The Zoo in the City's School Life

1969 — the present

Every third-grader: The zoo was founded to educate children, and its deepest institutional root in the city is a classroom root. The Zoo Mobile of 1969 — established by Earl Wells, in the sanctuary's old circus-wagon line — visited every third-grade classroom in Allen County: the zoo did not wait for the schools to come to Franke Park, but carried its animals to the county's children where they sat. The program stands in the city's own Franke Park history as one of the handful of facts it chooses to tell about the zoo, and it is the founding document of the zoo's school life.

The programs today: The modern zoo runs the same mission at institutional scale. Its education department publishes a school programs guide for the region's teachers; its educators make in-class visits with animals as well as hosting programs on the grounds. Its summer camps draw almost 2,000 children from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Its Teens for Nature program, for seventh through twelfth graders, puts more than 300 teenagers to work on nature, animals, conservation and leadership — the zoo's own volunteer pipeline, in an institution whose 1982 census already counted nearly a hundred volunteers. Field trips remain the ordinary school year's zoo contact, uncounted in the record reached; the counted programs above are the documented frame.

Sources:

1. City of Fort Wayne Parks & Recreation Department, "Franke Park History" (the 1969 Zoo Mobile and every Allen County third-grade classroom), cityoffortwayne.in.gov.
2. Fort Wayne Children's Zoo, School Programs Guide 2016–2017 (the school programs and education office), kidszoo.org.
3. Fort Wayne Zoo, education program descriptions (in-zoo and in-class programs; summer camps of almost 2,000 K–12 children), via the zoo's published record.
4. WFFT News, "Kids Who Care: Fort Wayne Children's Zoo Teens for Nature" (the Teens for Nature program, 300+ teens, grades 7–12), via the zoo's published record.