Sense of PlaceTraining
For Educators
Recharge Your Curriculum and Yourself
Effective teaching today requires more than delivering content.
It asks educators to design learning experiences that are engaging, relevant, and meaningful—while remaining grounded in professional goals and real-world classroom demands.
This place-centered training will support you by providing an opportunity to refresh your teaching practice and reconnect with purpose, creativity, and place—so the work you care deeply about can translate into stronger learning experiences for students.
Educators leave with skills and insights that support:
✓ Curriculum enrichment through story and place
✓ Inquiry-driven learning grounded in lived experience
✓ Stronger student engagement and relevance
✓ Confidence in voice, presence, and pedagogical choices
This opportunity offers practical tools rooted in hands-on learning and reflective practice. The result is professional development that is both practically useful and personally renewing.
Training Example: Approaching Walden
Professional Learning for Educators
Training Example:
Since 2006, I have led a core teaching segment of Approaching Walden, a professional development program for educators at Walden Pond. My training supports educators in reframing how they teach Thoreau—not as a distant literary figure, but as an entry point into personal connection, reflection, and place-based meaning.
Program Focus
Rather than beginning with analysis for curriculum design, the training begins where meaningful learning often starts:
with lived experience and personal connection to place.
Session Arc
1. Beginning with Personal Connection : The session opens with guided reflective writing, inviting educators to reconnect with their own place experiences.
2. Experiencing Walden Today : Participants then engage with Walden Pond through both sensory experience and story, modeling how place itself becomes a teacher.
3. Translating Experience into Teaching Practice
: Educators
explore a sequence of reflective activities they can bring to the classroom, including Finding the Thoreau in You—Erica’s popular worksheet to explore personal place connections through Thoreau’s themes.
4. Sharing Ideas and Program Design: Educators craft a meaningful lesson unit based on ideas sparked by the training.
Note: Erica can customize this sequence to feature region-specific writers or local places, allowing educators to adapt the approach to their own teaching contexts.
Who is this for?
✓K-12 Teachers
✓Graduate Students in Education Programs
✓Environmental, Literature, and History Educators
✓Museum & Park Educators
✓Independent and Informal Educators
The approach is transferable across subjects, grade levels, and locations—making it especially well-suited for professional development days, retreats, and site-based educator training.
“Place-based educator and author David Orr often writes that the
ecological crisis is not a technical crisis, but a spiritual crisis. Erica helps bridge the space between head and heart—encouraging learners to reconnect with place not just as a resource, but as a pathway for understanding life and meaning.”
— Torrey McMillan, Director, Center for Sustainability, Hathaway Brown School, Shaker Heights, OH
What You'll Gain:
Tools to enrich your curriculum, deepen engagement and bring your teaching ideas to life.
✔︎ Storytelling & Narrative-Based Teaching Learn how to weave personal, historical, and community stories into your lesson plans, making learning more relatable and memorable.
✔︎ Creative Expression as a Learning Tool Discover how to use place-based story, music, art, and creative writing to deepen understanding and connection.
✔︎ 21st-Century Skills Through Sense of Place Learning Help students think critically, collaborate meaningfully, and engage creatively with history, culture, and nature.
✔︎ Inquiry-Based Learning Strategies Encourage students to ask questions, investigate, and form their own conclusions through active, meaningful exploration.
✔︎ Building Confidence, Belonging, and Well-Being Support students in finding their voice, exploring personal connections to place and history, and cultivating a sense of belonging in the classroom and beyond.
Planning a professional development day or retreat?
This training offers a grounded, engaging approach to professional learning that supports instructional practice while renewing the energy educators bring to their work.
Let’s talk about how to offer this training together!
Prior Training Events Include:
Approaching Walden, Walden Woods Project
Antioch Graduate School
Georgia Environmental Educators Conference
Massachusetts Environmental Education Society
New England Environmental Education Alliance
Teacher-Ranger-Teacher (National Park Service)
Teton Science School
“Extremely relevant, easily adaptable, and usable.”
Participant, Approaching Walden, MA