Outreach

SFA hosts this event on campus to bring thousands of children to campus for a day of adventure and learning taught by SFA students. The annual event guides students from kindergarten through third grade in exploring forest habitats, plant and animal adaptations, and the world of pollinators through learning stations.

Bugs, Bees, Butterflies and Blossoms helps SFA teacher candidates learn how to access community resources and integrate a deep knowledge of the local environment for teaching science in a real-life, inquiry-based manner. This training also helps future teachers learn how to facilitate environmental education lessons in an early elementary classroom.

Dr. Alan Sowards, now a professor emeritus of elementary education at SFA, created and implemented Bugs, Bees, Butterflies and Blossoms in 1998. The program represents a partnership between the Department of Education Studies, the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture, SFA Gardens, SFA’s Mast Arboretum and SFA’s Pineywoods Native Plant Center.

Learn how to get involved in Bugs, Bees, Butterflies and Blossoms by emailing sfagardens@sfasu.edu.

The Community Responsiveness and Engaged Advocacy in Teacher Education program, or C.R.E.A.T.E., is designed to complement and deepen the educator preparation experiences at SFA by adding community-based mentorships with families who have children in kindergarten through 12th grade. In return, teacher candidates try to give back to those families through activities such as the online lessons they provided during spring 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schoolchildren across the nation to shelter in their homes.

Teacher candidates in C.R.E.A.T.E. participate in critical conversations about issues impacting social justice and in service-learning work with local community organizations, including C&R KuttBottle and the Nacogdoches Public Library.

C.R.E.A.T.E. layers these meaningful community-based partnerships into the pre-existing expectations of teacher candidates’ coursework and school-based field experiences to include local families and other community members invested in improving the knowledge and skills needed for teachers to be culturally responsive within racially, culturally and linguistically diverse school settings.

With professional development and conference presentation opportunities made possible throughout the program, C.R.E.A.T.E. remains part of a network of educators committed to education and advocacy work in the classroom and beyond.

Learn more by contacting Lauren Burrow at burrowle@sfasu.edu.

East Texas Adventurers is a program designed to provide a transformational and authentic educational experience for 100 sixth- to eighth-grade students from Nacogdoches Independent School District over the 2024-25 academic year. The program will target students identified as receiving free or reduced lunch; ethnically, culturally or linguistically diverse; or with disabilities. We seek to show our adventurers what East Texas offers through overnight expeditions to state parks. Students will not only explore the outdoors and Texas ecosystems but also will participate in activities promoting youth empowerment, pride and self-identity in the science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics fields.

Learn more about the East Texas Adventurers program.

The Math Career Carnival introduces local fourth- and fifth-grade students to the different careers that use mathematics. The Department of Education Studies created this project as a way to engage online teacher candidates in a real-world teaching experience.

SFA students develop carnival booths that highlight mathematics skills. Each booth offers games and interactive stations to help elementary school students practice mathematics skills and connect those skills to a wide range of careers – from professional athlete to bakery owner, aerospace engineer to architect, librarian to contractor, banker to zookeeper, and more. The goal behind the carnival is to show young students that math is, in fact, relevant to real life and can be fun and entertaining!

Find out more by contacting Mark Montgomery at montgomems@sfasu.edu.

Established in 2023, Project Raices is the short-hand name for the Reaching All Individuals and Communities to Establish Success in Language Learning Grant. Raíces means roots in Spanish. Much like roots, the name was intentionally chosen to highlight the interconnectedness of language, culture and family networks that are needed to grow successful academic achievement, language acquisition and school-community partnerships.

This grant team facilitates an experience guided by Project Raices’ primary goal to provide professional development to improve instruction for English learners through a variety of programs on topics such as identifying and ameliorating sources of inequity and inadequacy within schools and learning environments for English learners and multilingual learners and focusing on the benefits of fluency and dual language.

Learn more about Project Raices.

Each year, SFA students host a learning excursion to engage young students in science activities. They welcome hundreds of local fourth-graders to SFA’s Pineywoods Native Plant Center in the fall to investigate ecosystems, soil particles and tree functions. Wild About Science features stations where fourth-graders create a food web, observe and collect data from soil particles, and learn about the structure, function and adaptations of trees.

This is also an amazing opportunity for pre-service teachers to co-teach in groups to develop collaborative skills and flexibility. SFA students earn field experience to apply to their classes, as well as professional development credit they can list in their portfolios when applying for jobs.

Wild About Science is a collaboration between SFA’s Department of Education Studies, SFA Gardens, the Texas A&M Forest Service and Texas Project Learning Tree.

For more information on Wild About Science, email SFA Gardens education at sfagardens@sfasu.edu.