North Carolina’s first Outdoor Classroom Symposium will be held Friday, October 23, 2009 at the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill! 

The symposium will focus on techniques for creating, maintaining and using outdoor classrooms and strategies for integrating outdoor learning into the curriculum.  It will feature sessions on how to create specific types of school gardens and natural areas, how to start farm-to-school programs, and how to design and use your school grounds to enhance learning across the curriculum. Pre-symposium workshops will be offered on Thursday and mobile workshops on Saturday will give participants the opportunity to visit school and community gardens.  Other highlights will include a Friday evening reception, educational exhibits and many opportunities for networking and learning!

Symposium registration is scheduled to open in August 2009.  Sessions will be appropriate for educators who already have an outdoor classroom and for those who are just beginning to develop their schoolyard areas for outdoor environmental learning.  Teachers can earn CEU credits and participants can earn credit towards their N.C. Environmental Education Certification.

The symposium is a partnership between the N.C. Botanical Garden, the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Program, the Environmental Education Fund and the N.C. Office of Environmental Education, and the Natural Learning Initiative, N.C. State University.

This will be a great opportunity for classroom teachers, teacher assistants, school administrators, parent volunteers, non-formal educators and those involved in design of outdoor play and learning areas from across the state!

The objectives of the symposium are to:
• Help teachers, administrators and parent volunteers create, manage and maintain outdoor learning areas and link outdoor learning to the state curriculum standards;
• Increase awareness and understanding of the important academic and health benefits of outdoor teaching;
• Demonstrate a variety of hands-on outdoor activities that can be integrated into the curriculum;
• Connect participants to new resources;
• Give participants the confidence to take their students outdoors;
• Provide educational and networking opportunities and encourage collaboration between teachers, administrators, parents, scout leaders, community volunteers and nonformal educators in the development of outdoor classrooms