Curriculum

The SOFEE curriculum is adapted from FireWorks!, a comprehensive K-12 wildland fire science curriculum created out of the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Montana. The original curriculum includes hands-on, place-based lessons that are aligned with NGSS, CCSS, and EEEGL standards. Each lesson plan also offers comprehensive background information for teachers, and many have supporting materials like PowerPoint presentations and student worksheets. The lessons are designed to use trunks that are available for local teachers to check out that include specialized materials and tools like tree cookie samples, pinecones from specific species, etcetera.

In March 2020, Ashland Forest Resiliency convened a train-the-trainer session at the Medford BLM office to launch the SOFEE project, bringing together representatives from a wide range of local organizations and agencies to begin the process of adapting the original curriculum to focus on Southern Oregon’s ecosystems, to highlight Oregon’s unique land-use history, and to establish a pathway for fire-science-related study and careers.

The SOFEE team is now pursuing several tracks:

• Adapting all FireWorks! lessons to reflect local ecosystems, natural and cultural history, human communities, and career pathways, all through a trauma-informed lens

• Assembling materials for trunks that will be made available to teachers via host sites throughout the region

• Adapting select lessons to be useable in online, hybrid, and socially-distant learning contexts

• Identifying high-quality related curriculum developed by other providers