Approaching Walden 2008 - Seminar Overview

Approaching Walden

A professional development seminar for high school educators

and graduate students

July 13-18, 2008

Seminar Overview

The Walden Woods Project is currently accepting applications for Approaching Walden, a professional development summer seminar for high school educators and graduate students. This six-day workshop 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. This place-based, interdisciplinary workshop uses Henry David Thoreau's ethic and his experience at Walden Woods as a model.

What is Approaching Walden?

This seminar, now in its 12th year, features a daily mix of lectures, field trips, readings, discussions and reflection time. The participants encounter speakers from different fields with expertise in the areas of natural history, writing, literary analysis, art, and the environment. Some seminar features include: lectures on Thoreau, Transcendentalism, and social reform; workshops on historic land use, environmental issues in the classroom, and nature journaling; and trips to Walden Pond, historic Concord, and vernal pools. For more seminar details, see our FAQ page.

Approaching Walden allows educators to:

Immerse themselves in the literature of Thoreau while studying the same landscape he studied.

Understand Thoreau’s art of close observation.

Develop place-based curriculum units using their own home communities as classrooms.

Participants will learn how to teach their students the skills needed to:

Explore the ecology, natural and cultural histories, and current uses of an area near their schools.
Engage in the study of “place," investigating their community’s rich and layered stories, and identifying its treasures.
Prepare them to become responsible citizens actively involved in community decision-making.

Approaching Walden participants will examine with their students the interconnectedness between people and nature, while gaining an understanding of the entire fabric of the community that is home, and enable their students to find the Waldens that exist in their own communities.

FAQs

Learn more about seminar requirements, lodging, and other logistics.

2008 Seminar Application

Apply on-line or download our application to send via mail.

2008 Seminar Brochure - coming soon

Download our brochure for more details.

Questions?

If you have additional questions, please send an e-mail to education@walden.org.

Sample Curriculum Units • Photo Gallery