• The National Park Service (NPS) and the National Park Foundation, the National Parks Service's nonprofit partner, officially launched the Parks as Classrooms (PAC) program in 1992. Its objective is to introduce National Park resources to students and teachers nationwide.  Today, the program encompasses over 200 park sites.
• According to the National Park Foundation, the major goals of the program are: 1) to promote the parks as learning laboratories to develop greater awareness, understanding, appreciation, and commitment to the preservation and/or restoration of the National Park System and larger environment on which it depends; 2) to promote an improved education system in this country by assisting teachers in the development of more interactive lessons that incorporate park resources; 3) to integrate research and interpretive programs of the Park Service into the broader educational goals of  communities and schools through partnerships.
  
• PAC resources include: curriculum-based education programs, audio-visual materials including videos, accredited teacher training and workshops, traveling trunks and kits, teacher and student resource guides.
  
• National Park Service personnel work directly with educators throughout the United States to provide learning materials and experiences that are consistent with and accentuate existing curriculum requirements. While these resources are a result of a partnership between national park sites and neighboring school districts, the final products often have wider applications and provide a connection to national curriculum standards.
  
• The Parks as Classroom Program, which resulted from the cooperative relationship between Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Pi Beta Phi Elementary School, differs from others in the United States in that the curriculum produced includes both ranger and teacher directed on-site field trips. Although the teacher-directed units encourage and motivate teachers to educate beyond a classroom with limited National Park Service involvement, they still encourage teachers to seek resources and advice from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park education staff when needed.  The National Park Service has considerable expertise in bringing a resource alive through interpretation. Teachers have the ability to design formal curricula that fits their school’s need. By merging the two, we have the best of both worlds.

Why Use Great Smoky Mountains National Park as a Classroom?

• Diversity: over 4,000 species of plants grow there. A walk from mountain base to peak compares with traveling 1,250 miles north. Several resident plants and animals live only in the Smokies.
• Rich cultural history. From the Cherokee Indians, to the Scotch-Irish settlers, this land was home to a variety of cultures and people. It has the largest collection of log buildings in the eastern US and richest collection of Southern Appalachian architecture in America. 
• Over 10,000,000 visitors per year. The National Park Service must balance the protection of the land with the use of the people for both today and for the future. Today’s students will become tomorrow’s land managers, decision-makers, and stewards of the Park.
• An International Biosphere Reserve and a World Heritage Site. These international recognitions represent the Smokies importance to the planet. The purpose of this United Nations program is to recognize and encourage preservation of the world's great cultural and biological areas. The United States' National Park Service is proud to steward this world-renowned site.

Adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited National Park in America, is the gateway community of Gatlinburg. This small community supports Pi Beta Phi Elementary School serving approximately 450 students in grades K-8^th.  Historically, some of the families whose children attend our school lived in communities now dissolved within the park boundaries.  This along with the proximity of the school to the Park and the community’s tourism-based economy ties our students to the Park in a unique bond.

In 1991, recognition of this bond lead to the creation of a close working partnership between the staff members of the school and the visitor’s services division of the Park. The program was initiated through the joint leadership of the school’s principal, Glenn Bogart, and then Chief of Visitor’s Services, Gene Cox. The vision shared by these leaders was that of two institutions collaborating to more completely fulfill their separate yet shared missions.

To bring that vision to life, a committee was formed representing each organization. This steering committee created a mission statement, objectives and rationale that served to guide the collaborative efforts to come. These principles reflect the convergent aims of both organizations to educate our youth in a conservation ethos that will empower them to protect and serve the needs of the environment and their fellow citizens.

With the creation of these objectives, the stage was set for a radical overhaul of educational practices in both the school and the Park. In the process of planning for change, the steering committee made a commitment to holistic, interdisciplinary instruction.  To facilitate this change from more traditional, textbook teaching, six themes were chosen around which all instruction would be organized. The themes were “interactions”, “patterns”, “structure/order”, “change”, and “culture”. In later years, the themes were condensed into three themes: “diversity”, “connections”, and “the National Park Service”.

During the first year, teams from the first, fourth, and sixth grades piloted this process by creating three units and field–testing at least one of them. These teams worked independently under the oversight of the original steering committee. The following year, the entire instructional staff began working on the project. A park service employee and one of the teachers from the pilot groups joined each grade level to share the earlier experiences and to promote coordination. The process of curriculum reorganization included: (1) writing a rational for each unit, (2) writing a detailed site description of the area in the Park used for on-site instruction, (3) detailing the Tennessee curriculum objectives to be taught, (4) constructing pre-test and (5) writing of all the pre-site, on-site, and post-site lessons.  A standard lesson plan following the Tennessee Instructional Model was used. Teachers were employed for one week in the summer as part of this effort. During the school year, substitutes were used to free teachers for planning and writing, again for approximately one week. This process took three years to complete.

By the fourth year, all grade levels had planned six thematic units and were using these throughout the academic year to teach the traditional subject matter in non-traditional ways. Students were taking part in three to six field trips in the Park to study the themes.

In 1996 the National Park Service Education Program, which included NPS staff and formal educators, conducted an extensive evaluation of the project. The evaluation team analyzed and documented the following project areas: program as implemented (including strengths, weakness, and recommendations), perceptions of the program by stakeholders (teachers, parents, students, NPS staff), recommendations (K-8), and the impact of the program. This evaluation set the stage for three major events in the life of this project. (1) A revision in the mission and goals, (2) beginning revisions in the units, and (3) the recognition that a full time project coordinator was needed to facilitate coordination between Park Service and school staff and to provide curricular revisions.

The first PaC Project Coordinator was hired in 1997 after funding was secured from the Friends of the Smokies, a not-for-profit support group, and the Gatlinburg Board of Education. Again, both National Park Service and school staff conducted the development of the job description, and hiring process.

The last years of the project have involved continual revision and updating units in anticipation of publication and replication of the project within other schools surrounding Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is also the hope of the current steering committee, that schools and National Parks in other regions can use this park/school partnership as model to further their educational goals.