Embedded Files
The Wild Wanderers' approach is guided by a combination of texts and science standards that heavily informed the curriculums, teaching styles, and activities used in the field. Detailed below, these resources served as core texts in the first term of the Environmental Leadership Program, and prepared the team to bring environmental education to students in an impactful manner.
Learning in Places
Learning in Places
Learning in Places – Co-designed Outdoor Learning Research and Practice
The Learning in Places frameworks are a collection of educators, families, and community partners aiming as establishing science education in outdoor settings. They combine socioecological systems, culture and community, and place-based learning with scientific observation. These frameworks informed Wild Wanderers' teaching methods, allowing the team to dismantle traditional classroom hierarchies, and integrate all students and families to engage with the curriculums. They also provided important training about adaptability, following student interests, and uplifting community knowledge. These frameworks also informed the team's ability to make connections with place, namely Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, as well as incorporating deep thought about historical, seasonal, and future changes.
Coyote Mentoring
Coyote Mentoring
Much of Wild Wanderers' teaching methods are derived from coyote mentoring, a practice detailed throughout one of the core texts, Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature, by Jon Young, Ellen Haas, and Evan McGown. This approach centers play, passion, and core routines that guide personal connections to the outdoors, so that the team could pass this knowledge on to students and families. Wild Wanderers adapted a multitude of core routines from Coyote's Guide, including sit spots, child's passions, animal forms, and gratitude.
Coyote mentoring aims to align people with natural rhythms of the world, and to find teachable moments during play to promote learning when students are naturally at their most engaged. This informs the team's commitment to following child's passions and interests in the field, leading to greater independence, stewardship, and of course fun!
Kuo et. al
Kuo et. al
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00305/full
Ming Kuo, Michael Barnes, and Catherine Jordan are the researchers whose paper, Do Experiences With Nature Promote Learning? Converging Evidence of a Cause-and-Effect Relationship, scientifically backs the importance of getting students outside. Their research shows that outdoor learning improves students' physical and mental health, as well as increasing retention and improving grades. It also shows that early environmental education plants the seedto create stewards of the land at a young age considering adults who care strongly for nature commonly attribute their caring to time, and particularly play, in nature as children
NAAEE
NAAEE
The North American Association of Environmental Education states that lessons should provide accurate information from diverse and fair sources, recognize the complexity of the topics and give depth of concepts, build inter and intrapersonal skills to provide foundation for action, emphasize civic responsibility, encourage stewardship, be age-appropriate, and clearly written to include all necessary information for the instruction for future usability of educators.
NGSS
NGSS
https://www.nextgenscience.org/
By incorporating the Next Generation Science Standards into the curriculum and lessons, a high-quality science education can be started early which will allow students to develop an in-depth understanding of content and develop key skills that will serve them throughout the rest of their educational and professional lives. It advocates for three pillars of science education, crosscutting concepts, science and engineering practices, and disciplinary core ideas.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse