Evaluating the
effectiveness of your school forest program is a crucial component in a
thriving and growing school forest program. Only by understanding where your
strengths and weaknesses are, will your program be able to reach its full
potential. The following tools will allow you to collect important data and
information from others in your district. Use the information you collect to
compile a report about the success of the school forest for your school board.
School Forest Use Tracking Tool
Use this document as a tool to keep track of the
number of students, teachers, and community members (including parent
chaperones) that use your school forest each year. This is a great tool for
gathering information to then share with your school board!
School Forest Use Tracking Tool
School Forest Needs Assessment
A needs assessment can provide valuable information on
the opportunities and challenges of using the school forest. Allow teachers,
administrators, school staff, students, parents, and community members to
complete the assessment to get the greatest diversity of opinions. Use the following
example as a guideline to develop your needs assessment to address your
specific district’s needs. Don’t forget
there are free online tools to help you conduct your survey as well that make
it easier to administer and tabulate the results of the survey.
School Forest Needs Assessment
Field Trip Evaluation
After each field trip,
have the teachers complete a field trip evaluation. Post field trip evaluations
will indicate the success of the lessons and the field trip overall. This will help
teachers remember what worked well during a particular field trip and what
needs to be adjusted when doing a similar trip again. Use the following
document as a guide to develop a field trip evaluation for your school forest.
School Forest Field Trip Evaluation
Annual Wisconsin School Forest Survey Results
Each year the Wisconsin
School Forest Program sends a survey to each school forest to gather statewide
school forest information. The survey asks about school forest educational use,
use by community members, and school forest financial spending. A summary of
the
statewide survey results can be found here.