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Project Learning Tree
Project Learning Tree (PLT) is one of the most widely-used environmental education programs in the country. Each year, more than 30,000 educators attend PLT workshops, joining the half million who have already learned how to use PLT's curriculum.
The BLM has a partnership with PLT to enhance special theme workshops on fire education and on invasive species. In addition, BLM supports PLT's GreenWorks! programs, offering grants to support service learning projects involving fire or invasive plants. You must become a PLT facilitator to apply for one of these grants.
PLT relies on an extensive network of cooperating organizations and volunteer trainers to deliver its services. PLT provides educators with supplementary environmental curriculum materials that can be integrated into lesson plans for all grades and subject areas. All of the PLT materials have been correlated to the National Science Education Standards, to the national Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, and to all the age level handbook guidelines for badges for the Girl Scouts of the USA. Individual state partners are correlating the materials to the various state standards.
PLT activities address all aspects of the environment, using approaches that model constructivist learning theory, cooperative learning, whole language and problem solving applied to real-life contexts. PLT materials also include a variety of appropriate authentic assessment techniques. In addition to offering a Pre K-8 Activity Guide in English and Spanish, PLT offers units for secondary education in forests, forest ecology, risk. For more information, go to their website at www.plt.org.
PLT's Fire Education Program
The goal of the fire education partnership is to provide interactive, hands-on, locally driven programs that engage educators, students, and other community members in wildland fire education and activities. Nine western states were targeted to participate in the first year (2001-2002): Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. BLM provided PLT coordinators and lead facilitators from these states with intensive training related to both wildfire and fire education at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho in the summer of 2001. These coordinators, their facilitator teams, and fire experts from BLM and other agencies are now using that training to conduct a series of educator workshops in targeted communities in their states. These workshops provide both formal and non-formal educators with PLT fire activities as well as a variety of supplemental wildland fire education materials developed by the BLM and other federal agencies. By all estimates, this initiative will exceed its goal of training 1,000 educators during the first year. Select this link for information on PLT's Fire Education program.
The popular "Burning Issues" CD-ROM, produced by the Science Education Department of Florida State University in cooperation with the BLM, is one of the supplemental resources introduced to teachers in the fire workshops. This interactive program puts students at the controls as they try to keep destructive fires from spreading, learn when and where prescribed fires are appropriate, and learn how to protect homes and communities from wildfires. As one workshop participant commented, "If you want to reach the kids I teach, you need to get them really involved in an exciting topic or have something really interesting and fun for them to work with on the computer." The "Burning Issues" CD-ROM does both.
BLM and PLT are also working together to sponsor special GreenWorks! grants designed to engage students directly in grass-roots community service programs that focus on wildland fire prevention, safety, and restoration. These grants are being offered to educators and their students to implement community service activities including, but not limited to, brush clearing, community education projects, and restorations such as invasive plant removal and planting of native species after fires. The goal is to increase community involvement in fire-related activities and to link students to existing, on-going community networks that work for healthy ecosystems.
Due to the success of these programs, BLM and PLT are expanding this effort to include additional partners and states for 2002 - 2003. here are 45,000 wild horses and burros roaming public rangelands managed by BLM -- lands they must share with wildlife, and other users such as livestock and recreationists. Learn about the natural and cultural history of these hardy creatures — "living symbols of the American West"-- and the management challenges they present today.