Outdoor Learning Conference 2025: Full Schedule

Welcome to the 2025 Outdoor Learning Conference

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3:15pm MDT

Building Readers and Writers Through Engaging with Place-based Sustainability Issues LIMITED

Thursday May 8, 2025 3:15pm - 4:30pm MDT

The ability to use language—whether to share ideas, raise awareness, or speak up—is key to building a more sustainable future. Strong reading, writing, and thinking skills are often overlooked but are essential for achieving sustainability goals.
In this session, you’ll discover how to use critical literacy to help students analyze texts (including the environment), consider diverse perspectives, and examine power and justice in their local communities. We’ll explore practical activities, sample lessons, and a framework based on examples from a recent place-based, integrated unit research pilot entitled Who Speaks for the Trees, conducted in upper elementary grades in Canada. Leave inspired and equipped to integrate sustainability topics into language arts—or any subject—and empower students to create meaningful change.

Speakers

Jaime Groeller

Connect Charter School

Jaime Groeller is a settler Canadian who has been teaching for 15 years at a school with a focus on outdoor education and inquiry-based learning. This school is located in what is now often referred to as Calgary, Alberta, but is historically and currently known as Moh'kinstsis, Wîchispa... Read More →

Rachel Tidd

Executive Director, Wild Learning

Rachel Tidd is passionate about using outdoor and place-based learning to enhance literacy and math instruction. She is the author of the book Wild Learning: Practical Ideas for Bringing Teaching Outdoors and the Wild Math® and Wild Reading® Curricula series. Rachel is a former... Read More →

Ivy Waite

Ivy is a settler educator who lives on and benefits from the traditional lands of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), which includes the Siksika, the Pikani, the Kainai, the Tsuut’ina Nation, and Îyârhe Nakoda. She has taught alongside the human and more than human world in Calgary at... Read More →

Thursday May 8, 2025 3:15pm - 4:30pm MDT
Raven

Environmental and Climate Change Education Workshop, Environmental and Climate Education

Outdoor Learning Conference 2025