The planting of a tree shows faith in the future.

-- Charles Shultz

Care

Opportunities Abound -- Simply exposing kids to the Minnesota forest ecosystems gives them the opportunity to formulate values regarding forest ecosystems and ethical consideration of the trees, wildlife, ecological funcitions. Add some snippets of instruction along a nature hike, and the literature says that it sticks with them better as they make instant connections. Minnesota has numerous environmental learning centers, nature centers, and state parks that offer trails, personnel, and educational programming, as well as available classroom curriculums, which use language of forest management for many uses and creating sustainable systems. Capacity is great for extending care to the forests through teaching forest ecology, as well as offering students hands on learning experiences. Further studies could look into how much these opportunities are actually being used.

Partnerships Galore -- Many of these agencies and organizations have formed partnerships, a great example being the Minnesota Arbor Month Partnership, which is specifically working to promote care of Minnesota forests. The extensive evidence of collaboration that already exists between the administrative levels of education and forest action indicates that common desires for sustainable forestry are growing. Capacity for teaching care of forest for diverse use results from these diverse partnerships.

Service Learning Potential -- Engaging students in service learning projects within forests would provide benefits to both educational and forest initiatives. Educational literature suggests that experiential and service-based learning contributes to teaching students about citizenship and civic duty and leads to character development. Forestry could surely use students, who provide free energy and enthusiasm to help clean up, build trails, gather data, care for trees, pull buckthorn, etc. Service learning is not a means to care as commonly used in Minnesota as the more traditional classroom instruction and supplemental field trip method. However, charter schools with environmental missions, and schools enrolled in the DNR's School Forest Program do service projects with the forests. This is a means to care that has not been tapped into much.

Legitimizing the Learning and Care of Programs -- Programs like the School Forest Program formally support the needs of education and forestry by contracting members of many communities into efforst of management, care, and education. This relationship holds potential for greater public legitimacy since it is public forestry and public education agencies entering into the contract. Also, this approach to care of education and forests has a strength in the committment involved on either end. With 80 public schools in the School Forest Program, there is much more potential for schools to join and land to be entered into the program. Limitations may involve funding, DNR personnel, and committee members. Future studies could assess the impacts of the School Forest Program and limitations to its development.

Collaboration

Use of Physical Structures. Many buildings and facilities, like environmental learning centers, nature centers, state visitors/interpretive centers, and pavillions exist within Minnesota forests for the purpose of joining forest and education efforts - to serve as classrooms, informational centers, work areas, storage for data collection equipment, research labs, shelter, overnight accomadation, etc. Having a physcial place open to various groups requires collaboration in the process of managing use of the facility, but the space also serves as an agent for forming partnerships. When money is tight, it is in the best interest of whatever group is managing the facility to reach out and invite others to use and support it. These structures become a sort of commons for learning and work in the middle of the woods, drawing support and funding from a diverse set of stakeholders. Many structures exist. Future studies could look into use trends.

Development of Curriculum. Developing curriculum about forestry encourages collaboration across government and private interest group boundaries. Groups engaged in educational development and outreach must work together to formulate curricula that meet state education standards, that provides ease of use in and out of the classroom, that encourages the topic of Minnesota forests to be used accross disciplines, etc. Whatever the agenda or pupose in joining the topic of forest ecosystems and K-12 public education, there must be effective collaboration for any curriculum to be adopted, whether it is stemming from public agencies or private organizations. All curricula that I looked at has been correlated to Minnesota education standards. This means that content relating to thinking about forest "sustainability" could be lacking in much of the material, since no standards relate to sustainability. However, I was not able to gain access to specific course content to make any sort of judgement. Future studies could further investigate and evaluate the content of curriculum in relation to sustainable forestry.

Service Learning. Whomever the owners of the woods may be, as they commit their forests to restoration, conservation, or sustainable use; funding, data collectors, and manpower are in short supply for supporting efforts. Students are free labor, and there is an ever growing set of literature endorsing work and hands on learning to reinforce what is taught in the classroom. As indicated above, there is still much potential for collaborative relationships in service learning.

The DNR's Firewise Community Program integrates the community, technology, field work, DNR personnel, university research, and high school students in gathering data relating to fire and Minnesota woods. This sort of collaboration not only fits with the more place-oriented movements, but also with national education trends that call for more technological skill. GPS/GIS may be a great way to push technology and directly connect data to the outdoors and the real world. This holds capacity as a strategic pathway to gaining support across society. Further studies could look into potential to expand GPS/GIS education methods in high schools.

Charter schools that are situated within the northwoods and sponsored by environmental learning centers are extreme examples of collaboration. They are public institutions, they are being sponsored by a private organization, their educational philosophies can directly state that the surrounding environments are used as a learning context, and their missions are to instill a balanced environmental ethic in K-12 students. These types of educational institutions have great potential to function off wide-spread community collaboration. I was not able to research into them enough to determine if they do collaborate or not. This is something to look into further.

Change

Based on this research, the environmental organizations and the MN DNR have made great efforts to promote education of Minnesota environments and relate their missions to "sustianability". They have developed and retrofitted curricula and programs to meet state standards and have worked within national educational trends that emphasize standards and tests in addition to declining funds. Change towards some of forestry's and education's counter-movements has been limited by national trends and decreased funding. However, it seems as if sentiment for the counter-movements is growing and spreading, which bodes well for future change.

Forestry does not seem to be an environmental issue as targeted for collaboration with K-12 education as water quality and air quality efforts. There are many possible reasons for this, which I have no way of verifying. Regardless, if forestry wishes to establish a more extensive relationship with K-12 education, they may have to "compete" with other environmental issues in order to be integrated into curriculum. If something like Environment as Intgrating Context (EIC) gains in popularity as place-based education gains support, balances of issues used as context will have to be dealt with. There is much a growing demand for environment to be integrated, but it is unknown if this capacity has already been filled with other environmental issues, leaving foresty short-changed. Future studies could look at the loyalties of specific education programs to environmental issues and projects.

Many of the ELC's offer "forest management" courses. It can be hypothesized that they wish for students to critically think about how and why to manage of forest ecosystem. Perhaps the agenda is to steer more towards conservation and preservation, or maybe it is to restore the forest back to an orininal state, or maybe it is to get students to think about future challenges. Regardless, offering a course in forest management asks students to ask questions, since even the "experts" do not know how to manage a forest. There is no evidence from my research that a "right" way of managing Minnesota forests is being preached. Instead, the trend seems to be invite a wide-range of considerations. As mentioned in the above bullet point, attitudes are increasingly favoring sustianable ideas of place and collaboration.

The public education realm in Minnesota has not been pro-active in establishing a working relationship with public forestry. However, based on the growing literature on place-based education and examples like Vermont, where educational standards of "sustainability" and "understanding place" were adopted, there is much potential for a better relationship between Minnesota forestry and K-12 public education standards. There is literature calling for development of place-based sustainable forest management; there is literature calling for place-based experiential education. Much pontial exist for the relationship to contintue co-evolving (and that sounds so ecological too :) )