Trail Guide Training (Trail Guide Volunteers current and interested)

April 3, 10, 17, and 24
9:00 a.m. – noon
Free

Reservations requested by two days prior to date.

Serving as a Trail Guide volunteer at Audubon is a rewarding volunteer opportunity. This multi-day training provides new and returning trail guide volunteers with the skills to lead small groups of elementary students on Audubon’s trails, effectively achieving the mission of a Discovery Walk, which is to inspire and nurture curiosity about the natural world. 

Trail Guide volunteers are integral to the educational programming at Audubon. Most often these volunteers work with elementary students pre-school through fourth grade visiting Audubon on a fieldtrip. Volunteers lead small groups on Discovery Walks outside to inspire curiosity about the natural world through age appropriate activities. Information and skills learned in this training are useful in other volunteer positions at Audubon.

These four days of training are required for new trail guide volunteers and appropriate for returning trail guide volunteers. If you are interested in becoming a trail guide and want to find out what it is all about, please attend the New Trail Guide Orientation on Wednesday, March 27 from 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. If you have questions or concerns about the requirements, please contact Margaret Foley. An itinerary of topics will be posted online March 27.

*is a lesson that established trail guides should attend if at all possible, though there are activities designed for them on most days.

Day 1 — April 3

1. Introductions
2. Ice Breakers
3. Review of Training schedule, details, process, and agenda
4. Characteristics of Children
   1. Age appropriate activities and language
   2. Sentence structure and vocabulary for each age level
   3. Characteristics of each age level
   4. Learning ability
5. Practice language and topics for different age groups using a DW activity
6. Break
7. Framing Your Walk: separate lessons for new and established trail guides
8. Reflection, questions.

Day 2 — April 10

1. Summary and review of last week – are there any additional questions or thoughts on those topics?
2. Learning Cycle: investigate the process of how students learn and practice it in the field.
3. Troubleshooting: what happens when the learning cycle gets derailed? Ways to recover and deal with it.
4. A Day In the Life: This is a step-by-step for new trail guides on what being a trail guide looks like.
   1.  For established trail guides we will take you through the newly organized prop closet to show you where things are now located. We did eliminate some props so this is a chance to make sure what you need is there.
   2. There are some additions to the process that we would like to go over too.

Day 3 — April 17

1. Summary and Review of last week – any questions or feedback?
2. *Rainy Day Stations: New trail guides will learn the lesson plans for each station. Established trail guides will learn variation on the themes and some spin offs that they can use depending on the group.
3. Questioning Strategies and Practice: Broad versus Narrow questions
4. How to be a Guide on the Side
5. In-depth training on props: How To Use…
   1. …a pond net.
   2. …an aerial net.
   3. …mirrors.
   4. …laminated sheets.
   5. …color and texture cards.

Day 4 — April 24

1. Summary of last week – questions or feedback.
2. The Trail Guide Manual: Rules and Regulations
3. *Evaluations, Expectations, and Rubrics
4. *Updates to DW
   1. how to do bathrooms and drinking fountains
5. Sample DW for the new trail guides (Liberty, garden, underworld, bones, nest box)
   1. Established trail guides may leave or go on a sample DW with an educator on a different trail.  

Special Information: This training will be partially outdoors each day so please come dressed for the weather conditions.