Virtual Ceremony on October 15, 2020

 

Earlier this September, the Racine Zoo AmeriCorps Program (RZAP) received the Top Honors Education Award presented by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). The Award recognizes outstanding achievement in educational programming that promotes conservation knowledge, attitudes, and behavior, while demonstrating innovation in their program design and effectively measuring success. This recognition becomes even more remarkable when taking into account that the Racine Zoo AmeriCorps Program just concluded its first year as an AmeriCorps program.

 

As part of its mission to promote conservation efforts and an appreciation for the natural world, the Racine Zoo began looking for ways to increase the scope of its educational programming and to address some of the educational challenges faced by students in Racine, including issues of access to high quality environmental science-based programming. In fall 2018, the Racine Zoo was awarded an AmeriCorps Planning Grant to spend a year building all the facets of an AmeriCorps program to help fill these community needs. This planning period started with Zoo education staff travelling to all public-school districts in the county to meet with district administrators, curriculum advisors, principals, and participating teachers on what topics their curriculum should cover. As a result of meeting with school districts during their planning grant, Zoo education staff developed five programs undertaken at the kindergarten, third, fourth, seventh, and ninth grade levels with the goal of serving public school students at 29 schools across six school districts in Racine County. 

 

Once their AmeriCorps program launched in August 2019, their nine RZAP AmeriCorps members began working with students in their classrooms and at the Racine Zoo on activities and projects designed to address grade-level science curriculum. The five courses included Classification Cadets for Kindergarten students, Wildlife Explorers for third graders, Beginning Birders for fourth grade, Guardians of the Great Lakes for seventh grade, and Super Scientists for ninth grade. Details on each class can be found in Racine Zoo AmeriCorps Program's First Year by RZAP AmeriCorps member Amelia Ford.

 

As the year continued, they made adjustments to all five programs to refine their learning objectives and determine the ways to most effectively deliver them, with the students in all five of their classes showing improvement in their post-course evaluations. By the end of its first year, RZAP AmeriCorps members brought conservation education to over 3,150 students in Racine County who would have otherwise not had the opportunity to experience this type of hands-on environmentally-based programming. While the spread of COVID-19 caused them to have to halt programming in classrooms and at the Racine Zoo during the last few months of the school year, their new cohort of AmeriCorps members are continuing their mission to provide meaningful environmental education to children in Racine County.

 

 

After two weeks of virtual orientation on Zoom, the 20 Partners for After School Success (PASS) AmeriCorps members came together to meet each other in person for the first time by performing a service project at the MMSD School Forest for the 9/11 Day of Service.  The School Forest

 is open to the public most of the year and is widely utilized by Madison students during the school year for outdoor field trip opportunities such as environmental education, hiking, outdoor skills, overnight camping, night experiences and team building programs. 

 

Following these projects, the PASS AmeriCorps members gathered in the open-air shelter for a socially-distanced lunch while eating and chatting about the morning projects. In the afternoon, the PASS AmeriCorps members came together to take on the high ropes challenge course. They harnessed up and made their way up a rock wall, and then by working together in groups of two, the members made their way across logs, wires, islands of wood, and floating bridges. The afternoon was filled with lots of laughs and cheers of encouragement from the group on the course and from those below, as the members culminated their first day serving together in person as they prepared for a year of making a difference for students in the Madison area.

On 9/11 several AmeriCorps members and I volunteered for half of the day at the MMSD school forest, and spent the second half of the day working our way through the new high ropes course there. The school forest is used for outdoor classrooms, field trips, and overnight trips for kids in Madison, so helping keep it clean and ready for future groups was a great experience, and felt like an amazing way to honor 9/11, while still helping the Madison community! I enjoyed meeting my peers for the first time, while getting to work outside together and complete team building challenges. This event was a great way to start my experience with AmeriCorps, and I can't wait to continue to serve with my peers at events like this!

 

Our day of service at the Madison School District School Forest was an awesome opportunity to not only help out at the School Forest but also to bond with my AmeriCorps cohort and make new friends! In the morning, my group worked together to move and organize a large quantity of firewood into the woodshed, keeping it out of the rain and easier to access for the future. It felt really satisfying to complete this project and tidy up that space! In the afternoon, our group participated in the high ropes course. Not everyone wanted to go through the course, but we all ended up putting on our harnesses to show support for those who did decide to go up. We were all cheering each other on as people climbed completed the course and we weren't even bothered by the fact that it was a little cold and rainy. A lot of us were pretty nervous to go up on the high ropes course, but by the end, we were laughing and having so much fun.