Sense of Place and Story
TRAINING FOR EDUCATORS
Recharge Your Curriculum with the Power of Place
Teaching today is challenging. Students are navigating a rapidly changing world and educators are tasked with inspiring students while navigating standards, assessments in a shifting educational landscape. Students today need more than knowledge—they need relevance. They need to see themselves in the stories, landscapes, and histories they’re learning about.
Erica offers workshops, seminars, half-day and full-day training sessions for educators. Her interactive programs focus on storytelling, place-based teaching, curriculum design, and creative thinking. She also provides inspiring keynotes for conferences on the power of place, learning, and engagement.
Her Sense of Place Training provides educators with ideas to enrich their curriculum, deepen student engagement, and bring subjects to life. Educators will gain both practical tools and a personal recharge, ensuring they teach with renewed purpose and impact.
Gain Practical, Classroom-Ready Techniques for using storytelling, creative expression, and inquiry-based learning.
Learn Fresh Engagement Strategies and tools for helping students find meaning in history, culture, and nature through personal connections.
Recharge Your Passion for Teaching through reflective practices that reconnect you with your own sense of place, leaving you inspired and energized.
Who Is This For?
K-12 Teachers
Graduate School Students
Environmental & History Educators
Museum & Park Educators
Independent and Informal Educators
Any educator who wants to gain new skills and get a professional recharge
Training Outline:
This skill-building training will let you explore new ways to teach while experiencing them yourself—so you can bring them back to your students with confidence.
Step 1: Reconnect with Your Own Sense of Place Before you can inspire students, you must first rekindle your own connection to nature, history, and community. Through guided reflection and creative exercises, you’ll experience firsthand the power of place-based learning.
Step 2: Experience Engaging, Standards-Aligned Strategies We’ll explore place-centered storytelling, creative expression, music, and inquiry-based learning as tools to make lessons more memorable, relevant, and engaging.
Step 3: Apply It Directly to Your Teaching By the end of the training, you'll walk away with concrete, classroom-ready techniques that align with learning objectives while making education deeply personal and meaningful for students
Applications for the classroom:
Storytelling & Narrative-Based Teaching – How to weave personal, historical, and community stories into your lesson plans.
Creative Expression as a Learning Tool – How to use place-based story, music, art, and creative writing to deepen student understanding.
21st-Century Skills – How to help students think critically, collaborate, and engage creatively with past and present.
Inquiry-Based Learning – How to encourage students to ask questions, investigate, and draw their own conclusions for more active learning.
Place-Based Learning for Confidence & Belonging – How to support students in finding their voice, exploring personal connections to history and place, and developing a stronger sense of belonging.
Why Work With Erica?
Erica Wheeler is an award-winning songwriter, creative mentor, keynote speaker and interpretive trainer. Erica brings decades of experience working with the National Park Service, museums, historic sites, and academic institutions. Her training approach blends academic rigor with creativity and connection.
Her experience working with educators has included annual teaching for Approaching Walden, a professional development seminar through the Walden Woods Project, as well as graduate school seminars from Antioch Graduate School to the Teton Science School. Erica has also presented at national and regional conferences, and worked hand-on in schools with students of all ages. Her dynamic sense of place-based training helps educators engage students, integrate meaningful learning, and reignite their passion for teaching.
Prior Training Includes :
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
Let’s Connect!
““With its emphasis on integrating writing, music, and a sense of place, Erica’s workshop was incredibly inspiring... [She] gave us all an invaluable opportunity to reflect on our connections to the land, our personal history, and our best selves.” ”
““If I had one word to describe Erica Wheeler’s Soulful Landscape workshop, it would be ‘magical.’ The workshop was a big ‘ah-ha’ moment. I am a conservation professional, and although I hadn’t put my finger on it until the workshop, I had been struggling with a sense of loss regarding my connection to nature that first inspired me to work in this field. The workshop rekindled that connection. I left with the tools and resolve to more intentionally tap into the power of place as well as the inspiration to help others do the same.” ”