2026 Educator Institute
Art, Engineering, Music and More for the Forest Classroom
ECO Institute — Nature Specials
At North Branch Nature Center
- July 27 – 31, 2026
- $1,300 ($1,750 with 3 graduate credits). Financial Support Available
- 12 – 20 students
- For Elementary and Middle School educators and administrators
- Instructors: Ash Kerby-Miller & Guests
For 15 years, North Branch Nature Center’s Educating Children Outdoors (ECO) program has embedded with local public schools to bring standards-based lessons to the fields, woodlots and city parks nearby. Together with classroom educators, our NBNC Teacher-Naturalists have designed and taught many lessons on ecology, physics, geography, math… and music, visual art, engineering, storytelling, cooking, crafting, and play! During this course we’ll focus on ECO lessons based in “Specials” while still tying in academic standards. Expect to teach literacy through an oral storytelling workshop, physics through natural instrument-making, and ecology through harvesting and cooking wild foods.
This course is designed to help homeroom teachers bring more art+ into their forest classroom. In our work teaching outdoors in local schools, we’ve also noticed that music, gym, and art teachers are often tapped to help with outdoor learning – a key goal of this course is to build skills to help translate the expertise of those instructors into outdoor learning. Throughout it all, we will learn, play, and create in perhaps our most fun week of summer professional development offerings.
Course Details
Course Goals
- Become familiar with a wide array of activities that bring art, music, engineering, and storytelling into an outdoor classroom.
- Study the tools and narrative techniques of oral storytelling.
- Develop a complementary background to facilitate collaboration with Specials teachers at your school.
- Practice recognizing opportunities for cross-curricular lessons outdoors.
- Learn to recognize unique material opportunities for art, music, and engineering offered by outdoor spaces across the year.
Course Objectives
- Build games that illustrate NGSS, Common Core, and Proficiency-based Learning Standards, and tune them so they are engaging to play.
- Practice identifying plants and other natural materials for use as food, crafting, or art materials for outdoor lessons.
- Weave, dye, cook, paint, draw, and build musical instruments with natural materials.
- Develop a final project that can be immediately useful to your outdoor teaching.
About the Instructors
Ash Kerby-Miller is the Staff Naturalist at North Branch Nature Center, where they lead educational experiences for students of all ages. They studied Environmental Studies and Conservation Biology at Middlebury College, then split their time between ecological field research and environmental education. Their work took them to Panama to research forest carbon dynamics, then to alpine summits in New England to monitor bird populations, while teaching estuarine science educational programs to thousands of New York public school students in between. Ash leverages a deep foundation in natural systems to bring joy, empowerment, and justice into outdoor teaching. With five years of teaching NBNC’s ECO program across a dozen forest classrooms, they have an extensive list of greatest hits (and worst flops) to share with other educators.
North Branch Nature Center is a nationally recognized leader in nature-based education for children and adults. Our place-based and inquiry-based philosophy recognizes nature as our most dynamic, enriching, rigorous, and inclusive classroom. Healthy, inspired learning and development depends on immersive, curiosity-driven nature exploration, cultivated by expert teaching and mentorship. From our acclaimed Forest Preschool and ECO flagship programs, to our summer camps, community workshops, and professional institutes, NBNC offers a lifetime of learning and growth through deepened connections with the environment.
Recommended Texts
- The Organic Artist – Nick Neddo
- Sam Thayer’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants – Samuel Thayer
- How to Teach Nature Journaling – John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren
- More recommended texts will be provided as the course approaches.
Course Timing & Logistics
This course convenes Monday through Friday from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm at North Branch Nature Center. Exact timing will be communicated as course approaches. Participants should bring their own water, lunch, and snacks. Onsite camping is available upon request.
Academic Credit & Professional Development
This course qualifies for 3 graduate-level education credits through Vermont State University for an additional $450 course fee. For students transferring credit to another institution, it is each student’s responsibility to ensure that their home institution will accept the credit. Participants pursuing academic credit will be required to complete a final project and additional assignments focused on curriculum development. The final day of the course will include time for beginning this project.
All participants qualify for 40 hours of professional development hours and Continuing Education Units. Certificates of completion are provided at the conclusion of the course upon request.
Payment & School Purchase Orders
It is the participant’s responsibility to submit a purchase order request to their school immediately upon registration, and to provide a purchase order number and invoicing contact information to NBNC in a timely manner. Participants must have either provided NBNC a purchase order number, or made arrangements to do so, within 14 days of registration. Course tuition will be billed approximately 1 month before the start of the course. If you are paying for this course directly, we can create a billing schedule based on your needs.
Cancellation Policy
While we realize that unexpected circumstances arise that are out of our control, North Branch Nature Center cannot guarantee refunds for registrations cancelled within 30 days of the course. If a cancellation occurs within this window, NBNC will, if possible, attempt to fill the space from our wait list and provide a full refund.
Financial Support
Vermont residents are encouraged to apply for a VSAC Advancement Grant. NBNC also has financial support available for those without access to professional development funds. Please visit our Financial Support Page to inquire about financial support.