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Upcoming Presentations in the Nature
Talks Series: |
Facing Nature Deficit Disorder: A Roundtable Discussion |
| Location: |
Seattle
REI Flagship Store. Address: 222 Yale Ave N Seattle, WA 98109. |
| Dates: |
Monday, February 22, 2010 |
| Time: |
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. |
| Cost: |
FREE (donations requested) |
| Presenters: |
Panel of 6 National Experts (biographies below) |
| Description & Presenter Biography: |
 Richard Louv’s landmark 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, made tidal waves among parents and educators, and sparked an international renaissance of the environmental education movement, with a new rallying cry of "leave no child inside!"
Over the past 5 years, the Children and Nature Movement has grown strong and diverse as it has increased it’s momentum. New research continues to show the health benefits of unstructured play outdoors, at a time when children’s health issues such as obesity, attention-deficit disorders, depression and others, have in some places reached epidemic proportions.
At Wilderness Awareness School, we believe our mission and classes are part of the "cure" for nature deficit disorder, and we have organized an evening roundtable discussion on the topic with a group of six national experts.
Join us to discuss this important issue with some of Seattle's leading outdoor and environmental educators and organizations. Please bring your questions and concerns to this crucial conversation about Nature Deficit Disorder.
Our Panel of Experts include:
Martin Le Blanc: National
Youth Education Director, Sierra Club; Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Children
and Nature Network
John Chilkotowsky: Program and Marketing Director, Wilderness Awareness School; WA State Regional Coordinator for the Children and Nature Network
Gail Gatton: Center Director, Seward Park Environmental & Audubon Center
Darcy Ottey: Excecutive Director, Rites of Passage Journeys
Erica Nixon Mack: Program Director, Passages Northwest
Jourdan Keith: Founder and Director, Urban Wilderness Project
Biographies:
Martin
LeBlanc
 National
Youth Education Director for the Sierra
Club and Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Children
and Nature Network which is chaired by Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods. He has had a passion for the outdoors since having his own life turned around through an outdoor experience as a teenager. Martin manages the Building Bridges to the Outdoors youth project and believes every child in America deserves their own special place in nature.
John Chilkotowsky
 Program
and Marketing Director of Wilderness Awareness School, and WA State Regional Coordinator for the Children and Nature Network.
Wilderness Awareness School is a national not-for-profit environmental
education organization based in Duvall. Since 1983, they have
pioneered a unique mentoring approach which helps awaken children's
and adults' innate passions for the natural world. John has been
an educator since 1995, teaching and designing wilderness courses
in public schools, environmental education centers, and at primitive
skills camps. John has a Bachelor of Science degree, and is a
graduate of the Kamana Naturalist Training Program. He is in awe of the natural world and sees hope for the future in every child. He and his wife Troye live in the Snoqualmie Valley with their daughters Maya and Elena.
Gail Gatton
Center Director, Seward Park Environmental & Audubon Center.
Gail led the effort to build the Audubon Center and get it up and running. She has over 20 years experience covering a broad array of interests from high school education to conservation policy work. Prior to serving as the Center Director, Gail spent eight years working as an environmental policy consultant for the firm of Ross & Associates, specializing in environmental program development. She spent 15 years in Alaska working for a variety of political and environmental organizations and serving on the boards of several organizations, including the ACLU. She has a B.S degree from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. Gail lives in the Mt Baker neighborhood with her husband and teenage daughter. She also has a daughter attending college at the University of Michigan.
Darcy Ottey
Excecutive Director, Rites of Passage Journeys.
Journeys has been part of every major transition in Darcy’s life, since her Coming of Age program when she was 13. She became Executive Director of Journeys in 2006, after serving as Associate Program Director at Outward Bound Wilderness and spending ten years as a guide and instructor for a variety of wilderness programs. She holds an MA in Environment & Community, with a focus on Leadership, from Antioch University Seattle.
Erica Nixon Mack
Program Director, Passages Northwest. Erica came to outdoor experiential education as a second career, after graduating from Indiana University and working as a Physical Therapist. She joined Passages Northwest as Program Director in 2005, after six years working for Outward Bound as field instructor, climber, and whitewater specialist. When she is not busy trying to change the world, she loves to go camping, go for a run, spend time with her daughters, tend her urban garden, discuss issues of social justice, read, learn about different people and places, connect with friends and family, and try to make order out of chaos. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Open Arms.
