Outdoor Learning Conference 2025: Full Schedule

Welcome to the 2025 Outdoor Learning Conference

2:00pm MDT

Branching Out: Exploring Forestry Education FILLING

Friday May 9, 2025 2:00pm - 3:15pm MDT

PLT’s new Explore Your Environment: K-8 Activity Guide includes 50 hands-on, multidisciplinary activities to connect children to nature and increase young people’s awareness and knowledge about their environment. Activities integrate teaching about the environment into a multitude of subjects using hands-on classroom studies and outdoor field investigations. The guide is user-friendly, and works in classrooms and nonformal settings, in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Activities are organized by grade level (K-2, 3-5, and 6-8) and align with national standards for science, English language arts, math, and social studies. Many activities offer variations for a different grade level or focus. While lessons can be conducted both indoors and outdoors, all suggest meaningful ways to take student learning outside.

Session Host

Karine Cere

Indigenous Education Outdoor Learning Curriculum Coordinator, School District 93

Karine is a K to 12 teacher who specializes in outdoor learning and Indigenous education. She has worked as a classroom teacher, a teacher librarian, curriculum coordinator, and university instructor. She is passionate about outdoor learning, well-being and inclusion in education... Read More →

Speakers

Jenna Forslund

Project Learning Tree Canada

"Jenna Forslund, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is a dedicated educator with 14 years of public school experience, currently teaching high school science. She holds a Master’s in Education for Sustainable Development from the University of Manitoba and serves as a sessional instructor... Read More →

Friday May 9, 2025 2:00pm - 3:15pm MDT
201 (Indoor Space)

Environmental and Climate Change Education Workshop

9:45am MDT

The Blanket Exercise LIMITED

Saturday May 10, 2025 9:45am - 11:00am MDT

201 (Indoor Space)

The KAIROS Blanket Exercise (KBE) is an experiential teaching tool that explores the historic and contemporary relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the land we now know as Canada.

The Blanket Exercise is based on using Indigenous methodologies and the goal is to build understanding about our shared history as Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada by walking through pre-contact, treaty-making, colonization and resistance. Everyone is actively involved as they step onto blankets that represent the land, and into the role of First Nations, Inuit and later Métis peoples. By engaging on an emotional and intellectual level, the Blanket Exercise effectively educates and increases empathy."

Educators, please note, depending on the discussion the workshop could go, a bit overtime.

Speakers

Jacenta Marina

Indigenous Education, Mckim School (Kimberley, BC)

As a passionate and experienced Indigenous educator, who is a member of the Blood tribe, of the Blackfoot nation, I believe in establishing and maintaining respectful relationships, with Elders and knowledge keepers, indigenous families, students, parents, and school staff. I have... Read More →

Rosella Many Bears

Kainai Blood Tribe

I'm fluent in the Blackfoot language; it is my first language. I'm from the Kainai tribe and a survivor of St. Mary's residential school. I've recently retired from the Kainai board of education. I taught for 25 years. I taught at the Cutswood school, a Blackfoot language emersion... Read More →

Saturday May 10, 2025 9:45am - 11:00am MDT
201 (Indoor Space)

Indigenous Ways of Knowing Workshop

Outdoor Learning Conference 2025