Leading Nature-based Teaching: Prepare yourself to prepare your staff for the transition to an outdoor program, by Dr. Rachel A. Larimore

Early education program leaders around the world are increasingly enthusiastic about nature-based learning. Many leaders want to jump in wholeheartedly but find shifting the culture of their organization incredibly challenging. In this this action-focused webinar designed for program leaders and administrators, experienced early childhood nature-based program leader and author, Dr. Rachel Larimore will share her Trail Map for Leading Change as an approach for inspiring and supporting staff to move toward nature-based teaching. The first step of the Trail Map is preparing yourself as leaders for the journey to ensure you are ready to lead change within our team. This requires doing inner social-emotional work.

Talk of social-emotional health of children is common in early childhood, but we rarely stop to consider how adult relationships, with ourselves and others, influence our professional roles in early childhood. In this session, Dr. Larimore will guide you to explore the many social-emotional factors that impact your ability to lead change toward a nature-based teaching approach.

You will learn about character traits that influence your roles as a leader. We will discuss how you can do the inner work yourself to show up more fully as an educator, teammate, and change leader. Finally, we will also discuss actions you can take to support your team to dig more deeply and move forward individually and as a team.

In this session we’ll discuss:

• Foundational principles of nature-based pedagogy

• Inside, Outside, and Beyond as a metaphor for relationships

• Individual character traits and how they influence leadership related to nature-based education

• How we can provide ongoing support for our teams through the shift toward nature-based approaches

Objectives:

Participants will be able to...

1. list at least two core principles of nature-based pedagogy

2. describe the social-emotional meaning of the Inside, Outside, and Beyond in nature-based pedagogy

3. identify ways teachers’ affect influences children’s learning on a day-to-day basis

4. explain how they might provide ongoing support for teachers in exploring the social-emotional aspects of nature-based teaching