Educational Programs at Coe Park


pied piper

Hiking into Hunting Hollow

Coe Connections
 

Henry Coe State Park offers a variety of interpretive and educational services for nearby communities. The Coe Connections program offers in-class and field trip experiences that help students in grades one through six understand their natural spaces and nature's ever present cycles. During the school year, Coe Connections trains and sends experienced volunteers into classrooms to facilitate hands-on learning labs around Coe Park's watershed, wildlife, and more. Teachers are supported in arranging all day field trips to the park that involve stream studies, hikes, tracking training, and field study skills for all ages.
 

Through the Coe Connections program Coe Park volunteers, and park staff have developed a partnership with the Gilroy Unified School District's Summer Learning Program. With generous funding through the Packard Foundation's Summer Enrichment Initiative, the park has become familiar territory for hundreds of Gilroy's at-risk students.
 

cameron

Learning about nature

Summer Learning Program
 

Each summer park staff and volunteers work with Summer Learning Program coordinators and teachers to create a summer chocked full of quality environmental education. In addition to day field trips to the park for elementary school students, the program offers overnight camping trips to the middle school students. Providing all the equipment through the California State Park Foundation's FamCamp program, Gilroy's at-risk youth have the opportunity to camp under the stars. All programs have a central focus on environmental studies and conservation and involve scientific thinking exercises and physical activity. At the beginning of each summer, park staff creates training, curriculum, and support for Power School staff in order to bring the park into the classroom.
 

lorax tales

Gilroy Summer Learning Program

The Coe Connections program serves over 1,000 students each year with quality and sustained experiences with their local open space. Whether looking for micro-invertebrates in the streams or tracking the whereabouts of a resident fox, students develop relationships with the flora and fauna in the Wilderness Next Door.
 

Public Interpretive Programs
 

The park provides a variety of educational and interpretive programs throughout the year open to the public. These programs include Jr. Ranger, which introduce children 7-12 years old to Coe's natural and cultural resources; evening programs for all ages that cover fascinating topics ranging from mountain lions to forest fires; and special events such as our annual Tarantula Festival and Ranch Days.