Youth Engagement
In 2025, the Nebraska Chapter received a Chapter Presidents Council grant to fund the creation of youth engagement materials to make available to chapter members. As identified in our Strategic Plan, we aim to engage more with students in elementary, middle, and high schools to introduce them to the field of city planning and potential future careers as planners. In order to do so, planners across the state needed materials tailored to Nebraska to use when invited to classes or when reaching out to schools to attend classes. The following are three one hour presentations, one each per level of schooling, and a workshop that can be completed in 4, 6, or 8 hours. Each product includes guidance on how to use the materials and recommendations on how to tailor it to your own community.
How to Engage Your School District
There are a few ways to connect with your local school districts in order to educate students using these materials. First, if you know any local teachers, ask them for a contact person who could direct you to teachers who would be interested in letting you come in and talk. Classes that are talking about local government or have government classes in high school are great places to start. If you do not know anyone, reaching out to the school district administration is another great way. They can share your contact information with interested teachers.
Something to mention when you are reaching out is that you have a presentation that covers what a city planner does and an activity for the students. Explain that it will take up about an hour but be willing to adjust it to fit the teachers time frames. Teachers and schools enjoy when outside professionals come in and take the time to talk with students. You will get a positive response when you reach out and once you talk to a couple classrooms you can make it a yearly recurring event.
One Hour Presentations
Workshop (4-8 Hours)
The workshop is designed to take 4, 6, or 8 hours. The start will stay the same with the only difference being how many times the students get to do the activity. The four hour workshop includes an 80 minute presentation, 10 minute break, 90 minutes of work time, 30 minutes of presentations, and 30 minutes of extra time to flex however needed. If you want to do a 6 or 8 hour workshop, you just run the activity again with the students selecting a different open development spot. This will add 2 hours each time.
Presentation (80 minutes): To begin, you will start off with the PowerPoint. It should take about 80 minutes to get through the PowerPoint, that includes one 5 minute break about 45 minutes in. The next 30 minutes will cover different types of residential, commercial, and industrial uses. Then another 10 minute break is put in for the students to stretch or grab a snack before the activity begins. This will give you a chance to pass out the map of Prairie Junction to each table, rulers, writing utensils, and poster sized paper to each group.
Introduce Activity: After the break, go over the activity with the students (slide numbers 43-49).
Work Time (90 minutes): They should work on the project for the next 90 minutes. The students are given example developments from around Nebraska to research, they should spend about 15 minutes looking at them to get ideas. The next 10 to 15 minutes should be group discussion and making quick mock ups of what they want. The next hour will be them working on both the staff report and the large poster of the development. This part is a little more up in the air, if they spend a little more or less time discussing and researching it is fine.
Presentations (30 minutes): The last 30 minutes will be for presentations. There is an extra 30 minutes of time in the workshop for any technical difficulties, if the groups need more time, or presentations run long. You can also use it for feedback about the workshop and ask the students what they would change about it.
Things you will need to bring:
Poster sized paper, rulers, pencils, markers/colored pencils, and area description packets (how many depends on number of students/groups)