What can K-12 teachers learn from National Park rangers? A lot, says James Fester, author of the book The National Park Classroom: A Guide to Designing Project-Based Learning Adventures (ISTE, 2025).
The U.S. National Park Service describes its parks as “America’s largest classrooms,” and its rangers have developed educational approaches that invite visitors to engage with their surroundings in active, participatory ways. In the book, Fester introduces the National Park Classroom Framework, which enables teachers of all subject areas and grade levels to use the same methods as rangers to design engaging units and projects for subjects like math, science, history, and language arts.
In this exclusive excerpt, Fester describes two very different field trip experiences he and his students had when visiting national parks and shows how a little bit of innovation and understanding can capture students’ attention and deepen their learning.
In 2009, I was chaperoning my school’s annual 8th grade trip to Washington, D.C., and had decided to add Manassas National Battlefield Park to our itinerary. This small park in northern Virginia was the site of the first major battle of the American Civil War and a place we had just finished learning about, so I was getting all kinds of questions like, “Mr. Fester, will we get to see that bayonet charge from the movie we saw in class?” My learners were primed and ready for their visit, making it all the more tragic that after only about 20 minutes at the battlefield, all of that curiosity, interest, and excitement had melted away as a result of one of the most blasé interpretive talks I have ever seen. While we baked under the brutal Virginia sun, the ranger, although well-intentioned, monologued at us for the next hour, interjecting mind-numbing statistics and quotes that, absent appropriate context, added to the drone of monotone words coming at us.
Our experience at Manassas was bad, so bad that the next year I avoided Virginia altogether and instead opted for an excursion to Pennsylvania. This time, and with much trepidation, we visited Valley Forge National Historical Park, the storied site of winter quarters for George Washington and his beleaguered Revolutionary Army during 1777. I was promised a better experience this time, but I still crossed myself as I got off our tour bus and led my students to the site of our ranger program, a small row of reconstructed huts modeled after those that housed Continental Army soldiers.
This time, the ranger was dressed in a historical costume, and the first thing he said was, “I need everyone here to get into groups of four, and the first group to form up gets a prize!” It took a second for the students to comprehend what he had said, but when one group of girls was able to group up quickly, he called them up and handed each of them a different historic object to hold and pass around. While this was happening, he shared the program’s focus: “What was the experience of enlisted soldiers?” In service of this focus, he asked the group relatable questions like, “Who here has ever had to share a room with someone?”, which prompted many raised hands and stories of the challenges of shared rooms. “Well, what if you had to share a room with 11 other people?!” Cries of disbelief went through the group as he invited a dozen of my students to cram themselves into a hut while he discussed the life of enlisted soldiers. The program continued with my students being prompted to participate as much as the ranger talked. In open discussions, the students were encouraged to share what they knew from class while actively participating in hands-on activities like mock infantry drills. By the time our hour was up, the students’ energy and interest were higher than they were at the outset, and they were looking up additional information on their phones.
Students pose in front of a reconstruction of a historic building at Valley Forge National Historical Park. Photo courtesy of James Fester.
The difference in the experience of my students at Manassas and those who visited Valley Forge perfectly illustrates a growing trend within the wider interpretation field known within the National Park Service by the acronym ACE, or Audience Centered Experience. In short, it is a reform movement that seeks to move interpretation from a discipline dominated by one-way communication to a more interactive and learner-centered structure.
ACE evolved out of a desire to help rangers provide learning opportunities where visitors contribute to the program they are participating in. This engages them as equal participants in the learning process, which leads to more enjoyable and deeper learning.
The Elements of ACE
1. Essential Question
Makes the objective or purpose clear and accessible in the form of an open-ended question. Tees up later reflection and critical thinking by the audience.
From the Valley Forge Program: The ranger was quick to share the overarching learning goal from the outset: “What was the experience of the enlisted soldiers?”
2. Dialogic Opportunities
Questions or opportunities that provoke further discussion or questions from the audience. These questions draw on personal experiences and require learners’ elaboration to answer. They connect back to the focus of the lesson.
Valley Forge: When the ranger asked students, “Who here has ever had to share a room?” it led to both learner participation and opportunities for the ranger to share facts about the living conditions of the enlisted men, connecting back to both the program focus and the essential question.
3. Tiered Participation
The lesson has a flow that begins with easy asks from the audience and escalates to more personal questions or ones that require the sharing of opinions and beliefs.
Valley Forge: The program began with simple asks, like move, form groups, or raise hands. These simple asks were followed by questions about lived experiences, such as sharing rooms with family. By the end, the questions were focused on the relevancy of the learning and ended with the ranger asking, “Should Valley Forge be preserved? Why?” This question required a personal values statement.
Students lie on stacked wooden platforms, reenacting the living conditions of Continental Army soldiers. Photo courtesy of James Fester.
4. Roving
Meeting the learners where they are instead of staying in one place. This means adjusting both your physical proximity to be more approachable as well as shifting your instruction based on real-time observations or unexpected teachable moments.
Valley Forge: The ranger joined in with several activities, such as lining up with the students to help demonstrate the marching techniques or casually walking over to place himself near learners who were talking amongst themselves. When one of the learners asked, “Are you going to fire the cannon?” he used it as an opportunity to engage the audience in a new topic and bring in new learning resources, like the tools used to load the cannon.
5. Pop-Up Pacing
Components of a lesson “pop up” quickly and flow into the next experience. This keeps learners’ attention, requires only incremental investments of time and attention, and ensures that if one part of a program doesn’t land right, the next comes before the learner disengages.
Valley Forge: The program moved quickly between “beats,” with each part lasting no more than a few minutes. Learners who didn’t get to crowd into the hut or who didn’t share knowledge they recalled from class had other opportunities within a few minutes. The pacing required learners to stay attentive so they didn’t miss the topic transitions, and it also meant that if they disengaged, an opportunity to reinvolve them was minutes away.
The National Park Classroom
Bring proven teaching methods from the national parks into your classroom to address common instructional challenges and improve student outcomes.
