Program areas at Muddy Sneakers
Muddy Sneakers serves North Carolinas 5th-grade public school students by engaging them in experiential outdoor education aligned with North Carolinas essential science standards. Merging the energy of young students with local public and protected lands sets the stage for deeply felt experiences that instill a personal backyard awareness to the Standard Course of Study. Muddy Sneakers strives to cultivate in children a lifelong love of nature, enhance academic achievement, inspire the joy of living, and plant an understanding of the interconnectedness of all things. The 2023-2024 season marks Muddy Sneakers seventeenth year of bringing an experiential format to teaching a 5th-grade science curriculum at participating public schools across the Mountain and Piedmont regions of North Carolina. In 2023, participating teachers provided feedback through a survey conducted by NC State University, indicating that Muddy Sneakers partnerships should be more flexible to meet diverse needs. Therefore, we introduced multiple new partnership options and created a new role: Programming Reservationist and Administrator to enhance communication.
Overall, in the 2023-2024 season, Muddy Sneakers served 4,159 students and 186 teachers in 64 schools across 21 districts in 16 counties and the Qualla Boundary. Muddy Sneakers conducted 288 field trips and provided 71,882 hours of learning in 70 North Carolina outdoor spaces. Mountains Piedmont Schools Served 42 22 Students Served 2,534 1,625 Contact Hours 46,287 21,436 Mountain Counties: Buncombe, Cherokee, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Polk Rutherford, Transvylvania, Watauga Piedmont Counties: Forsythe, Guilford, Montgonmery, Orange, Rowan, Stokes
In late 2023, the North Carolina Department of Instruction updated the 5th-grade science standards, and Muddy Sneakers promptly updated its curriculum. Thanks to the support of the Dogwood Trust and our new partnership options, Muddy Sneakers significantly expanded its programming in the Mountains region. In the Piedmont, programming grew organically, extending into the Greensboro and Winston-Salem areas.