12th Annual SEEA Conference & Research Symposium

The integration of experiential learning, environmental education, and curriculum studies within the framework of nonviolence education are deeply connected. Raising awareness about the relationship between human behavior and environmental degradation are considered forms of violence against nature. By supporting a transformative learning environment, this will allow for the encouragement of students to analyze how this affects humans and ecological systems. The use of experiential learning may develop empathy for ecosystems through immersive experiences and create a practice of problem-solving and critical thinking in a real-world context. By incorporating environmental education into the curriculum, this may foster a stewardship behavior toward the environment and grasp sustainability concepts through active participation. The outcomes of an in-person environmental education program in the schools may result in enhanced student engagement, critical consciousness, empowered actions, and sustainable curriculum development.

Project Learning Tree is an organization that prioritizes environmental education for youth by providing teaching resources for educators to use. These resources provide a way for educators to take learning outside along with exposing their students to environmental processes and show how humanity is part of the environment, while using trees and forests as their primary lens. These resources can be used at multiple grade levels, and some are more specific to certain grade levels. Green Jobs guide is one such resource, that provides excellent, in-depth activities that educators can use with older students and students that are about to enter the workforce. The activities in this guide offer insights into what those who work in the forestry sector does, as well provide scenarios that model real-world decision-making situations regarding forested areas. Equity and inclusion are also something that PLT strives for. To showcase that, they have two other resources that may be helpful for some educators: Journeys - Black Faces and Green Spaces and Explora Tu Ambiente - K-8 Activity Guide. The former offers experiences of African American professionals within the forestry and natural resources job sector, providing their journey to their current careers. The latter is a version of the Explore Your Environment - K-8 guide that has been revised for educators who teach students that use Spanish as their first language. These three guides provide insights into careers and ways to interact with individuals in a manner that may let them be seen and heard.

This session delves into the transformative power of storytelling as a tool to bridge the gap between fear, knowledge, and action in rural Southern communities impacted by pollutive industries. Through the lens of environmental education and justice, participants will explore how to highlight the experiences of often-overlooked communities, building empathy and understanding for cultural values while fostering stronger emotional connections to nature.
Presenters will share proven strategies for engaging community members, particularly youth and elderly individuals, through immersive, enjoyable, and interactive environmental education activities that inspire care for the environment. By combining storytelling with action-oriented education, they’ve cultivated trust in communities where environmental misinformation often fuels hesitancy and mistrust.
This session aligns with three conference strands:
Environmental Education through a Societal Lens – Showcasing JEDI principles, it identifies obstacles, highlights invisible communities, and finds common ground to foster collaboration.
Invisible Obstacles – Bridging fear and knowledge, it addresses emotional and cultural barriers to environmental action.
The Power of Storytelling – Using compelling narratives, the session demonstrates how stories promote values, spark positive behavior changes, and create deeper connections with the environment.
Interactive Component:
Participants will engage in hands-on activities, including creating their own community-centered environmental stories and role-playing scenarios to build empathy for underrepresented voices. They will also participate in small group discussions to brainstorm methods for incorporating storytelling into their own environmental education initiatives.
Key Takeaways:
Strategies for addressing mistrust and misinformation in marginalized communities through storytelling.
Approaches to designing youth-friendly environmental education activities that foster care for nature.
Practical tools for integrating empathy and cultural sensitivity into environmental education programs.
This session promises to equip participants with actionable methods to enhance their environmental education practices, ensuring they leave inspired to make a tangible difference in their own communities.

Instilling HOPE through EE

This interactive workshop will consider research about the anxieties, distress and disengagement that can result when students (and educators) learn about environmental problems. The need for "HOPE" (a project-based learning framework) will be presented as an essential basis for change, rather than merely a feeling.

Workshop participants will:
- explore physical and mental health benefits of spending time in nature;
- use technology to measure positive impacts on the earth;
- recognize environmental heroes from various cultures;
- observe the resilience of nature;
- consider the potential of human empathy and ingenuity; and
- try instructional strategies intended to help students gain skills, experience, and confidence by solving bite-sized local problems

The focus will be on maximizing the mental health benefits of nature, instilling authentic hope, and engaging students in meaningful and effective problem-solving.

Depression and anxiety can be common reactions to environmental education, affecting both students and educators. Fear does not inspire or motivate students to make a difference in the world: instead, it can result in hopelessness and disengagement. The proposed workshop will share highlights from an eeCourse in development.

