Overview
This
two-week summer workshop, held at the Thoreau Institute in
Lincoln, Massachusetts, is professionally as well as personally
enriching, and provides teachers with the skills needed to lead
their students in a study of their home community. The
place-based,
interdisciplinary
workshop uses
Henry Thoreau's ethic and his experience at Walden Woods as a
model.
The seminar
features a daily mix of lectures, field trips, discussions, and
reflection time. The teachers encounter more than 24 different
speakers from different fields with expertise in areas of
natural history, literature analysis, community issues and
activism, and environmental issues.
Participants will learn how to teach their students the skills
to explore the ecology, natural and cultural histories, and the
current uses, of an area near their schools. Students will
engage in the study of “place,” investigating their community’s
rich and layered stories, identifying its treasures, as if
seeing and experiencing it for the first time. The knowledge and
skills they acquire in the process will help to prepare them to
become responsible citizens who are actively involved in
community decision-making.
Approaching Walden
alumni
will examine with their students the interconnectedness between
people and nature while gaining a sense of place.
Whether
urban, suburban, or rural, they will gain an understanding of
the entire fabric of the community that is home, and will
find the Waldens that exist in their own communities.
2006 Approaching Walden
Read the summary and the syllabus,
browse through the photo gallery, and download seminar's brochure
Past
Lesson Plans
