Free National Park Field Trips for Fourth Graders

I video chatted with Cecilia, along with her classmates pictured above for our September story about the success of the Every Kid in a Park program in the Everglades.

It was such a treat to hear about their experiences. They sounded like mini wildlife experts! Students told me facts about alligators, pythons, and native plants that they learned about in the outdoor classroom experience. Not only that, I noticed a desire to preserve and protect the unique habitat of the Everglades, which provides drinking water to seven million people in Florida.

“You get to see things that you don’t see everyday,” says Sebastian Brenes, a 5th grader. Yet it’s only about an hour away from their school. “It’s basically awesome,” he says.

Dante B Fascell is a STEM elementary school in the Miami-Dade district, one of the largest in the country. About one third of fourth graders in the Miami-Dade district visited Everglades National Park last year. That’s close to 9,000 students!

Though the Everglades has been hosting field trips for more than 45 years, the Every Kid in a Park program has more than doubled the demand. To accommodate these students, park ranger Allyson Gantt created a volunteer-run outdoor classroom with five stations.

“We really tried to make the stations interactive and hands on,” says Gantt. “We want kids to see wildlife up close,” she says.

It was obvious the experience made an impact, as students could explain what they saw and felt four months after they visited.