2025 Arkansas Environmental & Outdoor Education Conference

This session presents on The WILD Passport Curriculum, a progressive wildcraft curriculum that engages children in hands-on learning through five essential categories: fire, flora and fauna, tools, shelter, and rope skills. We will explore how this curriculum can be used to cultivate child-led programming, allowing youth to take the reins in their outdoor education experience. Targeted toward administrators, educators, and program directors, this session will provide practical insights into fostering autonomy, critical thinking, and resilience in children. Attendees will leave with an understanding of how to structure activities that align with developmental stages, build confidence, and encourage teamwork. Additionally, we’ll discuss how these skills can be integrated into a wide range of outdoor programs, from summer camps to classroom settings, promoting self-reliance and environmental stewardship.
Target audience: Classroom teachers, PreK-higher education, School administrators, Non-formal educators, Program directors

Presenters will showcase how environmental education is being implemented across Arkansas through community partnerships involving the Guy Fenter and Dawson Educational Cooperatives, Lake Ouachita State Park, and teachers from Charleston Public School. Participants discover innovative methods of connecting nature as an engaging educational platform while promoting the outdoors and discovering Arkansas’s natural beauty. These workshops bring environmental education lessons to life by connecting concepts with the natural world. These hands-on experiences align with Arkansas Science Standards and provide students with direct engagement with Arkansas’s natural resources. Workshop topics include: Arkansas’s heritage and history, renewable energy, water quality, ecology, geology, fish identification, ornithology, dendrology, and offers a comprehensive approach to environmental education.
Target audience: Classroom teachers, PreK-12 grade, Non-formal educators

Nature journaling is a fantastic way to get away from the everyday hustle, bustle, and rush; and practice patience, observational skills, and creative expression. It can be an opportunity to get out and experience the great outdoors. Keeping a nature journal is a great way to become acquainted, or get reacquainted, with our natural world. Journaling helps: • Improve your mood • Gain mental clarity • Unplug from technology • Boost memory • Reduce stress levels • Practice presence • Improve critical thinking and problem solving • Deepen appreciation for nature Participants will make their own field journal, use their senses to explore our environment, practice basic sketching techniques, and create a nature poem. No art skills needed! Materials, supplies, resources and door prizes will be provided.
Target audience: Classroom teachers, 3-12 grade, Non-formal educators, Program directors

1. This session explores how the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission utilizes outdoor experiences to cultivate healthy lifestyles and foster a sustainable future for all Arkansans. Target audience: Educators, outdoor recreation professionals, and community leaders. Topic focus: Integrating outdoor education into curricula, promoting physical and mental well-being through nature-based activities, and developing environmental stewardship. NGSS alignment: Crosscutting concepts of systems and system models, stability and change, and patterns. Participants will gain: Practical strategies for incorporating outdoor learning into educational settings. Resources for accessing AGFC programs and educational materials. Understanding of the connection between human health and environmental health. Skills for developing and implementing community-based outdoor education initiatives.
Target Audience: Classroom teachers, PreK-higher education, School administrators, Non-formal educators

2. During this session, you will receive information about funding available to create outdoor learning environments and for recycling stations. I realize due to curriculum demands that the importance of environmental education is sometimes overlooked. There are also many environmental agencies that offer grants and classroom education programs throughout the year. There are ways to create a “GREEN” classroom. I will share my experiences and knowledge with you during this session. You will take away the names of agencies, grants, websites, and other resources I have used to create an environmental and outdoor classroom setting.
Target audience: Pre-K through 8th grade.

Interact with 4 different presenters at your own pace in this Show & Tell Session.

1. Foraging in Arkansas: Individuals will have the opportunity to taste test a variety of recipes that highlight easily accessible and safe foraged foods and leave with valuable resources, including recipes and foraging guidelines, empowering them to integrate these natural ingredients into classroom lessons and programs, making environmental education both delicious and memorable!

2. Increasing Accessibility in Nature: Until recently, accessibility in outdoor spaces was mostly limited to short, paved trails. Today, adaptive equipment is becoming increasingly available and is changing the way in which we achieve accessibility in nature – for people of all disabilities. This session will provide information on the All-Terrain Wheelchair Program that is providing access to hiking trails in Arkansas for people with mobility limitations.

3. Building Profeesional Capacity: Have you wanted to increase your credentials as an environmental educator? This session will provide information and answer questions about AEEA's new online eeCredential Program. Attendees will learn about the program and courses offered to help expand their knowledge of EE and applications to their professional careers.

4. Creating a STEAM Night: One of the benefits of STEAM education is an expanded appreciation of environmental education because of the interdisciplinary approach to weaving science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics into experiences. Join us in the session as we describe the approach and learnings from initiating a STEAM Night at Leverett Elementary School in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Learn how to set it up, how to organize your partners, and how to mobilize families to come out for the event - connecting students and their families with environmental education.

5. Creating Awe in Arkansas Using Children's Literature

This three-hour interactive workshop is a miniature introduction to permaculture. It will inspire health and eco-conscious Earth stewards to provide for their own needs, growing their own food in the most productive, sustainable way using permaculture methods. It will challenge the participants to move beyond main stream conservation theories to embrace permaculture concepts for the most sustainable, social, rewarding, and spiritual approach to feeding and providing habitat for humans and wildlife. This workshop will educate and prepare its attendees to create better physical and mental health, the highest land fertility possible, water conservation strategies, never-ending surplus of food for humans and animals, the most diverse wildlife habitat imaginable and restoration of our planet’s life-support systems. It will be a life-changing experience for all who attend.
Target audience: Classroom teachers, 9-higher education, Non-formal educators, Program directors, Conservationists, naturalists, lecturers, gardeners