Interpretive Tips and Tricks — Coastal Safety for Field Trips

—Erika Delemarre, State Park Interpreter II, MPA and Coastal Programs Coordinator, Interpretation and Education Division

The Interpretation and Education Division is excited to share the Coastal Safety Toolkit to support your school field trips and public programming in coastal state parks. This toolkit will help you prepare visitors of all ages for a safe and fun experience at your park!

Coastal Safety Toolkit

In the Coastal Safety Toolkit you will find:

1. Video overview for how to use the Coastal Safety Toolkit
2. “Read Me First” document with instructions you can reference
3. Ready-made Coastal Safety Guidelines template document for you to customize for your park! Use this document to communicate with educators and group leaders in advance of coastal field trips and activities.
4. Examples of other parks’ completed coastal safety documents so you can see how the template looks once it’s completed.
5. A Coastal Safety PowerPoint Training presentation to customize for your park(s) to train staff and volunteers on coastal safety concerns in your district.

Table of Contents Coastal Safety Toolkit Template

Suggested Uses:

• Start by bookmarking the Coastal Safety Toolkit for future use.
• Create a “Coastal Safety Guidelines” document for each of your coastal parks and provide the document to educators when they book field trips with your staff.
• Once you’ve completed the “Coastal Safety Guidelines” for your park(s), share it with partner organizations who are booking and leading field trips in your coastal state parks. This will help them use department-approved language to effectively communicate safety topics and guidelines to educators.
• You can use messaging and verbiage from this document to provide information on your park’s website and social media channels.
• Print and post applicable pages of the “Coastal Safety Guidelines” in park kiosks.
• Offer the coastal safety training presentation for your seasonal staff, volunteers and/or partner organizations.

Page for Site Description from Coastal Safety Toolkit Template

I want to share gratitude for my collaborators Cryssie Moreno, Hannah Sarver, Sara Kennedy, and Justin McHenry who helped ensure accurate messaging and document preparation for this toolkit, and the interpretive team in the Sonoma-Mendocino Coast District for piloting the tools for us! The Interpretation & Education Division hopes that you will find this toolkit useful for promoting fun and safe learning experiences in your coastal parks in the seasons ahead.

The toolkit is available on SharePoint via this link.

Please feel free to reach out to Erika Delemarre (Erika.Delemarre@parks.ca.gov) with any questions or to request support. Do these resources spark ideas? Can’t wait to hear them!