Parks Academy Pictures

I got an e-mail with a bunch of pictures from the Parks Academy...so now I have a few pictures of me talking in front of lots of people and I don't look scared! (in most of them...)

View of the crowd from the front of the room...

Lots of park rangers, park supervisors, park interpreters, maintenance staff and administrators...and I actually think that's me in front, just to the right of the screen. I looked over at my boss and his friend and they were laughing. Later they told me they were laughing because I'm not much taller than the podium...at least I can make people laugh :)

...and me, standing in front of all of them with a microphone! It ended up being a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be and now I know that speaking in front of a group of people that I know and work with won't kill me after all.

Parks Academy: Part Two

Well, my talk at the Parks Academy went way better than I expected it to! It was Wednesday morning, and it started right around 9:45 a.m. I talked for a solid 1/2 hour (I think) and it seemed like people were paying attention...except a few who were laughing because I wasn't quite tall enough to really be seen over the podium...!

I was really, really, really nervous for the first few minutes. Then I had a skit that I added at the last minute--a law enforcement ranger and a misbehaving park visitor. After that it was like someone flipped a switch. The nerves went away and I started having fun. The chocolate chip cookies I passed around helped a little too...

Anyway the rest of the Academy was fun--good presentations and two field trips that were great. We went to Oatman, AZ. It's a historic mining town sort of like Virginia City, NV with not-so-wild burrows walking around the town looking for handouts. Of course, I had to spend $1 on burrow food (compressed alfalfa)--big mistake! They follow you everywhere and if you ignore them, you get head-butted or bitten. One head-butted my knee so I ended up dumping the rest of the food on the ground for whoever wanted to fight over it. Oops....

The 2nd field trip was to Big Bend of the Colorado State Park and a rock art site close by.

...so I guess that I learned speaking in front of a group of 60+ people I work with won't kill me after all :)

Park Academy

Yay! I get to do a talk in front of 65 park rangers on Wednesday morning at 9:30! (I'm trying to be excited about it...) I can do the talk without my notes right now, I just have to not get nervous and forget everything I've worked on for the past month and a half :)

Parks rented two inmate vans from the Nevada Division of Forestry so we are all carpooling down to Laughlin. They're picking me up in Yerington at 6:45 a.m. and we're supposed to be there by around 4 p.m. I've never been to Laughlin so that part is cool! There are other presenters--it's like a giant staff meeting where everyone gets together every couple years. Because of budget cuts it's been 6 years since the last park academy.

Me talking to a group of Boy Scouts...interpretive program.

 

Me on a full moon hike in the summer...doing interpretation.

 

I'm going to be doing a 30 minute slide show on interpretation--what it is and how to do it. I've got about 60 slides so I'm hoping it should go by pretty fast. Then there is a 15 minute break and I'm breaking everyone up into 8 groups to start developing their own interpretive program with props that I'm going to give them.  There are two of us doing this talk--Dana is going after me with a lot more information about designing interpretive panels, using the sign manual and developing an interpretive plan for each park. My presentation covers the who, what, when, where, why and how of interpretation. This was a surprise too--one day I got an e-mail saying I was a speaker at the academy and "here's the agenda!" haha

 

I'm always nervous before a presentation like this--mostly because it's people I know! So wish all of us presenters luck!! (I need it!)