Page 8 - Tree Line - North Carolina Forestry Association - Third Quarter 2023

Educating the Educators: The Sustainable Forestry Teachers Experience
By Kat Peters, communications intern; Jessica Ireland, director of education programs; and Abigail Ridge, education programs coordinator
Summer is here and so is the NCFA’s Sustainable Forestry Teachers Experience (SFTE)! Each June and July, the NCFA presents three workshops
for teachers — one in each region of North Carolina.
These professional development workshops provide teachers with continuing education and North Carolina environmental education certification credits. They also impart skills and knowledge as well as resources to
bring back to the educators’ classrooms or programs. The workshops are an excellent opportunity for forestry and the forest products industry to increase and expand knowledge and awareness about sustainable forestry in North Carolina.
The NCFA is happy to partner with
the NC Sustainable Forestry Initiative State Implementation Committee, the NC Forest Service, and NC Project Learning Tree (PLT) on this program. PLT, the environmental education initiative
of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, provides educators with environmental education activities and resources
that they can use right away in their classrooms. PLT activities are hands-on and multidisciplinary, can be tailored for any age group, and are correlated to the North Carolina standards, making them an ideal tool for integrating forestry into K-12 education in our state.
The four-day SFTE workshop allows educators to see sustainable forestry in action, with tours of North Carolina forests
and forestry facilities in the associated region. Groups typically consist of approximately 30 educators from across the state who teach all age levels and subjects, including science, language arts, social studies, agricultural education, Spanish, and more! The primary objective of the SFTE is to open educators’ eyes to the world of sustainable forestry in North Carolina so that they can then take that knowledge back to their classrooms, along with resources to integrate forestry into their curriculum. >>>
6 ncforestry.org / THIRD QUARTER 2023
Teachers tour Weyerhaeuser timberlands during the 2023 Coast SFTE.