Keenan Hofstetter, a student at Bourbon High School, has been selected with 13 other students from schools such as Owensville, Hermann, Belle, Washington and Union, to participate in the grant-paid National Resource Career Experience with Earth’s Classroom.
The program is for the 2009-2010 school year and is a program exclusively for high school juniors and seniors that are interested in wildlife biology, environmental studies, outdoor education, sustainable architecture or similar career fields.
The program provides a three-to-four hour after- school experiential course once a month throughout the school year. Each course will be a different subject related to the field.
At the conclusion of the program, the students must give a one-hour solo presentation to an elementary class on a subject they are most passionate about. Approximately 250-350 elementary students will be able to share the experience through the presentation of the NRCE students.
Twenty-four hours of the course, 60 hours of ecological learning/canoe-trip and the one-hour presentation will net a Certificate of Achievement.
The courses include: studying ornithology at Busch Memorial Conservation Area in October; Mammology at Earth’s Classroom in November; Forestry and Natural Resource Management in December; Sustainable Living in January that includes visiting a home that is designed in a self-sustainable way; Cultural Pre-History in February; Limnology in March; Herpetology in April; an hour presentation in the student’s school district in May; and, finally, a three-day, two-night canoe trip that will travel the Meramec River.