Nature Nurtures 2021: Workshop Series Summary

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The Baltimore Connecting Children to Nature (BCCN) team held its second annual Nature Nurtures Workshop Series from June 18, 2021 – July 8, 2021 to provide Trauma-Informed Care trainings, workshops on integrating nature into daily practices, youth perspectives on healing in nature, and opportunities to reignite connections with each other and our surroundings. This series is part of Baltimore’s larger BCCN strategy to foster cross-sector collaboration between the health, environmental, and education communities, and advances the City’s commitment to prioritizing healing-centered engagement and trauma responsiveness as demonstrated through the Elijah Cummings Healing City Act.

Our BCCN strategy enhances proactive health policy and improves children’s comfort in the outdoors; we help provide adults with the proper tools to facilitate beneficial nature-based experiences for Baltimore’s children and youth.  Additionally, time in nature has scientifically significant mental and physical health benefits associated with it, so we are simultaneously working to encourage healthcare providers and educators to incorporate outdoor time into their practices. 

Our first Nature Nurtures Symposium was held on March 7, 2020, just days before Baltimore shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to reignite this effort in a manner adapted for a city emerging from the pandemic in 2021, we restructured the symposium to be a series of free workshops and adopted a hybrid structure to accommodate varying levels of comfort. We hoped to facilitate rebuilding community and connection in nature to promote healing after over a year of isolation, while exposing our community to green nature spaces across the city.

Nature Nurtures 2021 was attended by a total of 130 people from across the city, with members of various sectors including formal educators, environmental program providers, students, healthcare providers, out of school time programmers, farmers, community-school coordinators, social workers, ministers, and many more.

The series consisted of 13 workshops–7 in person and 6 virtual–all for free!

Nia Jones of the Black Mental Health Alliance leading our first workshop of the series at Whitelock Farm. Attendees learned about mental health and healing from trauma for Baltimore City’s children and youth.

 

Each in-person workshop was at a different nature space around Baltimore to expand the attendees’ knowledge of local parks, gardens, farms, and spaces to connect with nature in the city. They included:

  1. Youth and Mental Health: A Conversation
    • This workshop was led by Nia Jones of the Black Mental Health Alliance and took place at Whitelock Farm. Nia led an engaging dialogue about understanding youth mental health and methods for promoting healing with children, particularly in educational settings.
  2. Forest Bathing
    • One forest bathing session, led by Ted Martello of BCRP, took place at Fairwood Forest. The second, scheduled for Stillmeadow Peacepark, was cancelled due to rain, but will be rescheduled soon! The walks, based on the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, are meditative and meant to quiet the mind while connecting with one’s natural surroundings.
  3. Take it Outside! Working with Students in Outdoor Spaces
    • This workshop was led by City Schools’ farm to school specialists Laura Genello and Laura Menyuk at Great Kids Farm, the school system’s educational farm. Educators from across the city attended to learn how to effectively use outdoor classrooms.
  4. Trauma-Informed Care trainings 101 (virtual) and 201 (in person).
    • The TIC trainings were led by Raguel Broy of the Baltimore City Health Department. The 201 training took place at Cylburn Arboretum and provided a deeper dive into recognizing trauma and using trauma-informed practices.
  5. Emergent Curriculum: Learning Outdoors in Nature
    • This workshop was led by Sarah Lank and Monica French of BCRP’s Carrie Murray Nature Center. The session focused on showing educators what emergent curriculum looks like and how to bring education outside.
  6. Healing the Earth & Community Through Urban Agriculture
    • This workshop was led by Ausar-Mesh Amen of Malcolm House, one of Baltimore’s urban farms and community food sites. Ausar spoke about the role of agriculture in education and healing from generational traumas, and provided a tour of Malcolm House.
  7. Take a Bike Ride!
    • This workshop, led by Jamison Holtz of BCRP, was a guided bike ride through Druid Hill Park and demonstrating one of the many outdoor recreation opportunities the City offers.
Raguel Broy of the Baltimore City Health Department leads the Trauma-Informed Care 201 training at Cylburn Arboretum.

 

Each virtual session was recorded (except for the Trauma-Informed Care training). You can watch any of them at the links below:

  1. It’s all connected! Nature, Academics, Arts, and SEL
    • This workshop was led by Gabriel Pickus, founder of Inward Discovery Grows Outdoors (InDiGO). The workshop provides teachers with an example of integrative lessons using nature, the arts, math, and social-emotional learning.
  2. Introduction to the Outdoor Classroom
    • This workshop was led by Claire Cambardella of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. She walks teachers through an introduction to outdoor learning and provides a sample activity that can be done with students.
  3. How to Design and Build an Outdoor Learning Space
    • This panel was facilitated by City Schools’ Joanna Pi-Sunyer and featured Landscape Architects Heidi Thomas and Cherisse Otis of EnviroCollab, BCPSS teacher Scott Hartman, and retired teacher Kim Munchel. The panelists speak about their experiences with designing and implementing outdoor classrooms at City Public Schools.
  4. Healing in Nature – Perspectives from City Youth
    • This panel, facilitated by BOS’s Abby Cocke, featured youth Ambassadors Shelah Johnson, Young Elder, Sydney Johnson, and Lanae Williams of the Healing Youth Alliance. The youth presenters share their perspectives on trauma in Baltimore, access to green spaces (or lack thereof) for youth, and how they choose to heal in nature.
  5. Guide to Nature-Based Recreation in Baltimore
    • This workshop, led by Mary Hardcastle and Jamison Holtz of BCRP, outlines the outdoor recreation opportunities in the city and walks attendees through the CivicRec platform to register for BCRP programming.

Due to rain, we were forced to reschedule 2 additional workshops. If you are interested in attending either of those when the rain dates are set, please reach out to Abby Cocke at abby.cocke@baltimorecity.gov.

Thank you to our host sites, our workshop speakers, the BCCN team, and each of our attendees for making this workshop series a success! We look forward to hosting another iteration in 2022. If you are interested in being involved in Nature Nurtures moving forward, please contact Abby Cocke at abby.cocke@baltimorecity.gov or Andrea van Wyk at avanwyk@aqua.org.