ECO Institute — Nature Specials

At North Branch Nature Center

• July 27 – 31, 2026
• $1,300 ($1,750 with 3 graduate credits). Financial Support Available
• 12 – 20 students
• For Elementary and Middle School educators and administrators
• Instructors: Ash Kerby-Miller & Guests

For 15 years, North Branch Nature Center’s Educating Children Outdoors (ECO) program has embedded with local public schools to bring standards-based lessons to the fields, woodlots and city parks nearby. Together with classroom educators, our NBNC Teacher-Naturalists have designed and taught many lessons on ecology, physics, geography, math… and music, visual art, engineering, storytelling, cooking, crafting, and play! During this course we’ll focus on ECO lessons based in “Specials” while still tying in academic standards. Expect to teach literacy through an oral storytelling workshop, physics through natural instrument-making, and ecology through harvesting and cooking wild foods.

This course is designed to help homeroom teachers bring more art+ into their forest classroom. In our work teaching outdoors in local schools, we’ve also noticed that music, gym, and art teachers are often tapped to help with outdoor learning – a key goal of this course is to build skills to help translate the expertise of those instructors into outdoor learning. Throughout it all, we will learn, play, and create in perhaps our most fun week of summer professional development offerings.