Who we are

Our History

The Minnesota Master Naturalist Program has offered place-based, experiential natural history lessons to Minnesotans since 2005. The spark of an idea for Nature for New Minnesotans originated from a Minnesota Master Naturalist participant who also happened to be an English language (EL) teacher. They asked to use the curriculum with their EL learners, and found immediate success. Upon completing the course, one EL adult learner stated: "I have been living here and learning English for seven years and this is the first time that someone has actually taught me about where I live!".

Building on this experience, Minnesota Master Naturalist received three years of grant funding to develop and implement place-based, experiential curriculum for adult EL learners in Minneapolis and St. Paul. In the fall of 2021, program director Lucas Rapisarda held listening sessions with English language instructors and adult learners to determine what topics were of the highest interest. With the assistance of an English language curriculum designer, twelve lessons were developed and a pilot class took place in February, 2022. Intended to last only one month, the pilot snowballed into a three month long exploration of the climate of Minnesota and involved two experiential field trips to the Bell Museum, and Lake Itasca State Park.