Check out all that our 2023 High School River Rangers are up to this spring! This year we were able to work with two different groups to meet our goal of educating and fostering passion in teens. We have three River Rangers from Kipp Denver Collegiate, and six River Rangers volunteering with us through Groundwork Denver.
Animal Babies Spring Break camp
This spring break our river rangers attended a day of or animal babies spring break camp. Their goals for this day was to be a kid! This was their first day of their internship and they did amazing. Not only were they interactive during our activities but they also went out of their comfort zone and worked on their management techniques. They came out of their shell quickly and were playing twister before we knew it! Needless to say all of the campers for the week loved the “teenagers” as they called them. Our river rangers were so exited throughout the day but most of all they loved Critter Crawl. We even showed them how to hold a crawdad!!
The KIPP River Rangers have already had their three excursion days. The KIPP River Rangers are teaching at our 5th grade excursion which takes place in Overland Pond Park. For their first day they were able to go through a day of excursions without kids and see the lesson they chose being taught. This gave them time to ask questions about the lesson and day in general. It was also an opportunity for them to meet our team and have some fun!
This helped prepare them for their second day Which was meant for them to teach the beginning part of their lesson. However, during their second day all three of our River Rangers taught most if not all of their lesson and did so confidently!
Sofia taught all about pollution and how to prevent it through a story, Uli taught about water quality testing, and Jisela taught about all of the physical adaptations of a beaver. We ended a great day By taking the Rangers on our Raft into Overland Pond.
For their third and final teaching day the rangers taught their whole lesson confidently twice! We were very lucky during these three days with good weather but we got even luckier today for our final day, two of our three river rangers caught their very first crawdad! (see pictures below)
Russell Square Park: Grand Opening