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2023 Downeast region tour participants visit Baskahegan Company lands and visit a harvest conducted by A&A Brochu.
Met with Enthusiasm and Support from Maine Businesses and Educators.
By Hope Light
Returning for its 27th year, Maine businesses and educators have enthusiastically received Maine TREE’s Forests of Maine Teachers’ Tours. Since 1997, Maine TREE’s Forests of Maine Teachers’ Tours have hosted over 1,000 educators. Through this program, Maine TREE facilitates connections between two of Maine’s most critical workforces: professionals who steward the lands we depend on and professionals who educate and care for our children. These connections invigorate content delivery in classrooms, secure a sustained forest workforce, and prepare a generation of land stewards for Maine’s future.
Classroom Teachers, Girl and Boy Scout leaders, conservation organization staff, and other educators are among those who join the tour to learn about Maine’s forest resources from professionals working in the woods. Educators earn up to 30 contact hours toward their continuing education requirement for teacher certification renewal. The tours prepare participants to return to the classroom with stimulating approaches to share knowledge about the forest with students, colleagues, and communities. Throughout the four-day tour, participants engage in Project Learning Tree activities, meet professionals who work in the Maine woods, and develop ideas on how to bring the forest to the classroom or the classroom to the forest.
Each year, the tours are hosted in different regions throughout Maine. This year, tour participants will visit land owned by the 2024 program underwriters Hancock Lumber and Irving Woods and tour the companies’ manufacturing facilities. Two tours are scheduled for this summer: July 9 to 12 in Fort Kent and July 23 to 26 in Poland Spring.
One tour participant, speaking about their experience attending a previous year’s tour, said, “We need to keep our children here in Maine. We need children who have a connection to the natural world around them. The Teachers’ Tours help those who work with children foster that love in the next generation of Mainers. Maine is such a beautiful place to live and work, and I am so grateful to be a part of an opportunity that looks to Maine’s future for all of us!” 2023 tour participant and Piscataquis County Soil & Water Conservation District education coordinator Kacey Weber encouraged all educators to apply, saying, “I learned SO MUCH, and I met wonderful people doing incredible work in conservation (…) If you are an educator – traditional or not – I highly recommend the Maine TREE Teachers Tour to you all. “
2023 Forests of Maine Teachers’ Tour participants practice Project Learning Tree lessons.
If your organization would like to join Hancock Lumber and Irving Woodlands in supporting this program and increasing environmental literacy and educational opportunities for Maine educators, visit mainetree.org/sponsor/ or contact Logan Johnson, Maine TREE Executive Director, at logan@mainetree.org. Organizations that commit to supporting the 2024 Forests of Maine Teachers’ Tours before June 7 will be listed as sponsors on the event T-shirt.
Interested Maine Educators can apply online by April 14, 2024, at mainetree.org/teachers-tours/
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