Video
Everglades Environmental Education: 40th Anniversary Celebration
Descriptive Transcript
Description Narrator: An airplant grows on a tree branch. In the background, visitors traverse the slough.
Everglades Environmental Education 40th Anniversary Celebration.
Ranger Allyson: Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming out today to help us celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Everglades Education Program. We're able to pin down the actual date that our program started and that was April 19th, 1971.
Description Narrator: An illustration of a backpack and ranger hat surrounded by common Everglades animals. Everglades Environmental Education Program. 1971 to 2011.
Allyson Gantt, Education & Outreach Coordinator, Environmental Education.
Allyson Gantt: It's nice to be able to take some time and step back, and even though we've started off our season and things are busy, it's nice to be able to take today to recognize our successes and to acknowledge this milestone and celebrate where we've come from and where we're headed from here.
The program started with a six-week pilot program at Shark Valley. The first program brought inner city schools out to the park, to Shark Valley and for a fishing program, and also to visit the Fire Tower.
Description Narrator: A school bus drops off children at the Loop Road Education Center.
Yvette Cano, Park Ranger, Loop Road Education Center. Yvette speaks to the kids at the campground while holding a large map of Southern Florida and the Everglades.
Ranger Yvette: I am Ranger Yvette. I know you guys have been on the bus forever and ever and ever, but we promise you three days of jam-packed fun. Can you handle that?
Kids: Yeah.
Ranger Yvette: Listen, we freed you from your classroom. You got to be a little more excited than that. OK? Are you excited about camping at Loop Road for three days?
Kids: Yes.
Ranger Yvette: Oh, OK, that's better. That's better.
The environmental and programs started nothing near to what we have here today, but it started back in 1971. So, we are very, very excited that we have been up and running for 40 years.
Description Narrator: Larry Perez, Former Environmental Ed Park Ranger.
Larry Perez: I like to think that personally, my six years with the education department and the thousands of students I interacted with on day programs and special programs and camp programs that among those thousands of thousands of students, perhaps a baker's dozen, learn something from what I was saying all those many years.
Description Narrator: Dan Kimball, Park Superintendent. Scenes of park rangers teaching students while hiking in the Everglades.
Dan Kimball: You know, back in the early sixties, we had this rather… I think he's known as the strongest director of the National Park Service, a guy named George Hertzog. And he was the one who really said, you know, parks are out there. They're a great place to have people connect with their environment.
And he told the park service to start an environmental education program, and he was a pretty powerful guy, and he talked about connecting people with the parks, but he also talked about how important it was for people to understand their relationship to the environment.
Immediately after that, of course, we started our Environmental Education Program in 1971, and the rest is history. You start to think about how many students have come through this program. 380,000 students have come through this program. I mean, it's pretty phenomenal.
Description Narrator: Paula Nelson-Shokar, Teacher.
Paula Nelson-Shokar: Oh, it would be a disservice to everyone not to have this program. I think about my personal students, I do teach science, and we're just less than ten minutes away straight down the road. And many of my kids have never been to the Everglades, and once they’ve experienced this, they too will change whatever fears that they may have.
Description Narrator: A road sign, yield for Panthers, next 2 miles.
Paula Nelson-Shokar: And it's the fear of the unknown, really, or if it takes them out of their comfort zone and that they will gain a deeper respect for the world in which we live in. Because then they would want to be advocates for this fabulous place.
And I think that's why it's important for people to have these experiences.
Description Narrator: Sandy Dayhoff, Former Environmental Education Program Manager.
Sandy Dayhoff: In 1971, there was a small place in the Everglades. There was a ranger who lived there alone. His name was Bruce McHenry. He was a man of vision.
He invited other Rangers to tromp out through the water and the Everglades. Thus, the Swamp Tromp.
Description Narrator: Students experience the Everglades walking through a slough.
Sandy Dayhoff: We came to visit. Bruce called it the environmental education program, and he loved it. Little did the visitors know that this would change all of their lives forever. In general, most of the park staff thought we were kind of crazy, as you saw earlier.
Description Narrator: Park employees wear costumes and perform a scene for the audience.
Sandy Dayhoff: But they persevered and became an unstoppable team of young rangers.
Description Narrator: Park rangers guide visitors to view wildlife.
