The ENC offers programs geared toward adults who want to learn more about the natural world.
The Environmental Nature Center offers Professional Development and Team-Building workshops at our 5-acre outdoor facility OR we can come to you! Click on the options below to view details about each program. To schedule any of the ENC’s professional development programs, please call (949) 645-8489 or email us.
The ENC’s Excellent Educator Series is also a great way to learn exciting hands-on ways to teach children about science and nature. It is held about 9 times a year at the ENC, with options to join in virtually. Check our calendar for these and other scheduled events.
Excellent Educators Series
The ENC’s Excellent Educators series brings all kinds of educators together for fun afternoons and evenings of learning exciting hands-on ways to teach children about science and nature. Everyone is invited! Classroom teachers, outdoor educators, scout leaders, homeschool parents – anyone who wants to be a better educator. This year we are excited to partner with the Crystal Cove Conservancy in offering these fun workshops.
ENC and Crystal Cove Conservancy are proud to co-facilitate this PD workshop for any kind of educator. Join us for a round table discussion on ways to incorporate gratitude into your school curriculum. We will also learn about the Tongva and Acjachemen of present day and spotlight some activities that highlight traditions of the past. Please come prepared to share about the land you grew up on – who are the original stewards of that land and what is something interesting you learned about them?
Afterwards we’ll enjoy a light meal together and share some wine by the campfire before breaking out the marshmallows and skewers to make some s’mores!
This workshop will take place at the Environmental Nature Center.
Contact Mindy@encenter.org if you’d like to sponsor the food for this event.
This workshop is co-facilitated by the ENC and Crystal Cove Conservancy and will take place at the Environmental Nature Center.
Outdoor learning has the potential to profoundly enhance student engagement and understanding, but it also presents distinctive instructional challenges. In this interactive workshop, K–12 educators will gain practical tools and strategies to design and facilitate inclusive, engaging, and effective outdoor learning experiences. Participants will explore best practices in outdoor classroom management with a focus on equity, accessibility, and student-centered learning.
Through hands-on, collaborative activities, educators will practice strategies for assessing and adapting to the dynamic nature of outdoor settings. The workshop will introduce the use of Talk Moves, a set of powerful, discussion-based strategies that promote inquiry, students’ voices, and deeper conceptual understanding. By the end of the workshop, participants will leave with ready to use tools, shared insights, and renewed inspiration for integrating outdoor learning into their teaching practice.
A light dinner and wine will be served after the workshop concludes.
Contact Mindy@encenter.org if you’d like to sponsor the food for this event.
This workshop is co-facilitated by the ENC and Crystal Cove Conservancy and will take place at the Environmental Nature Center.
There are so many ways to connect writing and literacy to nature-based experiences, and studies show that students make bigger cognitive leaps when writing down their understanding of a concept. We’ll practice writing our own nature-inspired poetry, then jump into ideas for pre-literacy skills from nature. We’ll also do some nature story-mapping and end with teachers developing their own lesson ideas using children’s books as inspiration.
A light dinner and wine will be served after the workshop concludes.
Contact Mindy@encenter.org if you’d like to sponsor the food for this event.
This workshop is co-facilitated by the ENC, Child Creativity Lab, and Crystal Cove Conservancy and will take place at the Environmental Nature Center.
Educators will be participating in one of Child Creativity Lab’s Engineering Design Challenges. We will engage collaboratively in a STEAM Challenge and participate in our style of Experiential Learning. Educators will learn how to foster creativity in themselves, learn how to facilitate the 4 -Step Design Thinking process through upcycling, and how to adapt it to the needs of students of all ages and abilities. Most importantly, CCL will provide an opportunity for you to demystify ‘STEAM’, while we enjoy creating together and engaging in sustainable practices. After the design challenge, Crystal Cove Conservancy will lead a case study on the Santa Ana River. Through their case study, educators from the Conservancy will provide an approach for considering large-scale engineering challenges with K-12 students that empower both students and teachers to design engineering solutions for broad environmental issues.
A light dinner and wine will be served after the workshop concludes.
Contact Mindy@encenter.org if you’d like to sponsor the food for this event.
