Cuyahoga Valley National Park - For Teachers (U.S. National Park Service)

NPS/ted toth

Students visit a canal lock.

Plan a Field Trip
Cuyahoga Valley National Park provides an ideal setting for a variety of educational experiences. Whether your students spend a week at the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center, a few hours on a geology program, or explore transportation history aboard the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, the hands-on educational opportunity in a natural environment is especially memorable.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park's primary partner in educational programming is Cuyahoga Valley National Park Association (CVNPA) through the operation of the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center. National park and CVNPA staff work together to offer a variety of day and residential programming.

Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad Education Programs are available during fall and spring.

Teacher Guide
In 2009 national park staff partnered with Western Reserve Public Media to create a free teachers guide, Generations: Cuyahoga Valley National Park—Preserve and Protect, with middle school lesson plans in mathematics, science, social studies, art, and language arts. This guide is a companion piece to the one-hour Generations: Cuyahoga Valley National Park documentary and the national PBS series, America’s Best Idea. There is also a board game about the national park available in a pdf format.

Expanded For Kids Section
In 2009, with support from a Parks as Classrooms grant, we did a major expansion of the For Kids section of this website. Over 50 people were involved, including local elementary and high school students. The primary audience is upper elementary students doing online research for school projects. We focused on providing local ecological, geological, and historical information that supports Ohio academic content standards in social studies and science. A professional children’s nonfiction writer wrote most of the text, making sure that the writing style and reading levels were appropriate for young readers.

Look for these buttons throughout the For Kids section.

Look for new special features under For Kids. There are over 70 videos of real kids getting their park-related questions answered by park experts! You’ll also find writings from different eras in which local people describe their life experiences. These cover the period from the Western Reserve, through the Canal Era, to the 1930s. Look for links under Changes in Daily Life.

What do you think? If you or your students visited For Kids, we would appreciate hearing what you liked best and what could be better. Did you find the information you were looking for? E-mail your comments to Arrye Rosser, interpretive and education specialist, at e-mail us.

Teachers in Parks
National parks enrich the lives of many in this nation. They provide access to the powerful ideas, values, and meanings associated with the remarkable cultural, natural, and recreational heritage of the United States. The National Park Service (NPS) strives to provide opportunities for all Americans to connect to their national heritage through the national parks. However, these opportunities are lacking for some — often due to a variety of social and economic factors.

The Teacher-Ranger-Teacher (TRT) Program offers a solution by linking National Park units with teachers from predominantly Title 1 (at least 30% of students on free or reduced cost meals) school districts.