Sandy Dayhoff: It wasn't too long before they talked teachers into coming. You guys were from the city, you were city slickers, and the experience was new for you, and they…
Group: Loved it.
Sandy Dayhoff: The teachers then brought the students to learn about this special place called Everglades National Park, and they...
Group: Loved it.
Sandy Dayhoff: And pretty soon, the teachers wanted more and more and more. You all are a greedy bunch. [laughter] The place became an outdoor classroom and the Rangers and the teachers…
Group: Loved it.
Sandy Dayhoff: They wanted day programs, camping programs, special visit programs, off-site visits, traveling trunks, teaching workshops, curriculum guides, curriculum kids, and you go on and on and on, and you're still not happy.
Description Narrator: Alligators and a variety of birds found in the Everglades. A tram full of students drives by.
Sandy Dayhoff: It was never enough, and the Rangers…
Group: Loved it.
Sandy Dayhoff: It is often said that the lifeblood of the Everglades is water, but I'm not so sure that's really true. The lifeblood of Everglades and Everglades National Park lies within, and always will lie within those who fight for it, protect it and…
Group: Loved it.
Sandy Dayhoff: Thank you. [Applause]
Description Narrator: A student enters his tent at the campsite.
Student: What is it? Oh my god. I can’t sleep with wild animals, oh my god.
Vivian Vega: Every year we've been lucky enough to bring our students to the Everglades for the Shark Valley field trip, and it is amazing, and they are fascinated by what they see, and they go back to school, they can't wait to go back and tell their parents, they can't wait to come back here.
It's like nothing they've ever seen before, and they’re thrilled by it. And as a teacher, I'm thrilled to be able to give them this opportunity.
Allyson Gantt: What we are looking for is to give people, give students a positive experience and help them to make a positive connection to the Everglades, and to our natural world with the idea that they will carry that on throughout their lives and whether they turn into teachers that share it with someone or just a really great parent or friend who shares it with the people that they know around them. That is as important as we can get, and that is turning people into park stewards.
Description Narrator: Ellen Siegel, Park Volunteer & Supporter.
Ellen Siegel: The story that I wanted to tell took place on a really beautiful spring day when I was a volunteer for the fourth grade Shark Valley tram trip. And it's a very, very well put together program with an awful lot of preparation. We heard about the prep tonight at this program. And the bus pulled up on time and it unloaded the kids and on the bus was a little girl in a wheelchair with two extra people with her.
And one of the things that the park service is rigid about is you got to register everyone, and if they're special needs, we have to know. And the school had not alerted that we had a child in a wheelchair.
She was a beautiful, blue eyed, blond little girl and she was a quadriplegic from a car accident. And the Rangers conferred really quickly because really protocol might have been that she and her adults couldn't go, and there was no way she was not getting on the tram.
And so quietly, without any fuss, the wheelchair and the two extra adults got put on the tram and we went on the tram trip. And the highlight of that trip for me, besides the compassion and the commitment that I saw it on the staff, was when we dug up the periphyton, which is this gooey, ooey, ugly, scary looking algae mat.
Description Narrator: A person squeezes water out of a handful of periphyton.
Ellen Siegel: And they passed the pieces around and the aides and the Ranger put a glob of periphyton on this little girl's hand and squeezed it and the look on her face—the delight, the joy, the awe, the surprise—will never leave me.
And that's the Everglades Environmental Education Program to me.
Vivian Vega: Just a very big thank you to the National Park Service program and to the Rangers for making it possible and for allowing us to be a part of it. Thank you.
Description Narrator: Everglades National Park Video Production. National Park Service logo.
Producer, Director, Editor: Jennifer Brown.
Executive Producers: Allyson Gantt, Alan Scott.
Music performed by: Rhonda Lorence ‘Changing Tides’ and ‘Wandering’, From the Movements in the Moment album, Magnatune Records, www.magnatune.com.
Graphic illustration by Nate Shaw, www.nateshawart.com.
Description
This video features interviews from the Environmental Education 40th anniversary celebration in addition to Everglades nature and education program footage (8 min. with closed-captions).
Duration
7 minutes, 58 seconds
Credit
NPS Video by Jennifer Brown
Date Created
02/22/2011
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