A national program with 70 sites (and growing) and thousands of anticipated participants across the snowbelt, SnowSchool is powered by the passion and energy of hundreds professional educators and volunteer leaders every winter.

Last week the first on-snow educator training event of the season was held at the National Flagship SnowSchool Site (Bogus Basin). Over 20 educators and community volunteers turned out on a snowy Friday morning to learn about and brush-up on their SnowSchool leader skills.

SnowSchool leaders reviewed the essential hands-on snow science activities for K-12 students, such as digging snow pits and conducting a snow-water equivalency experiment. All participants hiked out to the SnowSchool Weather Station and later, even got a chance to knock the rust off their belly-slide technique! First day of SnowSchool at this site is scheduled for January 6th.

To help SnowSchool educators nationwide prepare for teaching so many students across a varied and changing landscape, WWA annually provides on-snow field workshops and online-training opportunities (like our annual fall Virtual SnowSchool Conference). This year we’ll reach over 100 educators through these efforts. And this winter we’ve broadened our professional development approach by making our new SnowSchool at Home science activity video series available to all our educators and volunteers.