Funding enabled Yampatika Environmental Literacy Program to offer free programming to every kindergarten through fifth-grade student with a goal of increasing environmental literacy. Students increased short-term knowledge of topics at each grade level and improved awareness of local, natural environment. Students also exhibited an increase in positive attitudes towards environmental issues and understanding the opinions of others.
Yampatika has developed a model program which reflects movements within ALL education to promote 21st century skills, like: critical thinking, collaboration, and connection with community and the natural environment. Yampatika’s Environmental Literacy Program supports educators in teaching common core curriculum and improving student performance overall.
Environmental Literacy Program by grade-level, Adaptations, Animals, Aquatic Wild, Archaeology, Architecture, Bats, Bears, Beavers, Birds, Botany, Geology, Fire, Flying Wild, Food Chain, Fossils, Habitats, Human Impact, Mapping, Owls, Pine Beetle, Plants, Pollution, Project Learning Tree, Project Wild, Rocks & Minerals, Senses, Skulls, Tracking, Water Ecology, Water Quality, Watersheds, Wildflowers, Wildlife; and more.
Funding provided program support for the AmeriCorps School Based Mentoring Program placing 10 School Based Mentors in nine schools throughout Routt County to improve the academic performance of targeted students and promote positive youth development in the schools. Each Mentor works with 10 students, spending a minimum of one hour a week with each student for the duration of the school year. The mentoring model, intervention strategy centers on increasing adult bonding and academic engagement. Mentors also provide weekly in-school and after-school programming for all students in the schools, as well as annual service learning opportunities.
Funding offset costs of Yampa Valley Science School. The Yampa Valley Science School provides an opportunity for all sixth-grade students in Routt County to spend an entire week exploring the ecology of their home and collecting research to determine how we can better protect it. A teacher from Soroco described the experience and benefits from a teacher’s perspective, “The science school experience fosters an interest and love of science. For some students it is their first opportunity to do some real, hands-on, minds-on science. It takes science from the theoretical to the practical, relevant topic I feel it is meant to be. It gives us, as classroom teachers some really valuable schema and knowledge on which to build for the year.”