Teach Outdoors

Today’s episode is to help shed light on a very important topic here in Canada.  I do want to front load all of the listeners that there is some graphic and disturbing content in the intro of this podcast.   Our country has a tragically sad history when it comes to the treatment of Indigenous people. Recently, the remains of 215 children were discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential school. ...

Chris Green, our guest today, is the Director of The Guelph Outdoor School in Ontario, Canada.  Website: https://www.theguelphoutdoorschool.com/about Facebook: The Guelph Outdoor School Instagram: @TheGuelphOutdoorSchool    We begin by talking about how to make land acknowledgements more personal and authentic.  Chris suggests that we can do this by thinking about our relationship to the land.  Gu...

Manon McPeters is a lead nature instructor trainer at the Wilderness Awareness School which is based in Duvall, Washington.  She has been working with the 8 shields framework for mentoring for over a decade and also grew up as a teen student of the Wilderness Awareness program.  Her passions are engaging with the human body and observing the connection between brain and body and how they collabora...

Place has a history, often we are unconscious of it. It is our responsibility to think about the indigeneity of our place and learn about different perspectives. We can help students develop a sense of responsibility for the land.    Dr. Leyton Schnellert: Twitter @LeytonSchnell  Website: https://leytonschnellert.com   Today through zoom, Dr. Leyton Schnellert is joining us to talk about place-con...

Let’s discuss the intersection between social-emotional learning and learning outdoors with Miriam Miller! Visit mentoringnatureconnections.wordpress.com for outdoor learning resources as well as workshop and consulting opportunities.   Casel reviews and recommends SEL programs that can be adopted into classroom practice.  casel.org   Investigating and discussing how outdoor learning can be a way...

Our guest tonight is Alexa Charles who is a Mentoring Support Teacher for the Coquitlam district. She leads us through her journey of “Learning with Purpose and Place in SD43” and how she infuses an ethnography lens with her documentation.    Alexa Charles Information: She curates a blog entitled, “Learning with Purpose and Place in SD43.” Follow her on Twitter @MsCharlesSD43   Other Inspirational...

Shelley Moore is the author of One Without the Other: Stories of unity through diversity and inclusion. Her website blogsomemoore.com has numerous resources and information about her endless work in this complex field of inclusive education and competency-based learning.  Shelley also consults throughout BC, Canada and across north America.  Shelley's Social Media Info: blogsomemoore.com  @tw...

April Pikkarainen is our guest tonight to talk about the importance of collaborative teaching. April and I taught in a collaborative setting for 2 years where we engaged in daily outdoor learning experiences with our 44 Kindergarten and Grade 1 learners.  Amazing!! I hope you have fun listening to our journey and what we learned from this experience.     If you have any comments, questions, or sug...

Have you ever wondered how to infuse literacy with your outdoor adventures? Nature is a literacy-rich environment, a place where we can experiment with language in many ways.  Our land provides us with an inherently play-based environment where we can explore literacy in an informal way.  We can expand our vocabulary, develop conversational skills, recount stories and events, and the list goes on...

In today's episode of Mentoring Nature Connections, we are looking at how to infuse mathematics into our outdoor learning adventures.   Our guest tonight is Janice Novakowski who is a K-12 mathematics and numeracy consultant for the Richmond district in BC.  She is also an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, working with pre-service teachers and is on the board of directo...

Mentoring Nature Connections is all about sharing our experiences and questions about outdoor explorations.  I'm hoping you'll join us on our journey of investigating nature with our learners.  Today we are joined by Kelsey Keller, a Grade 3/4/5 Montessori teacher at Baker Drive in Coquitlam, BC.  Together we are exploring the topic of place-based learning and how we make the connection...