Lake Roosevelt Administrative History

Environmental Education

When LARO's interpretive program was just getting started, park staff acknowledged the need to work closely with schools and other institutions to convey the conservation ideals of the Park Service. Beginning in the late 1960s, Park Service interpreters were trained to incorporate environmental themes into their programs. As the agency promoted this strongly during the 1970s, the Park Service obtained funding to produce curriculum materials for elementary school students and expected each park to do so. [124]

By 1971, one of LARO's management goals was to help eastern Washington schools develop environmental study areas and an environmental curriculum, both through teacher workshops and on a consultant basis. The following year, LARO personnel served as visiting staff to several sixth-grade school camps, offered forty off-site environmental education programs, and maintained regular contact with local teachers and administrators. The park's Environmental Education Specialist was based in the Spokane field office, and that office and the Regional Office handled most of the environmental education programs of the early 1970s. Most of the programs dealt with local history, plant/animal relationships, and archaeology. By 1975, LARO staff was working with the Grand Coulee Dam school district to develop an environmental ethic in its curriculum; the state published the resulting loose-leaf workbook. [125]

LARO again initiated formal environmental education programs for students in 1988, reaching approximately five hundred children per summer. In 1989, the recreation area began participating in the Pacific Northwest field seminars program. Park staff organized a number of field trips to several National Natural Landmarks related to the Ice Age Floods, plus a houseboat tour of Lake Roosevelt on the history of the upper Columbia River. A shift in focus of interpretive programs occurred in 1993, when many recreational skills demonstrations were replaced with environmental education activities. These programs emphasized water resources and reservoir dynamics. [126]

The park established a new environmental education program in 1995 known as the Lake Roosevelt Floating Classroom. LARO's Chief of Interpretation Dan Brown felt that focusing on water-quality issues would be a good way to increase public awareness of this controversial and important aspect of managing Lake Roosevelt. The NRA hired its first Education Technician, and the program combined interpretation and resource management. Houseboats rented from Roosevelt Recreational Enterprises were outfitted with water quality and aquatic environment monitoring equipment. Instructors included Park Service interpreters and resource specialists, scientists, and experts from other agencies, tribes, universities, and private industry. Students from area high schools combined two days of hands-on testing and data-gathering exercises with pre-trip classroom study of water quality issues. The program has been "wildly successful" from the beginning. It supported the Park Service management goal to promote understanding and problem solving of difficult water-quality issues through community involvement. [127]

Participants in the Lake Roosevelt Floating Classroom program, no date. Photo courtesy of National Park Service, Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area.

After the first season, park staff decided to work more closely with teachers to establish curriculum-based materials and programs. Following a series of teacher workshops, LARO employees and area teachers created a Floating Classroom Teacher's Guide. In 1998, LARO established a five-year plan for an interdisciplinary, curriculum-based education program for kindergarten through twelfth-grade students known as the Lake Roosevelt Education Outreach Program. Its purpose is to combine existing programs such as the Floating Classroom and the annual Water Festival for fourth graders into a comprehensive approach for all grade levels in twenty-two school districts. The goal is to expose over five thousand students to the resources of their watershed in ways that enhance community awareness and environmental stewardship and also help teachers meet new state standards known as Washington State's Essential Learning Requirements. [128]

The Floating Classroom program was part of a pilot project supported by the Governor's Council on Environmental Education. Other elements of the plan include a Resource Directory, Environmental Lab and Classroom, Teacher Curriculum training, and the Water Festival. LARO's interpretive staff worked with local citizens in establishing the project and developing the curriculum. [129]