Overcoming Obstacles to Outdoor Learning SEEA’s eeLandscape Analysis - and particularly the School Survey - revealed a number of barriers that limit opportunities for students to experience the benefits of outdoor learning. Despite research documenting the academic gains, real world connections to curriculum, physical and mental health benefits, problem-solving skills, self-efficacy, and nature connection that can result from outdoor learning, few classes regularly spend time outside the classroom walls. And those classes that do venture over the threshold often miss out on opportunities for enriching and empowering student-directed learning. This workshop will focus on methods and models for overcoming obstacles to outdoor learning. Building on survey findings and research, workshop participants will explore instructional strategies and approaches that have been effective in getting students outside more frequently, and for more meaningful real-world learning experiences and nature connections.

This interactive session explores how Gyotaku, the traditional Japanese art of fish printing, serves as a powerful tool to bridge the gap between entertainment and environmental education. Participants will engage in hands-on activities that demonstrate how art can captivate diverse audiences while fostering a deeper understanding of ecological and cultural topics. By using a non-traditional location for the workshop, people that would not normally engage in environmental education are reached.

Aligning with the conference strand of integrating creativity into educational practices, this session highlights the versatility of Gyotaku in teaching about fish biodiversity, river basins, water quality, and both place-based and Japanese cultural history. Attendees will learn how this art form connects participants to environmental and cultural heritage while sparking curiosity and engagement.

Key takeaways include methods for using Gyotaku to align with environmental education goals, strategies for integrating it into lessons on aquatic ecosystems and cultural history, and techniques for promoting community engagement through interdisciplinary, interactive learning. Participants will leave with tools to make education both impactful and memorable while inspiring environmental stewardship in audiences that may not have thought about it, through the connection of art and nature as entertainment.

Learn about recent findings on the current state of environmental education in the southeast, including gaps and barriers to access that prevent the successful implementation of environmental education in communities and schools. Collected from hundreds of schools and environmental education providers across the southeast, the findings and tools from our regional landscape analysis of environmental education are relevant to environmental education providers, funders, and school teachers and administrators. Participants will have access to tools and resources to strengthen connections between schools and environmental education providers in their community.

UL Research Institutes is a world-leading organization that is hard at work discovering how safety science can help solve increasingly urgent problems like renewable energy from lithium-ion batteries. Additionally, ULRI is committed to educating the future of safety science with their free platform - Xplorlabs.org. Xplorlabs inspires students and educators to solve real problems like supply chain issues of lithium-ion batteries. In this interactive session participants will attempt to mine for resources, reclaim the land once those resources have been extracted, and use the no cost Xplorlabs.org to explore solutions to the problems mineral extraction poses. They will then consider the application of this hands-on lab to place-based education opportunities (e.g. Okefenokee Swamp titanium mine, Boundary Waters copper and nickel mine).

Learn why stories matter and why they are so effective in creating emotional and intellectual connections to the natural world.

Community Engaged Learning (CEL) is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs. Faculty and educators facilitate these experiences by creating each facet of the engaged activity with a designated community partner, discussing and evaluating the mutually beneficial, reciprocal relationship that ensures all parties are supported. The specific links between the CEL experiences and the student learning outcomes are reflected in the activities that the students take part in as an intentional part of the instruction and contributes to the depth of students’ learning within the context of their studies. Students are given ongoing structured opportunities for critical reflection before, during and after their engagement that are designed to have them pause and consider how what they are seeing and experiencing matters not only to themselves, but also the communities in which they live and grow. In this session, Kelly Porter, design and environmental educator, will discuss this dynamic pedagogy using case studies from courses she’s created at the higher education level that merge design, EE and environmentally based non-profits in her community of Northeast Tennessee. Attendees will learn best practices in Community Engaged Learning (CEL), including guided reflection as a key stage of the CEL process. They will also receive resources to help them begin their own CEL initiatives from both the educator’s and the community partner’s perspectives.
This session aligns with the volunteer track, as CEL fosters a reciprocal exchange—providing students with real-world, high-impact learning experiences while supporting community partners through meaningful service-learning projects.
Additionally, this session fits within the ""EE through a societal lens"" track, as CEL pedagogy encourages students to reflect on how their efforts throughout a project directly impact their communities. This reflection can foster a heightened sense of empathy and an awareness of the significant effects their actions can have.