Note: This is an only an overview.
More detailed guidance and criteria for each assignment are on the Canvas page.
Since this is an evolving conversation based on carefully sequenced experiences, consistent preparation, attendance and participation in all class meetings are crucial. Showing up for one another is the heart of creating a supportive and meaningful learning community.
Blogging is a great way for you to create an archive of your evolving journey. It is also an extension of our ongoing conversation and you will read other’s posts and bring gems from your peers’ writing to the class meetings. Before each meeting, you will post a reflection on your experience with nature practices and the readings on the course blog. (learn more)
In class and on our retreat at Morven, you will explore your relationship with nature through a variety of nature connection practices. To help you establish and deepen your own intentional practice and begin leading others, you will meet weekly in small groups to experiment with practices and documenting your experience in creative ways.
500 word essay to weave the story of your own relationship with nature including both the emotional and the rational aspects of self. Consider your family history with nature going back generations and the social and cultural factors that have shaped your experience. How has your relationship with nature changed over time? What places and experiences deeply resonated with you? What losses have you experienced? What longings do you have for nature in your life now?
Change happens through quiet, personal epiphanies as well as through the transformative impact of community action. Our first visit takes us to Morven to explore nature play and the site's potential to support the UVA and local community in individual and collective flourishing through nature connection. On our second visit to the Monacan Nation History museum in Amherst County, we will meet with Assistant Chief Lou Branham, an inspiring Indigenous leader who will share stories about the past, present, and future relationship histories with the land on which we study.
Drawing on the understandings you develop through readings, field trips and your own and your peer’s relationship with nature, we will work together to design accessible nature connection practices for a community organization.
At the end of the semester, you will have a chance to consider how, if at all, your thinking about nature and your relationship to it has changed and what you’d like to take with you moving forward. You can draw on the course readings, your own reflections and the blog posts of your peers to reflect on what you make of your experience and how you’d like it to inform your personal and professional life. (learn more)