Jourdan Keith
Founder and Director, Urban Wilderness Project. Recently voted Seattle Poet Populist, Jourdan has been featured in Seattle Magazine, Seattle Woman and ColorsNW. Jourdan is the Founder and Director of Urban Wilderness Project because she believes that connecting to the natural world is critical to restoring communities, reducing domestic violence, building relationships, and acknowledging and healing historical injustices. She has thirteen years of experience as an educator including six seasons of wilderness trip leadership, and over nine years experience creating, planning and organizing activities and workshops. Some of Jourdan's other roles and experience include Environmental Restoration Project lead for UW Restoration Ecology Network, and project management, trail building and natural restoration experience for Seattle Parks and Recreation, North Cascades National Park and USFS.
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The Hidden Lives of Northwest Wildlife |
| Location: |
Seattle
REI Flagship Store. Address: 222 Yale Ave N Seattle, WA 98109. |
| Dates: |
Monday, May 3, 2010 |
| Time: |
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. |
| Cost: |
FREE (donations accepted) |
| Presenter: |
David Moskowitz
(biography below) |
| Description & Presenter Biography: |
 Join David Moskowitz, expert wildlife tracker and author of PACIFIC NORTHWEST WILDLIFE AND TRACKING (Timber Press, scheduled publication May 2010) for an evening of amazing photographs and stories exploring the lives of our regions wildlife.
From the tiniest shrews to bears and cougars, the signs of wild animals are all around us, waiting to be discovered by the observant outdoor adventurist. From the wild coastline to alpine tundra and from rain forests to deserts, David Moskowitz will share tips on how to find wild animals and interpret the signs they leave behind on the landscape including tracks, feeding sign and scent marking.
Biography: David
Moskowitz is our lead wildlife tracking instructor, including the Wildlife Tracking Intensive course, Tracking Club, and the project manager for the Cascade
Wildlife Monitoring Project. He joined Wilderness Awareness School
in 2005, bringing with him over a decade of experience teaching outdoor
and environmental education throughout the United States including at
Outward Bound and the North Cascades Institute. David is a skilled field
researcher and has been involved with forest carnivore research and wildlife
monitoring in the Cascades for many years as well as avian research in
the Puget Sound area.
He holds a bachelors degree in Environmental Studies through Prescott
College with an emphasis on Field Ecology and Wildlife Tracking. David
is an active member of the International Society of Professional Trackers
and has given many talks and presentations on wildlife and tracking
based on his years of field work and teaching. He holds professional
certifications in wildlife tracking, wilderness medicine, avalanche
safety and sits on the Board of Directors for Rite of Passage Journeys
where he is the chairman of the Safety Committee. His writings on wilderness
skills, environmental education, natural history and tracking have appeared
in numerous regional and national publications including Green Teacher, Wilderness Way, and the Wilderness Education Association
Journal. |
Getting Kids Outside: Lessons from Coyote's Guide |
| Location: |
Seattle
REI Flagship Store. Address: 222 Yale Ave N Seattle, WA 98109. |
| Dates: |
Monday, June 7, 2010 |
| Time: |
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. |
| Cost: |
FREE (donations accepted) |
| Presenter: |
Ellen Haas |
| Description & Presenter Biography: |
This talk is for folks who are getting kids outdoors, but need some help. How do you move kids beyond their fears, tame their wildness, focus their attention, or widen their awareness? It centers on Wilderness Awareness School’s seminal teaching guide, Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature: For Kids of All Ages and their Mentors.
What we call “Coyote Mentoring” is an edgy approach to education outdoors. Through living in the landscape, questioning, storytelling, adventuring, and inquiring, mythical Coyote magically engages the students. Through wise and specific limit-setting, inspiration, and counsel, Mentor steers the ship.
Ellen Haas, the book’s coauthor along with Jon Young and Evan McGown, will unveil the book’s essence, then invite conversation about issues like how to design a learning experience, how to teach “invisible school,” and, for formal teachers, how we can uplift environmental education standards to include intimate connection with nature that leads to voluntary simplicity and lifelong caring and tending.
If you are teaching/playing/working with folks outdoor, join us for conversation!
 Biography: Ellen Haas is co-author and an outreach specialist for Wilderness Awareness School's book Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature: For Kids of all Ages and their Mentors. Retired from a 20-year career teaching English, Ellen contributed to many of Wilderness Awareness School’s initial projects in Washington -- including its first long-range plan and program catalog, early editions of Kamana, and the Seeing Through Native Eyes and The Art of Mentoring audio recordings. She loves simply being outdoors; watching her son develop a business; and her grandchildren, dog, and garden grow.
|
Raising Children With Connections
to Nature: Facing Nature Deficit Disorder
|
| Description: |
Richard Louv’s landmark 2005
book, Last
Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder,
made tidal waves among parents and educators, and sparked an international
renaissance of the environmental education movement, with a new
rallying cry of "leave no child inside!"
