As an environmental educator, my philosophy empowers students by connecting with their interests and encouraging a sense of place in the outdoors. By guiding students to develop connections with the course material to their personal lives, I can help students build a stronger sense of environmental stewardship. Establishing a sense of belonging or enjoyment of the outdoors helps ignite the inquisitive curiosity that drives students to learn. Studies have proven that attentiveness increases while stress decreases through outdoor education; therefore, we must connect students to the outdoors through a different approach from the typical classroom setting. Environmental facilitators have the capacity to share outdoor memories with their students through multiple hands-on investigations that allow students to both explore the natural world and utilize critical-thinking skills to problem-solve. By building on the sense of wonder of the outdoors, this option of kinesthetic learning creates care for the outdoors as we attach positive connotations with outdoor experiences.
As I teach, I show my authentic self and encourage students to do the same. This allows me to get to know and acknowledge each student's needs to drive their participation and excitement. By facilitating the discussion of diverse experiences and backgrounds, environmental education can be accessible and engaging. I aim to create genuine connections with my students that help build confidence in their interests and passions. Students simply want to be heard and seen and creating a safe place in outdoor education makes the outdoors more inclusive - sometimes this is as simple as letting a student know they are heard and welcome in an academic setting. Through outdoor education, we want to build on unique life experiences in ways that cannot be achieved in an indoor classroom. Acknowledging a student's needs includes the ability to be flexible and adaptable in my lessons to fit and amplify unique interests. For example, this can be an opportunity to highlight and develop a specific passion of a student, modify the lesson to increase engagement, or anything else that may arise.
Designing lessons that require curiosity and establishing the feeling of discovery is vital to ensuring our students’ success in outdoor education. When I teach, I demonstrate and embody my passion and excitement for the material, which creates a setting where students can appreciate and observe their surrounding environment to build wonder and environmental stewardship. This journey taught me to use nature as a teaching tool because there is value in this form of active engagement. I believe students deserve an immersive educational approach; for example, multiple research and data collection opportunities provide students with hands-on learning. Introducing the material through a climate change lens allows students to think critically about the complexity of the human connection to Earth. Having the privilege of teaching in an experimental forest, our lessons help students meaningfully connect their outdoor education experience to environmental issues. Observational skills aid the sense of belonging in nature, and observational skills are utilized as a resource to shape enthusiasm. My role as an environmental educator is to facilitate these connections to the environment and guide students to build on their sense of wonder for the outdoors. As an instructor, I see the development of this awe for nature can be transformed into care for the environment and environmental issues. Emphasizing a sense of belonging and gratitude for the natural world aids the awareness-to-action format in my instructional effectiveness; ultimately, encouraging students to use this newfound awe of the natural world to pursue environmental stewardship.