Educator Spotlight: Ranger Abby

The Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and Mississippi Park Connection’s education team is rolling out a new Educators Newsletter this week! It will serve as an information hub for Minnesota educators who want to connect their students and classrooms to the Mississippi River through standards-based online programs, field trips, and more.

Each quarterly edition will feature an Educator Spotlight, showcasing a person important to our park and its education programs. So without further adieu, meet Ranger Abby Olsen!

Many people are curious about the job of a ranger. What do you do for the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area?

I split my time between the public programs team and the formal education team. For the public programs team, I work in our visitor centers answering questions, making suggestions, giving tours, and swearing in Junior Rangers. I also present a variety of programs about the park. You name it, I’ve probably done it!

In the formal education arena, I lead many of our in-person programming. But of course, these days the ed team has been focusing our energy on the virtual classroom visits, which I love. I teach about otters, geology and national parks and it is amazing to be able to interact with students virtually.

I think the job boils down to teaching. I have to find creative ways to connect visitors to the Mississippi River national park site through suggestions, programs, lessons, etc. so that they care about the river resource enough to speak for it, vote for it, and protect it.

How did you become interested in becoming a park ranger, and what do you love about your job?

It was never my goal to be a park ranger, I feel very lucky and also apologetic to all those who have been trying for years to get a job like mine because I kind of fell into the position. After I finished my service in the Peace Corps, a family friend told me I could use my non-competitive status to get a job with NPS, and here I am! Little did I know that it would be the perfect combination of exploring the outdoors, educating students, giving tours, offering advice about where to go, and hiding away in an office planning programs; just perfect for this nerdy introvert. 

My favorite part of the job is interacting with kids because they ask the best questions. And when they can’t wait another second to tell me a story related to what I just said, then I know I’ve connected them to the river!

What are some of your favorite things that you enjoy about the national park area, or what fascinates you about this particular park?

The most amazing thing that the Mississippi does is defy the idea of a typical National Park. This is not the breathtaking Grand Canyon, hours from a reasonably-priced grocery store, or marvelous Yosemite, miles from only semi-decent restaurants (in my opinion). This is an urban area where you can get some really good Korean food just minutes from the park boundary AND catch a flight out of an international airport. And before you do, you can hike to one of several waterfalls, find a spot quiet enough to hear the trees talking, or watch some coyote or wild turkey. What other park can boast that?! The proximity of schools to the park allows us to meet with thousands of students a year and use the river to teach a variety of topics.

One of our more successful park programs has been our Online Classroom Visits. How does an Online Classroom Visit work? What are the benefits for both teachers and students?

When a request comes in for one of my programs, I will contact the educator directly to set up the date and time, ask if there’s a definitive end time, and get a link to google meet or zoom. During the visit, I typically ask the educator to help me notice when a student has a question, and as long as it’s relevant, I try to answer questions as they come up. I ask a lot of questions of the students, so I invite them to unmute themselves or answer in the chat, depending on how the educator prefers to run things. And of course, if there’s any time at the end I will happily stick around and answer any more questions that the students have.

I hope that teachers can use my programs as a recall point in future lessons; reminding students that Ranger Abby said this in her program and making those neural connections long into the future. For students, I just hope to be a new, friendly, authoritative, female face. I’ve heard more than a few teachers say that they are just excited to give the kids someone new to look at!

Do you have any recommendations to help educators get kids outside or excited about nature, especially during a pandemic?

We at Mississippi use the sandwich technique as much as we are able. The first step is setting up expectations about what students are going to experience or doing some sort of activity to learn about the river. The second step is the river experience itself; a canoe trip, one of our all-day field trips, biking along the river, or something as simple as a walk along the bank of the river. Lastly, we encourage some sort of reflection in the form of poetry, art, or journaling as well as using the experience to continue learning. It makes the actual outdoor experience more meaningful and connects students to the outdoors.

We have teacher guides related to our Big River Journey and Journey to the Falls field trips available on our Teacher Resources page on our website. The pre- and post- trip activities can be modified in a lot of ways, but something as simple as talking about student’s fears about what will happen when they go outside, students knowing that they aren’t alone in those fears, and how they can better prepare for it, can be a great start for getting kids outdoors.

What philosophy guides you when educating students, as well as when informing the general public? What do you keep in mind when working with these groups?

I’ve been giving programs at Mississippi for almost 13 years now, right around the time handheld screens became pretty ubiquitous, my philosophy as a presenter boils down to: be as, or more, interesting than a screen. It’s not easy, especially for this introvert, but I keep my words positive and use a lot of gesturing, pictures, and crazy faces to get my point across. I seem to have hit my stride in connecting with student audiences over the last several years, so I feel pretty good about that.

I have to remind myself with every interaction that everyone’s stories are different, so what connects me to the river, may not be the same as the next person who comes into the visitor center or into my virtual classroom. So, lucky me gets the job of continually learning about the river and its systems in order to find more possible ways to connect everyone with this amazing resource.