At Wilderness Awareness School, we believe our mission and courses
are part of the "cure" for nature deficit disorder,
and we organized an evening round table discussion on the topic
on January 8, 2007 at Seattle REI.
The event was attended by over 100 people, and featured 7 representatives
(see their biographies below) from leading local organizations
which strive to provide meaningful experiences in the natural
world for young people in our region. Each of
these panelists' organization and contact information is below.
Participants got to hear these panelists' different philosophies
and methodologies for nature education, and took home tips and
strategies for providing meaningful experiences in nature for
the young people in their lives amidst today’s increasingly
indoor and technologically-focused lifestyles." (Read
an
article in the Seattle PI about the issue and our event). |
| |
| Presenters' Biographies: |
Martin
LeBlanc
National
Youth Education Director for the Sierra
Club and Vice President of the Board of Directors for the
Children
and Nature Network which is Chaired by Richard Louv, author
of Last Child in the Woods . Martin has had a passion
for the outdoors since having his own life turned around through
an outdoor experience as a teenager. Before working for the Sierra
Club, Martin was an outdoor education advocate for Texas Parks
and Wildlife in Austin, Texas and was also an outdoor educator
for Youthnet a non-profit in Mount Vernon, Washington in the mid
90’s. Martin believes “every child in America deserves
their own special place in nature”. Contact
Martin by emailing martin.leblanc (a) sierraclub.org
Stan Crow
 Director
Emeritus of Rite
of Passage Journeys. Journeys is an organization which provides
wilderness rights of passage experience for youth and adults and
trainings for parents, educators and mentors in creating rites
of passage and coming of age experiences. Stan is the former director
of the organization's Center for Imaginal Education, and first
joined the Journeys staff in 1971. Stan has extensive experience
working with young people and training youth leaders. He has led
the team in the development of Coming of age and mentoring curriculum.
Stan is a skilled group facilitator, community-based educator,
and ritualist, and enjoys nature and singing. Contact
Stan by emailing stan (a) riteofpassagejourneys.org
John Chilkotowsky
Program
Director of Wilderness Awareness School.
Wilderness Awareness School is a national not-for-profit environmental
education organization based in Duvall. Since 1983, they have
pioneered a unique mentoring approach which helps awaken children's
and adults' innate passions for the natural world. John has been
an educator since 1995, teaching and designing wilderness courses
in public schools, environmental education centers, and at primitive
skills camps. John has a Bachelor of Science degree, and is a
graduate of The Kamana Naturalist Training Program. He is in awe
of the natural world and sees hope for the future in every child.
Contact John by emailing johnc (a) wildernessawareness.org
Stacy Mercier Earlywine
 Program
Manager and Outdoor Educator for Passages
Northwest. Passages Northwest is a Seattle based non profit
dedicated to inspiring leadership and courage in girls through
exploration of the arts and nature. Growing up in Maine, she was
exposed early on to the power of wild places. Stacy received her
BFA in Dance in 1994 and discovered climbing the following year.
She volunteers as a lead climbing instructor/trainer with the
Washington Alpine Club and has worked as field staff for Outward
Bound. She's climbed, hiked, and explored her way through Thailand,
Laos, Cambodia, India, Tibet, Nepal, and Guatemala. Stacy believes
her childhood experiences in the wilderness sparked her desire
to explore the larger world and greatly shaped who she is today.
Contact Stacy by emailing stacy (a) passagesnw.org
Jeff Rose
 Associate
Program Director with Outward
Bound. Outward Bound is a national non-profit educational
organization based in the North Cascades. He has worked extensively
in experiential and outdoor education, teaching rock climbing
and mountaineering in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.
Jeff has a master's degree in geography from San Diego State University,
researching the role that outdoor education institutions play
in the way in which people relate to nature. He is an active member
of several professional organizations including the Association
for Experiential Education, the American Mountain Guides Association,
and the Wilderness Education Association. Contact
Jeff by emailing jrose (a) outwardbound.org
Mark Jordahl
 Naturalist
at IslandWood.
Mark’s passion for learning about the natural world and
his love of the Pacific Northwest were first sparked while working
as an AmeriCorps volunteer and wilderness guide in Southeast Alaska
in the mid-1990’s. In addition to working as a naturalist
at IslandWood, he has taught in a marine science course for inner-city
Seattle teens, owned a sea kayaking guide service, and served
as Adult Programs Director for Wilderness Awareness School. In
2004-05, Mark spent a year doing his masters research on Conservation
Education in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda. He strongly
believes that kids need to get dirty more often. Contact
Mark by emailing markj (a) islandwood.org
***
Browse
this website for information on our mentoring and other courses
which can help you learn to how reconnect young people in your
life with the natural world outside their door. |
