2025 Arkansas Environmental & Outdoor Education Conference

Grab your food and join facilitators Monica Woods and Sarah Lewis for an open-format book discussion. The main theme of the book is social psychology, with the hope that environmental educators will find it a useful tool for critical thinking in their fields and at this time in our history. The target audience is any environmental educator interested in this topic and how it relates to their professional and/or personal world. Participants will come away with insight, context and new perspectives of the world in which we are working to educate people about environmental systems. They will also take away connections with others with whom they can network and share ideas, further deepening community as environmental educators. Those interested in this session should read at least of Malcolm Gladwell's Revenge of the Tipping Point before the conference.

Forest Bathing is an immersive experience designed to help deepen the connection to your surroundings through your senses. Participants will be given various “invitations”, or prompts, to help facilitate this connection. During invitations we wander independently, then we come back together as a group between invitations. We then end with a tea gathering. This practice is designed to foster deep ways of “knowing” the earth. Instead of naming plants and animals we’re more concerned with who they are. The benefits of the practice include lower blood pressure, easier emotion regulation, and reduced stress among many others. Forest Bathing helps to connect humans to the land and each other. We protect what we love.
Target audience: Classroom teachers, PreK-higher education, School administrators, Non-formal educators, Program directors