Teacher Conservation Tour Workshop Series

2025 TCT Workshop Series (registration opening soon)

• Prescribed Fire for Educators, June 12-13, 2025, Batesville, AR

• The Forest is Our Classroom, June 19-20, 2025, Monticello, AR

• Arkansas Timber Industries and Forestry Careers, June 26-27, 2025, El Dorado, AR

What is the Teacher Conservation Tour?

The Arkansas Forestry Association Education Foundation, along with partners from forestry and natural resource professionals, timber producers and forest product manufacturers from across the state have been providing these in-depth educational workshops for Arkansas educators since 1993. The Teacher Conservation Tour (TCT) has become one of the premier professional development opportunities in Arkansas.

This extensive educator workshop focuses on the environmental, ecological, and economic benefits of Arkansas’s forestlands and timber industries. The sessions and onsite tours provide educators with a lot of time in the woods, learning about the interaction between forests, the environment, and the economy. Participants tour forest product manufacturing facilities, view forest ecosystems, and harvesting and replanting operations all while learning valuable information about our forest communities.  Participants also meet and learn from natural resource professionals and members of the forest products industry who are in the field conducting this work on a regular basis.    

What educators said about the Teacher Conservation Tour –

• This tour has significantly changed my perspective of modern forestry. It has eliminated a prejudice I felt regarding this industry. I see it as modern farming, employing conscientious control in a beneficial relationship with other ecosystems. Seeing a clear stream near a burned ploy being prepared for planting and knowing both are necessary and responsibly tended during the process had the greatest impact upon me. I no longer see modern forestry as destructive. This tour was as enjoyable as it was informative.

• I have been a teacher for 30 years. This has been by far, the best conference I have ever experienced!

• Came away with a very different view of how logging and nature work together for the good of all of us!

• Best workshop I have ever been to. Convinced me I need to continue teaching forestry and Natural Resources in my Agri classes.

• The hands-on approach and interactive activities made the learning more accessible and tangible and retention more effective. The variety of activities and the multiple levels of learning K-12 as well as the materials provided made transfer of learning more feasible and desirable. This is the way to motivate both teacher and student and peak interest in nature and man’s responsibility to it.

Although this workshop provides teachers of grades K through 12 with Arkansas Department of Education approved professional development, any formal or non-formal educator may apply for the TCT.  Workshop fees are kept to a minimum thanks to generous sponsors of the program.

See pictures of past TCTs on the AFA Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/arkforests/photos/?tab=albums

If you have questions, please contact Rob Beadel at (501) 374-2441 or [email protected].