Prep Time: > 1 Hour
Activity Time: ~15 Minutes

Goal: To gauge student context on experiences, education, and understanding related to nature connection and land-based topics – this activity focuses on building relationships with students by engaging with their interests authentically and creating a space where they can advocate for their own learning

Description:

• Design and deliver a pre-knowledge survey to your course students at the start of a term or program.
• Acknowledge the vulnerability and sensitivity related to some of these topics and preface some of the content in the survey.
• Give students the option of anonymous responses and skipping questions.
• Have both quick multiple-choice questions and a few longer responses.
• Design questions based around the overall goal of your course and/or teaching unit.
• Sample questions:
  • Have you ever heard of the concept ‘nature connection’? (Y/N)
  • Have you learned about or practiced nature-based learning in other courses? (Y/N)
  • How do you feel in nature? (Calm, Indifferent, Stimulated, Unsure, Discomfort, Other)
  • What ideas do you associate with ‘land’?
  • Have you learned about Indigenous land-based education?
  • How often do you try to intentionally spend time outdoors? (3+ times a week, 1-2 times a week, never)

Debrief: Share appropriate snapshots from the survey with the class as a guiding tool for the goals and growth of your time together. For example, if most of the class responds as seeking outdoor time 1-2 times a week, build space in the class to share that time together. A class may also identify key themes they would like to focus on, such as Indigenous rights, climate change impacts, or personal reflection.

Source: Interview Participant B

Prep Time: < 5 Minutes
Activity Time: ~10 Minutes

Goal: Open a conversation about how people are very different about what impacts their comfort level – vulnerability and honesty in this activity help deepen relationships and help students focus on their own experiences while reflecting on the perspectives of others

Description:

• Acquire 2 ropes – draw a circle on the floor or ground with the smaller rope in the middle and then a bigger circle outside of that.
• The inside circle is the comfort zone. The space between the inside circle and the outside circle is the learning zone. Outside of the large circle is the panic zone.
• To explain the concepts, use an example such as bungee jumping:
  

  “If I said we’re going bungee jumping, where would you be on the three zones? If you feel comfortable with bungee jumping, then jump right into the middle. If you’re not sure about jumping but would be interested to learn about what would happen, you would be in the next ring. If it makes you panic, you would be outside the large circle, in the panic zone. You may have a low level of panic close to the rope or you can be panicking far away from the circle.”

• Have students stand and list a few different activities, from things that generally do not seem scary (e.g., eating breakfast in the morning) up to more divisive activities (e.g., playing video games, going to school, going shopping), and finally broad ‘scary’ activities (e.g., cliff jumping, deep water diving).
• Then move to exploring nature-based learning examples:
  • Doing ‘Sit Spots’
  • Helping in a community garden
  • Learning wildlife tracking (tracks and other signs of animals)
  • Identifying nature sounds
  • Plant identification
  • Circle singing
  • Sharing a lesson you have learned from nature
  • Engaging with social and political aspects related to nature spaces (foraging regulations, conservation area practices, land development consultations)

Debrief: Discuss how experiences with nature-based learning can have different comfort levels, and how to incorporate different comfort levels into work with each other and the community.

Source: Interview Participant A

Prep Time: > 1 Hour (to gather resources on local community examples/initiatives)
Activity Time: ~ 3 Hours

Goal: Increase student awareness of local community needs and foster meaningful connections to local nature – this activity prompts students to use interdisciplinary skills to develop a tangible application of their learning that values local and cultural contexts

Description:

• Have students (either individually or in groups) write out community engagement plans that they submit as part of a hypothetical part of a community nature connection design project.
• Students are then tasked with envisioning a design plan that could be implemented in their own community to support nature connection opportunities for residents.
• Present benefits of nature connection (as identified in this eBook or from your own experience) to students for context on how it can serve their community.
• Encourage students to research current gaps in community nature connection and design a space that would bridge some of those gaps.
• Present current community initiatives to students as inspiration.
• If possible, partner with a local conversation organization to learn about needs students could fill. Only pursue this path if there is reasonable capacity for uptake and sharing of proposal work.
• Potential design elements of their community space could include:
  • Areas for sit spots
  • Observation platforms
  • Circle firepit
  • Community gardens
  • Weekly speakers on nature topics
  • Plant identification board
  • Educational QR code scavenger hunt throughout the space.

Debrief: Have students share/present their community engagement plan. What nature connection gaps did they identify? Why did they choose to include specific design elements? How would this area benefit the community? How can we take action on parts of the plan in real life?

Source: Interview Participant B

Prep Time: > 5 Minutes
Activity Time: ~ 10 Minutes

Goal: Connect the group through rhythmic collaboration and support students in feeling present in the moment and grounded in the outdoor space – this activity encourages students to communicate, relate, and act with awareness toward their peers without verbal conversations, allowing them to strengthen their collaborative relationships

Description:

• Have students form a circle in an outdoor space, preferably with some privacy or minimal disturbance.
• Start a simple body percussion rhythm yourself (e.g., clapping your hands, slapping your chest, snapping your fingers, stomping your feet).
• After four rounds of your chosen rhythm, have the person beside you add a new rhythm on top of yours.
• After four rounds again, have the next person carry on and so forth until the entire circle is part of the rhythm.
• When the rhythm returns to you, change to a new rhythm and have the group continue to change the song as well.
• Vocalizations, body percussion, and passing on your turn are all welcome.

