Day Two @WeirFarmNPS with @richnovack Reading Landscapes: Writing Nature

I am thanking The Great Whatever that several years ago, I had the fortune of sitting with National Writing Project's Judy Buchanan who not only shared her brilliance and expertise with me, but a passion for working with National Park Services. She planted a seed about nature writing and, a couple of years later, emailed me to say that there was a site near Fairfield University called Weir Farm and they might make a phenomenal partner for a nature writing workshop.

Indeed.

Two years ago, we brought our Invitational Leadership Institute to the historic site to spend a day writing about landscape. Fast forward to this week, a generous grant through National Writing Project support, and the vision of Rich Novack and Kristen Lessard, and WOLA! We have our first ever two-day Reading Landscapes: Writing Nature in the 21st Century teacher institute.

Today, I will be doing a small workshop based off my environmental days working in Kentucky when I earned a Masters from the Kentucky Institute of Education and Sustainable Development and where I wrote a thesis on Environmental English - bringing earth into the English classroom. I'm tapping an exercise from Project Wet (a community-building activity) and making a case for the work I do now with CWP-Fairfield through a philosophy of Ubuntu and our Young Adult Literacy Labs.

Phew. I was young then. I started my second masters at age 25 and in 1998, when I was a first year teacher, I earned the degree and immediately began to make sense of ecological sustainability in terms of urban education, nature, poetry, young adult novels, and outdoor learning.

As I put together the presentation, I couldn't help but walk down memory lane when my hair was longer, my love handles less severe, and my optimism about what is possible at an all-time high.

Here's to the 2nd day of the work - I'm so impressed by the vast region this institute has attracted educators from - there needs to be much more of this work for our K-12 teachers.