Time: 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m 

Format and Length: In-person, 6 hours, plus 1 hour of pre-work

Audience: All grades welcome! Most suited for formal and nonformal educators who work with grades 3-8, including educators working with 5th and/or 6th graders in outdoor school settings

Location: Cathedral Hills Trail System. Grants Pass, Oregon. 

Description:

Join this workshop to collect new tools to engage with outdoor learning! Join us at the Bureau of Land Management’s Cathedral Hills Trail System to experience and explore nature journaling, a flexible, engaging, and adaptable teaching tool that helps students develop both scientific (NGSS) and social-emotional competencies. 

Along the trails we will stop to practice close observation, inquiry, and connection-building using a series of nature journaling prompts. No previous art experience is required! This tool is about scientific observation, not art skills. 

We will also practice giving feedback on journal entries to promote a growth mindset, model outdoor facilitation strategies, and discuss how to incorporate nature journaling in any learning context. We’ll discuss how Nature Journaling can enrich an outdoor learning experience and serve as a bridge to prepare for and debrief outdoor school or other field experiences.

Whether you’re preparing your students to get the most out of an outdoor school experience, or hoping to develop inquiry in your very own schoolyard, nature journaling can be the multitool in your outdoor education tool kit.

Plan to bring a notebook and a pencil, water, bag lunch, and a camping chair (if you have one). The site has no potable water.

The workshop will include travel on an unpaved trail. We are currently determining a route that will be accessible for as many educators as possible. If you have accessibility concerns that you would like to make sure we address in our route selection, please include those in your registration form. We will share information about the route with all registered educators in advance.

More details about the site and trails will be provided closer to the date of the workshop. 

This workshop is brought to you by OSU Extension Service Outdoor School (ODS), Oregon Natural Resources Education Program (ONREP),  Bureau of Land Management-Medford District and Southern Oregon Land Conservancy. 

Registration required. Offered at no cost to Oregon educators. PDUs available. Substitute Reimbursement available on teacher workdays. 

Stipend: A $100 stipend is available from OSU Extension Service Outdoor School to support the attendance of eligible outdoor school educators who are not being compensated by their employer for the time they attend the workshop. Please contact with questions about stipend eligibility.

Registration for this workhsop has closed.