2019 Annual Conference

"The Outdoors is for Everyone: Equity, Access and Inclusion in Environmental Education"

Where: Sharpe Reservation, Fishkill NY
When: Thursday, October 31 - Sunday, November 3
Thank you so much for the thoughtful dialogue at this year's conference. Let's keep this important conversation going-  equity, access and inclusion for ALL in outdoor education. We hope you find the resources below helpful.

**STAY TUNED FOR INFO ON THE 2020 CONFERENCE AT SHARPE RESERVATION**

Next Steps: Taking Action!
We hope that this conference sparks work that you will continue back at your office, with your colleagues, and in the presence of your students. Below is an annotated compilation of resources for conference attendees to continue the work of understanding systemic oppression and how it relates to the field of environmental/outdoor education. As you move through the workshops and learn about additional resources, please add them to this list. We will be discussing this list and what you learned at the “Next Steps: Taking Action” roundtable on Sunday. 

Books
White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by: Robin DiAngelo
Written by a white woman who leads trainings about racism for various business, government and nonprofit groups. She details the experiences she has had in those trainings where white people are offended and unable to have these difficult conversations about racism and their own implicit bias. The author explores ways that white people can become more resilient and able to have these difficult conversations as well as develop tools to understand their role in systemic racism - the racism that is baked into the culture and laws of the United States. The author argues that white people are an integral part of the solution to systemic racism but we can’t begin to address it if we can’t even talk about it. 

For White Folks who Teach in the Hood, by: Christopher Emdin
So often we see a class of students who come from a different background from us and we automatically make assumptions about their capacity and their life outside the classroom. This book has great techniquest that any educator can use the very next day to help them connect to students on a deeper level to facilitate teaching and learning.
  • Additional Resource: Reality Pedagogy by Christopher Emdin VIDEO HERE 

The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, by: J. Drew Lanham
Filled with rich descriptions of a childhood spent outdoors, fans of nature writing will love this book. The author places his own history within the context of the history of slavery and grapples with what it means to fall in love with a land that his ancestors were brought to against their will. 

Trace: Memory, History, Race and the American Landscape, by: Lauret Savoy
The American landscape is steeped in a history of racism, genocide, displacement, silencing, and erasure. Lauret weaves together personal narrative and historical 

Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, by: Zaretta Hammond
If you’ve digested information from this conference and you’re ready to tackle your own implicit bias and build a toolkit for bringing that awareness into your teaching, this is the book for you. Written for classroom teachers, the author lays out the biological groundwork for understanding how the brain processes and stores information and explains that students who do not feel safe physically cannot learn new information. Students do not feel safe when they are faced with the realities of systemic racism and implicit bias on the part of their teachers. The book lays out a clear path for building relationships with students that help them feel safe while still demanding a high level of scholastic rigor from them. An inspiring and practical book!

Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors, by: Carolyn Finney
This is a more academic text but it is very readable because of the personal accounts that the author weaves in to their historical context. Through the stories told and research gathered, we learn about the relationship that black people have with forests, outdoor recreation, trees, and other aspects of the environment and how these relationships are steeped in a history that other cultures might not be aware of. The author specifically delves into representation of black history at the National Park Service’s parks in Florida and how that might be affecting the low numbers of black people visiting the park and seeking employment with the NPS. She also delves into representations of black people in popular magazines like Outside and National Geographic. 

Racism without Racists, by: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
This academic text explains how racism survives and thrives even when almost no one considers themselves a racist. Structural racism is the name given to bias that is built into so many systems of our society including education, healthcare, housing, employment, and media. It is important to recognize structural racism because it means that even if you've recognized and worked through your own implicit bias, there is still work to be done to dismantle the larger racism structures of society. 

Organizations: to learn from & connect with! 
Podcast Episodes
Code Switch - This podcast is produced by NPR and explores current topics in the news through the lens of systemic racism, housing segregation, and ethnicity. 
  • “Made for You and Me” - an episode that deals with the lack of diversity in the outdoor recreation and organizations that are working to facilitate outdoor experiences for a wider range of Americans. 
  • “It’s Getting (Dangerously) Hot in Here” - this episode examines the disproportionate affects of climate change on communities of color. Hurricane Katrina and extreme heat waves are both discussed through interviews with people who have experienced climate change-related events. 

Articles
https://www.colorlines.com/articles/5-questions-woman-keynoting-poc-only-environmental-gathering 

3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive 
https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/culturally-responsive-teaching-strategies/
Zaretta Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain gives examples of successful strategies for culturally responsive teaching based on neuroscience evidence. She elaborates specifically on methods that help students with oral cultural traditions, suggesting methods of making lessons more game, social, or story driven.

Culturally Responsive Teaching: 4 Misconceptions 
https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/culturally-responsive-misconceptions/
This post is a summary of an interview that the writer conducts with Zaretta Hammond, author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, clarifies what culturally responsive teaching actually is, as opposed to the “It’s a Small World” approach that is often perceived as. It shows that culturally responsive teaching not only helps the student be more comfortable but also helps the student achieve higher academically. The full interview is available to listen to/read through a link in the article as well.

What is Cultural Awareness, anyway? How do I build it? 
http://www.culturosity.com/articles/whatisculturalawareness.htm
This article details the importance of cultural awareness in effective communication. It provides evidence for experiences where cultural differences result in communication problems and offers advice on how to remedy such conflicts.

Facebook Groups
Urban EE Collective - https://www.facebook.com/groups/urbaneecollective
Catch our keynote speaker, Akiima Price, in this group as well as other environmental education professionals from across the country who are working with issues like environmental justice and racism in the EE field. Other topics that are covered are the particular challenges and opportunities that urban environmental educators face, stories of good work being done in the field, and job opportunities. 

Eco-Inclusive - https://www.facebook.com/ecoinclusive/
Facebook page that does a good job of disseminating information, articles and stories of diversity in ecosystem science and outdoor recreation. 

YouTube Videos
Fear of a Black Planet: Scientific Racism and the Making of the Anthropocene
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCZxrPGPac0
This lecture was given by Cynthia Malone at New York University in 2019. She outlines the systemic racism embedded in scientific progress in the United States, specifically as it related to natural history/ecology. She explores this from the deeply racist roots of the American Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo, to the colonial nature of conservation. Follow her on Twitter @cynth_malone
    ** listening note, the echo on this video is a bit distracting so it is better to listen to it with one earbud in

Curricula
​What’s Good in My Hood - Akiima Price
https://mdehndotorg.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/nyrp_whatsgoodinmyhood_workbook.pdf
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Additional Resources from this Conference: 
Resources on the harmfulness of “color-blind” attitudes towards race and how we might move beyond them:
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.