I had a long day today. It doesn't help that I stayed up until, like, 4 AM reading and eating fruit snacks. D'oh!

The Parks as Classroom program is a joint effort by the local schools and the Resource Education department of the GSMNP to connect students with the great natural resource that is the Great Smoky Mountains. Part of this program involves kids coming to the park for field trips to learn, and part of it involves us coming to the schools to teach. And that's just what we did today.

Mostly I just followed around Beth as she presented different... presentations to different classes of kids throughout the day. In this particular school, each class representa the entire group of kids for that grade - in other words, the sixth grade class is ALL THE SIXTH GRADERS IN THE SCHOOL. Nuts!

Beth ebbed and flowed like a madman for basically five straight hours. It was really neat to watch her change pace, vocabulary, and approach for each age group, and she changed with such alacrity it made my head spin a little. Bombarding as it was, it was cool to finally see what kind of material I'll be presenting when my time comes. And it will come...