• When: Thursday, June 22, 2023, 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
• Where: The morning session and lunch will be at Stroud Water Research Center. The afternoon session will be a tour of nearby school sites.
• Audience: Formal educators (classroom teachers, administrators, etc.) and non-formal educators (naturalists, environmental educators, conservation districts, etc.).
• Act 48: Up to 6 hours.
• Cost: FREE, including lunch. Registration is required as we have limited space. If you register and need to cancel, please email Tara Muenz so we can offer your spot to someone else.

With funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Environmental Education Grants, Stroud Water Research Center, in collaboration with regional partner school districts, sparked an initiative to create outdoor learning spaces on school campuses. These areas benefit water quality and wildlife habitat, providing meaningful outdoor learning opportunities for teachers and K–12 students. This project also allows communities to engage with the school to learn about the local watershed.

In the morning of this workshop, you will tour the Stroud Center Education Department’s outdoor learning spaces and learn about best practices for teaching watershed education through these spaces. With a native plant expert from the White Clay Wild and Scenic River Program, we’ll walk the grounds learning about best management practices like rain gardens, permeable pavement, rain chains, and native plant suggestions that you can implement on school grounds. Then we’ll give you time to design your own schoolyard, getting one-on-one time with the experts, using the design tools we’ve shared. 

After the provided lunch, we’ll hop on a bus to tour several local and model school grounds, hearing directly from participating teachers (elementary to high school level) on their process and collaborative approach at all phases, from design and building to lesson creation. Presenters will share tips on how to get started, funding outlets, lesson ideas, design tools, and successful ways of communicating with key staff in the district. 

Learning Objectives

• Participants will receive information about tools and resources available for outdoor learning space design and implementation.
•  Participants will learn about a successful model of increasing equitable access to meaningful outdoor learning spaces for teachers and their K-12 students through the design and access of the spaces.

Jump on in and join us! Questions? Please email Tara Muenz (co-instructor of the workshop).

Presented in Partnership With