This workshop is co-facilitated by the ENC and Crystal Cove Conservancy and will take place at the Environmental Nature Center. Description of this workshop coming soon!
A light dinner and wine will be served after the workshop concludes.
Contact Mindy@encenter.org if you’d like to sponsor the food for this event.
This workshop is co-facilitated by the ENC and Crystal Cove Conservancy and will take place at the Environmental Nature Center. Description of this workshop coming soon!
A light dinner and wine will be served after the workshop concludes.
Contact Mindy@encenter.org if you’d like to sponsor the food for this event.
This workshop is co-facilitated by the ENC and Crystal Cove Conservancy and will take place at the Environmental Nature Center. Description of this workshop coming soon!
A light dinner and wine will be served after the workshop concludes.
Contact Mindy@encenter.org if you’d like to sponsor the food for this event.
Professional Development Workshops
Are you looking for an engaging, hands-on workshop for your weekly faculty meeting? Or are you wanting to offer your teachers a unique professional development experience on an in-service day? The ENC’s PD team will facilitate a workshop complete with innovative techniques, fun curriculum ideas, and multi-disciplinary connections to the world around us. All workshops connect to the unifying theme of nature and align with the Next Generation Science Standards. Mini workshop: 75 minutes, $12/teacher; 3 hour workshop: $17/teacher.
This workshop will help teachers with the process of embedding connections to the natural world throughout their curriculum. Nature is the perfect launch pad for cross-curricular connections and teachers should feel confidant in inspiring their students with wonder and curiosity about the world around us. The workshop will provide ample ideas for hands-on activities, from building simple bird-feeders to collecting students’ compost.
This workshop will take teachers through a ‘day in the life of a naturalist’, where they learn the value of formulating questions about the world around us and making observations to help us find the answers. The skills learned in this workshop are applicable to any subject area, as they tap into critical thinking and attention to detail.
This workshop will tap into an important part of the NGSS – using the engineering design process to engage students in critical thinking, team work, and creativity. Teachers will practice using the steps of the engineering design process with upcycled materials. We believe in re-using materials as often as possible in the classroom, which is an important message of sustainability. Students and teachers alike will benefit from learning to think outside the box and being resourceful with classroom materials.
Project Learning Tree® is an award winning, multi-disciplinary environmental education program for educators and students in Pre K-grade 12. PLT, a program of the American Forest Foundation, is one of the most widely used environmental education programs in the United States and abroad. PLT continues to set the standard for environmental education excellence. The Elementary school curriculum (pre K-8) takes an interdisciplinary, hands-on approach to learning and contains more than 90 different lesson plans. In addition to teaching about science, trees, and forestry, PLT can be used to teach language arts, social studies, nutrition, mathematics, visual arts, and more. Our Vice President Lori Whalen will show you several hands-on activities to bring the environment into the classroom and your students into the environment. Topics range from forests, wildlife, and water, to community planning, waste management and energy. $11.50/teacher with a 20 minimum
Exotic plant species can have damaging consequences to our ecosystems. The trees, shrubs, and flowers native to California are often overlooked as resources for our butterfly gardens and landscaping. Join ENC Assistant Director Lori Whalen to learn why natives are so awesome, then she’ll model some of her favorite plant related activities. Join us to DIG INTO the science behind supporting our native flora. This workshop’s target audience is K-5 teachers, but we’re happy to present this workshop to teachers of any grade level. 2 hours. $11.50/teacher with a 20 minimum
Team-Building Workshops
Perfect for a corporate event or staff retreat, our team-building workshop will engage your team with several different hands-on activities. These games and challenges will stimulate a part of the brain that isn’t often used at work, while getting creative juices flowing and forging cooperative relationships. Mini workshop: 75 minutes, $12/person; 3 hour workshop: $17/person.
If you come to us, we’ll utilize our 5-acre outdoor facility to connect with each other and engage in team problem-solving tasks together. You are welcome to bring in lunch (as long as it is in compliance with our Zero Waste Policy) and picnic in one of our beautiful native plant communities.
If you’d like us to come to you, we can utilize any outdoor space, conference room, or multi-purpose room. We have a very creative team and can transform your space for the needs of this workshop.