News

NPS Education Summit

March 2023

The Stewardship Institute is part of the planning team for the first annual National Park Service Education Summit—an event designed to support and connect educators who deliver NPS K-12 education programming. The summit will feature content focused on learner-centered professional development, presentations on service-wide initiatives, and opportunities for education program development and support. Some of the topics for the week include the Foundations of Education, America 250, Student Learning after Trauma, and Honoring Tribal Legacies. The summit was a virtual event held March 28-31. The summit provided an opportunity for connecting colleagues from across the service, learning about emerging program initiatives, and celebrating educators!

Park for Every Classroom, a Stewardship Institute supported partnership program, was featured during a session on climate change education titled “Finding Your Place in Climate Change Education.” In this session, Joan Haley, from Shelburne Farms and Director of Park for Every Classroom, Larry Perez, from the NPS Climate Change Response Program, and Geneviève de Messières, lead for NASA’s Earth to Sky Interagency Partnership, discussed the different ways these programs are supporting educators across the service.

Group in the Forest Center classroom working together during a training session
NPS Photo

2023 Stewardship Institute Trainings

February 2023
Beginning in January 2023, the Stewardship Institute hosted two trainings for NPS leaders and partners. One training was dedicated to building a workplace rooted in equity and wellbeing. When leaders look to build a positive workplace culture, it can feel daunting and confusing to identify the desired culture and the steps they can take to achieve it. Without training, resources, and support, park leaders are on their own to figure out how best to support their employees. That is why the Stewardship Institute invited NPS leadership (superintendents, program managers, division chiefs, regional office leadership, etc.) to participate in a 5 session learning series on building workplace culture rooted in equity and wellbeing. Forty-three leaders registered for the training and learned about the 5 building blocks for workplace culture – dignity, purpose, belonging, growth, and joy. The training highlights the Surgeon General’s recently issued guidance on workplace wellbeing as essential for public health. They also discussed Carol Dweck’s How Companies Can Profit from a “Growth Mindset” (hbr.org)

The second training the Stewardship Institute hosted is focused on Mindful Facilitation. Mindfulness is both an ability to focus and a mindset that facilitates wellness, high performance, and inspiring leadership. Participants had a chance to work in small groups and practice facilitation skills on feedback, decision making and consensus, engagement and empowerment, inspiring and managing change, and negotiating through conflict. The training provided NPS leaders with the skills to facilitate complex situations, practice personal reflection, strengthen emotional resilience, and help build a diverse culture of openness and acceptance.

The Stewardship Institute is dedicated to hosting opportunities for the NPS to cultivate healthy and positive workplaces and leaders.