Nature Wisdom Podcast: Episode 08
Urban Nature School Planning…
Which do you think is more important?
Having an amazing outdoor location to practice your skills… Or having an amazing attitude and passion for the journey of natural discovery?
In my experience, it doesn’t matter if you have 10,000 acres of pristine wilderness or 0.1 acres…
If you don’t have the right attitude about using your senses consciously outside then you won’t ever develop deep gifts as a naturalist & mentor.
You could live in the most amazing wild landscape, and yet live every day with your senses completely shut down (it happens every day).
On the other hand… It’s 100% possible to create meaningful nature connection routines that support human health, happiness and success in the middle of a big urban city!
Today I’m talking with Jerry Goodykoontz. He’s a very passionate teacher of young children in the middle of a big city.
Part of Jared’s mission is to design preschool programs that use nature connection activities as a core teaching element.
We had a great conversation about how to create high quality nature connection opportunities for young kids in an urban classroom setting.
I’m excited to share this one with you – it’s episode 8 of the nature wisdom podcast…
I think you’re really going to see how it’s possible to design an entire curriculum around nature connection even if you don’t always have amazing access to big forests and untouched wilderness.
These are all strategies you can integrate very effectively if you live in the city and need ways of bringing nature to an indoor setting.
Opening Transcript:
Hey it’s Brian Mertins and welcome to another episode of the nature wisdom podcast.
A few months back I got the idea that it would be really fun to create a podcast where we get on the phone and actually spend time working with lots of different people on developing nature connection skills…
Whether it’s tracking or bird language or figuring out how to start a nature school… and just generally becoming a more powerful mentor & leader & human being as a result of practicing deep nature awareness skills.
So here we are at the eighth episode… and I’m just really enjoying getting to connect with all these different guests we’ve had on the show.
It’s always such an enlightening process to witness the unique goals & interests & transformations that different people bring to the table as we really dive in and focus on helping you get to that next level of your journey.
Theres just so many different ways that we can apply nature awareness skills to develop those ancient natural instincts, and discover new connections in the outdoors, and create amazing exciting lives for ourselves in the process…
My goal here is to create a really practical resource for anyone who is seeking to build a deeper relationship with nature and sharing these skills with others for fun and the personal growth that comes along with it.
If that sounds like you then I would love to have you be a guest on the podcast… whether you’re a total beginner and you’re just starting out on your journey or if you already have some really exciting things developing and you’d like to go deeper.
So all you have to do is on the podcast page for this episode you’ll see a link that says “Be a guest”.
You just click that link and let me know a little bit about yourself, what you want to work on, and I’ll be in touch to schedule a time when we can chat.
Now in this episode I’m talking with Jerry Goodykoontz and
Jared is in a really cool situation where he’s a teacher of young children and he plays an active role in three different schools where he’s working on really helping those schools start to bring nature connection into the classroom.
One of the things that’s kind of unique about Jared’s situation is that he has so much passion and so much excitement about being outside in nature and sharing that experience with kids…
But the schools that he’s working in are actually in very urban environments.
They don’t really have much to work with in the way of natural landscape around them and so it poses some really unique challenges.
We spent a lot of our time developing some workable plans and thinking about how can you create high quality nature connection opportunities for kids in an urban situation… where they really don’t have a lot of experience being in the outdoors.
I think you’re really going to see how it’s very possible to design an entire curriculum around nature connection even if you don’t always have amazing access to the natural world.
So I think you’re going to really get a lot from listening to this episode.
This is the kind of stuff that you can integrate very effectively if you live in the city… if you want to share nature with your family or bring nature into an indoor setting… and have it all work very seamlessly and naturally.
This was a really fun and stimulating conversation so I think you’re going to enjoy listening.
Here is my conversation with Jared…
Show Notes:
Want to be a guest on the show? Just follow the ‘Be A Guest‘ link and I’ll be in touch.
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