2020 Annual Conference

"The Climate of Outdoor Education"

Where: Sharpe Reservation, Fishkill NY
When: Thursday, November 5 - Sunday, November 8


                                                                           Learning Strands  
  • The Climate in the Classroom - How public school's/teachers are engaging students in the classroom environment, whether it be around climate change, social-emotional learning, adjusting to standards, etc. and how outdoor educators can support them
  • Civic Engagement - How we might take environmental education further to provide concrete ways for our students to feel a connection to the processes of government and encourage them to get involved
  • Inclusion and Access for All - acknowledging the whiteness and hegemony of the EE field we currently exist in; engaging in new conversations while ensuring topics of diversity and inclusion take a leading role in our outreach efforts; and working towards more culturally relevant programming and diversified audiences, employees, and boards. 
  • Climate Science - the latest in climate science findings and ways outdoor educators are incorporating current research into their programming
  • STEAM - how our programming can support our state standards and the STEAM movement









Thank you to the 2019 Conference sponsors and donors!
"When I attended the first organizing NYSOEA conference at SUNY Cortland in 1968, I had been a naturalist for about five years after graduating with a B.S. Biology degree from Cornell’s College of Ag and Life Sciences. I was the Director (and sole employee) of the 12-acre Weinberg Nature Center, municipally- owned by the Village of Scarsdale in Westchester Co. The Village justified paying a housing-provided naturalist to work with the schools by making me their Wildlife Control Officer. I’ve fond memories of learning suburban human nature while rescuing skunks from window wells, and opossums and milk snakes from basements.

I heard about the nascent NYSOEA through the Westchester Co. Naturalists, an informal group including staff from the Greenburg Nature Center and Ward Pound Ridge Reservation among others. I remember meeting many enthusiastic teachers, nature center folks and those from academe at the conference, all listening to first President-Elect George Fuge who broad-shoulderedly almost filled the auditorium stage. George, Raquette Lake Director, explained that the NYS Biology Teachers Assoc. had recently gone belly up creating an opportunity for a new organization. An outdoor ed association would serve statewide all teacher trainees and their teachers, educators, nature center people and outdoor agencies – all committed to the long-established type of outdoor learning championed by the likes of SUNY Cortland’s Raquette Lake and New Paltz’ Ashokan Center. The first 1970 Earth Day was two years in the future, but there was already much concern and heated national debate on Outdoor and Environmental Education’s definitions. I remember sitting in on this debate’s scoping sessions at an Association of Interpretive Naturalists (AIN) meeting, as well as NYSOEA’s.

Most important, was the compelling argument that NYS public and private education, both formal and informal would be enriched by a strong Outdoor Ed organization dealing with not only natural science, but more especially all the multidisciplinary curricular learning aspects most appropriately done outdoors. Thus, our early and enduring slogan: “Do It Outdoors”.
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Fifty-year-old memories are often most vivid outside conferences session. In December 1969, I rode with two 4-wheel drive-equipped Westchester teachers, among the outdoor ed philosophy’s strongest advocates, to a winter NYSOEA board meeting at Raquette Lake where I found myself the first Outdoor Communicator editor, an honor conferred likely so everyone could keep a closer eye on this science guy, a strong EE advocate. Wisely, both OE and EE became equally important. On the way home our high wheeler made the Blizzard of 1969 almost fun. By the time we reached southern Westchester ours was the only vehicle on the road. I opted to leave my gear at their house and walk the 5 miles to Scarsdale where I hoped to hitch a ride with a police officer to the other side of town. We would have made it if there wasn’t someone middle-of-the-road asleep in his car. After my exhausting 2 a.m. waist-deep-snow hike down the Center’s 100-yard driveway, my wife dropped a snow shovel out the window so I could clear the outwardly-opening storm door. By then I was more than ever convinced that outdoor education would thrive."

Charter member Frank Knight moved from private nature centers to DEC’s Stony Kill Farm EE Center; eventually to DEC headquarters as Project WILD state coordinator where he also generated photos and text for publications and kiosks. Frank was very active with the American Nature Study Society (ANSS) founded in 1908 and the John Burroughs Association (JBA), 1922. Frank was PATHWAYS editor for a couple years until his 2012 move to WA with wife Janet to be near their kids and grandkids.