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For Educators

Programs for Educators

The Watershed Agricultural Council in partnership with the New York City DEP and the USDA Forest Service, offers a suite of forestry educational programs for classroom teachers, non-formal educators, and students in New York City and the New York City Watershed regions. These programs explore the connections between land, water, and people, with a special focus on how healthy forests protect water quality. Programs teach educators and students about the critical role forests play in watersheds and highlight how individuals and communities can be active stewards of their watershed environments.

Key learning objectives are to understand:

Watershed form and function

The New York City water supply system

How healthy forests filter and protect water quality

The past, present and future human dimensions of the NYC Watershed

The Forestry Program offers 4 core program areas:

Watershed Forestry Institute for Teachers

Each year, the Watershed Agricultural Council’s Forestry Program offers a FREE five-day, four-night summer professional learning program for 4-12th grade teachers and non-formal educators in the NYC Watershed region that explores how people and forests work together to provide clean drinking water. Key topics include watershed science and stewardship, sustainable forestry, and the human dimensions of the NYC Watershed and water supply system. Teachers earn CTLE credits and experience field trips, curricula training, dozens of hands-on activities, peer and expert collaboration, campfires and more! 

Watershed Forestry Institute for Teachers

Watershed Forestry Field Trips

The Watershed Agricultural Council’s Forestry Program offers customized field trips to help groups discover how forests and people work together to provide some of the world’s best drinking water. This competitive grant program helps plan and pay for 4 different types of watershed forestry themed field trips in the NYC Watershed.

Watershed Forestry Field Trips

Virtual Watershed Forestry Field Trips

The Watershed Agricultural Council’s Forestry Program offers FREE Virtual Watershed Forestry Fieldtrips to the New York City Watershed so you and your students can experience the forests that filter and protect NYC’s drinking water LIVE in your classrooms. WAC educators join your class live from the reservoirs, streams and forests of the NYC Watershed and lead your students in hands-on science activities related to watersheds, forest ecosystem services, and stream ecology.

Virtual Watershed Forestry Field Trips

Green Connections

This competitive grant program supports classroom partnerships that meaningfully connect students from NYC and the upstate NYC Watershed through personal communications and shared experiences. Two program options help students grow academically, social-emotionally, and civically by learning about each other, each other’s ways of life, and the two contrasting, yet interconnected environments in which they live:  

  • Green Connections LITE – 4-12th grade students connect REMOTELY through mail and video conference. 
  • Green Connections FULL – 4-8th grade students connect through pen pal letters, shared field trips (one upstate, one downstate), a 7-lesson curriculum, and local watershed stewardship projects. 
Green Connections

Watershed Forestry Educator Community of Practice

Support for our network of educators by providing information, resources and ongoing trainings on our Teacher Resources document and through our education e-newsletter.