Working Together

The journey to design student work and conduct professional development takes us through a few purposeful phases. Initially, we consider the group of teachers and learners, and create educational nature-based experiences. Then we coach leaders into a particular means to carry out the wild schoolwork that connects curricula to one another and to our places. Ongoing professional development is intended as all the Earthlings make progress.

Create

Educating Earthlings meets teachers and students where they are - be it with outdoor studies and an environmental program ongoing, nature-based learning to enrich, or even starting from scratch. To best suit each community, our planning process works from a set of Guiding Questions for leaders to consider and share in decision making. There is strong professional development intended for all educators.
 
We tailor interventions to the culture and vision of each particular school community. Breadth and depth of ongoing environmental education, goals to grow existing programs, opportunities to extend teacher capacity and the most responsible intended scope of potential initiatives are all considered. We aim to integrate outdoor experiences into broad academic areas and align with institutional practice and community growth.

  • How can our initiatives help to integrate subject areas?

  • Could Wild Places find some curricular place for every student every year?

  • Can nature-based professional development be meaningful for all educators?

Conduct

Earthlings educating one another can do so confidently, with a particular method for captivating all learners. These steps outline an accessible cycle of actions and options for leading wild schoolwork. Facilitating requires teachers to get outside, to say “yes, and…”, to champion questions, to guide research, and then repeat. Rewilding our schoolwork strengthens the best skills for teachers supporting young people in their Earthling investigations, and for learning across every discipline. These are elegant practices that all educators will recognize, and that we employ here as a deliberate cycle of thoughtful movements.

Connect

We grow well and learn and belong as deeply as we are connected to the natural world. Educating Earthlings applies a cohesive set of 12 Connectors - a menu of complementary tools and pathways that capture curricular priorities and bind us to all other Earthlings.  
For Instance: 
We are connected to the land 
- by the ancestors we share,  
- by the periodic table of elements that we exchange,  
- by the forces that govern the flows of all matter and energy,  
- by the stories of the land our cultures tell,   
- and by 8 more specific accessible means. 
At every age and in every place, we can work among these 12 Connectors to better recognize, investigate and share. Teachers and students make observations and build questions using these Connectors to structure their studies; we interpret and relate to our surroundings via these links.  As we gain fluency with these Connectors, we come to better know ourselves, and some of the deep wisdom expressed in every wild landscape, starry night, weedy sidewalk and shiny pebble.