects, and waste reduction.

IslandWood has a Scholarship Endowment whereby schools can apply to receive scholarships so that their students can attend and participate in the School Overnight Program (SOP). The primary conditions for the scholarship subsidy include:

a. Financial need where the school has a high percentage of students who qualify for free and/or reduced lunch programs and families meet the criteria for financial need.

b. Program need where the school does not regularly participate in an annual residential environmental education program.

c. Diverse student population where the school has a high percentage of cultural and economic diversity.