Photo: Ranger Daniel Kish gives a ranger talk at Point Supreme in Cedar Breaks with an aspiring Junior Ranger by Leah Hurley.
As a Peace Corps Volunteer, a National Park Service Ranger, and now as a dad, I've worked with youth to share the wonders of our natural world. I've also taught English and sexual education.
In Paraguay as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I developed interpretive environmental education activities to engage grade school children in the form of camps. We played games, performed skits, had free time, did crafts, and learned about the deforestation of the surrounding Alto Paraná Atlantic Forest. We also learned about the water cycle, photosynthesis, recycling, the ozone, and much more.
I helped to develop a youth group Comision Pro Ambiente de Jacarei'. I created a curriculum and wrote and was awarded grant funds from USAID for my project. We worked with high school students to harvest tree seeds, construct a community tree nursery, provide community talks, and take field trips to a Paraguayan national park and NGOs.
I developed a curriculum to teach English classes on a regular basis. There were two groups. One being grade school children, and the other were high school students and adults.
As a park ranger, I regularly worked with youth to provide talks, guided hikes, issue Junior Ranger badges, attend special events and much more.