Debrief: Have students describe how the activity made them feel. Did they struggle to build harmony with the group? Did the rhythm feel calming? What tone did the group rhythm take on; fast and excited, slow and calm, strong and loud, gentle and quiet? Did they feel connected to their peers more? What kind of relationship building was needed to keep the rhythm?

Source: Interview Participant G

Prep Time: > 30 Minutes (In class, food preparation time varies)
Activity Time: ~ 1 Hour

Goal: Have students share food that is part of their ancestry, culture, or heritage to connect with each other and learn about the origins of different traditions – sharing food often helps bring people together and forms closer bonds based on cultural pride and appreciation

Description:

• Ideally choose a day and place where you can host an outdoor picnic.
• With a few weeks’ notice, ask students to choose and prepare or bring in a dish to share with the class that they feel connected to. The dish can relate to a traditional food of their ancestors, something that has been popularized by their heritage, or that was part of their culture growing up.
• Take note of any allergies or dietary restrictions.
• On the day of the picnic, have students share why they brought in the dish that they did.
• Reflect on where food comes from in the natural, historical, ancestral, and industrial world, how it is grown, harvested, cooked, and the inputs food takes (human, nonhuman, natural, technological).

Debrief: Make connections between food and where it comes from in the natural world, how different people from different places in the world have chosen to highlight certain ingredients, and how important access to cultural foods is for nature connection. The ability to access nature and access cultural foods through traditional methods (hunting, gathering, foraging) is a direct way in which many people connect to land. Without access, depth of connection and self-identity in nature can be greatly affected.

Source: byron murray, outdoor educator instructor & To Know the Land podcaster

Prep Time: < 5 Minutes
Activity Time: ~30 Minutes – variable, repeatable; longer amounts of time may enable deeper connection while experiences may also occur in short periods.

Goal: To practice and experience mindful connection and communication with trees and plants, to understand their perspectives and the possibilities of interspecies communication through open, sensory, intuitive engagement and experience

Description:

• Spend time with a single tree in a park, forest, backyard, city street – anywhere.
• Approach the tree with an open heart and mind.
• Verbally in a quiet voice or nonverbally in your mind’s voice, intentionally ask the tree for permission to connect with it.
  • There will be a feeling of peace, warmth, openness and/or welcome if the tree agrees to connect. If the tree does not want to connect, there will be a sense of feeling blocked and/or closed. Respect if the tree does not want to connect and simply move to ask another tree.
• Physical proximity to the tree before, during and/or after this initial connection can vary.
• After the tree grants permission, introduce yourself and let the tree know you would like to speak with it; ask if that is alright with the tree. From here, let the asking of questions, deep listening, and receiving of answers flow. Curiosity about the tree’s life is a good starting point, inquiring about how it is feeling inside and out, if it has any needs, about its relationship to its surroundings and human/nonhuman community members.
• Communications from the tree can be received in a range of sensory, internal ways, singly or in combination: as visuals in the mind’s eye, as sound, as taste, as physical sensation in the body, as a sense of knowing, as language heard and/or seen as text in the mind’s eye. The tree imprints its messaging through the unique intuitive and knowledge fields of the human it is connecting with. A message received that is surprising is often a sign that it is coming from the tree.
• Practicing discernment, respect, ethics, and care during these engagements is important. Keep a clear mind, do not project messaging onto the tree or make up information. Meditation, mindfulness and awareness of the different states of our mental and physical being assists in discerning that messages from the tree are coming from the tree and not ourselves.
• After spending time with the tree, take a moment to thank the tree for your time and engagement together. Offer it a little water, a strand of hair, a hug, and/or a kiss. Gestures of reciprocity intentionally acknowledge relationships and disrupt Western approaches that do not consider or give back to eco-nonhumans. Reciprocity recognizes the interrelations of all beings on Earth.

Debrief: Take a few minutes to reflect, write down and/or draw what was experienced. Gather as a group to share experiences and discuss what it means to connect and communicate with eco-nonhumans, personally and as a society. What are the implications of interspecies communication with trees and other eco-nonhumans who can share their knowledge and perspectives with humans?

There are challenges with English and its pronouns that refer with assumption to eco-nonhumans as gendered and/or objects. This could be a good point for discussion.

Intuitive Interspecies Communication (IIC) is available to everyone, an ability that some people innately have and others develop with practice. Common in many Indigenous ways of engaging with ecological nonhumans, interspecies communication has largely been suppressed by Western colonial education and ideology. Interspecies communication is based in respectful awareness that all eco-nonhumans are alive, self-aware, perceptive beings living and engaging with/in communities. While this activity focuses on connection with trees, similar practices can be engaged for plants, indoors and outdoors. Repetition of IIC practices enhance experiences, abilities and knowledge. This basic description of approaches offers a starting point, to be engaged as a group and/or individually. IIC is an emerging academic field of study involving plants, animals and other ecological nonhumans, reflecting growing public (Western) engagement with IIC. There are ever-increasing resources on IIC: articles, books, films, podcasts, talks, etc.

Source: Dr. Sarah Abbott, Associate Professor and Critical Plant Studies scholar based in the Department of Film, University of Regina. www.sarahabbott.ca