Bright Ideas

 

Nature-based education prioritizes emergent, child-directed learning that’s individualized for each child, but we don’t often follow the same principles when it comes to our own professional learning. 

 

In this UnPD forum, we’ll give one another permission to design and facilitate (un)professional development for ourselves that authentically meets our individual and collective needs, rather than subscribing to the traditional school model (hence “unPD”).

 

For the past year, Cassandra Ellis and Colton Running have been working in community with one another and other professionals to co-create, offer reciprocity, and nurture a sense of accountability for one another’s projects. In the forum, they’ll model this approach to professional development, and give participants the opportunity to learn experientially with mutual support to push their projects forward.

 

To try out this approach, come with a project (job-related or not) you want to start, you’re in the middle of, or you’ve stalled and lost momentum on. Projects might be a workshop series you want to breathe life back into, a podcast you’re eager to begin, or a publication series you’re unsure of how to sustain. This forum centers thriving in solution-oriented community and healing from isolating silos. We don’t promise you’ll leave this experience more “professionally developed,” but rather experience alternative and innovative approaches to support you as a person, practitioner, and professional.

 

The forum will took place on Tuesday, October 26 at 3 pm PT/6 pm ET.

 

 

Colton Running is the founder of Natural Learning Northwest, a program built around creating connections for both children and their families with outdoor spaces through place based & experiential learning. He is a National Geographic certified educator and has been working with children in Environmental Education settings for over 16 years. Before launching his own programs with Natural Learning Northwest, he taught Forest Kindergarten for five years. His new program offers: Forest School & Camps for children as well as Classes & Workshops for families and educators.

 

Learn more at www.naturallearningnorthwest.com

 

 

 

Cassandra Ellis offers her creative and care work through Be With Cassandra. Be With Cassandra creates and nurtures experiments in change and belonging, while being held by nature. Cassandra facilitates intentional connection by writing essays shared through

a weekly email newsletter, hosting change matchmaking dialogues on a podcast, and holding space for kinship gatherings and workshops. Cassandra’s fourteen years of experience in education and working with families of young children have revealed to her that a shift towards a deeper sense of belonging is needed for so many. If you don’t find Cassandra on a beach with Ernest the dog, you may find her listening for frogs with forest kindergarten children at Nature Nuts. Cassandra gives gratitude to the Snohomish Tribe and the extensive web of Coast Salish tribes who have tended to the lands, waters, air and fires long before she planted her own feet in the Pacific Northwest of North America.

 

Learn more at www.bewithcassandra.com