COEO ANNUAL FALL CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PRESENTERS! {RE}GENERATING OUR NATURAL INTELLIGENCE The Council of Outdoor Educators of Ontario is excited to invite you to attend our Annual Fall Conference to be held at Camp Couchiching, from September 19 – 21, 2025. The 2025 COEO conference organizing committee has been hard at work and plans are well underway for this year’s annual fall conference. This year’s conference theme, “{Re}Generating our Natural Intelligence”, is an opportunity for educators to rethink and reimagine the role of outdoor learning and experiential education at a time when digital technologies, virtual learning environments, simulated instruction and artificial intelligence are transforming educational practices, policies and places. Plan to join us as we learn, share and laugh with kindred spirits from across the province and beyond. We’ll enjoy great food all weekend and enjoy an evening social program filled with fun, dancing and live music. You will leave this professional development experience feeling rejuvenated and with many new ideas and resources in hand. CALL FOR PRESENTERS! Natural intelligence is the ability to flexibly adapt and achieve goals in a variety of environments based on our experiences in the natural world. It is these lived experiences, that take place within the complexity of life’s natural systems, which provide an essential literacy and resistance training for our minds (bodies and spirits). By redressing and rekindling natural intelligence, we will be able to prepare students for the real problems of today and ready them with resilience to face the future challenges of tomorrow. How can we as Outdoor and Experiential Educators best connect children and youth to natural places, community spaces and each other? What learning activities and techniques are we using to foster empathy and understanding, critical thinking, creativity, self-awareness, goal-directedness, adaptability and the application of knowledge? What critical roles are we playing to ensure the facilitation of high-quality outdoor learning opportunities throughout the province? How can we best utilize concepts like systems thinking, ecological literacy, deep ecology, and ecopedagogy to transform the work we do? We welcome all submissions, but are looking specially for workshops and presentations which support the conference theme, but are not limited to, the following suggested topic areas: -Making time to think and feel – pause, quiet time and reflection in OEE -Meaning making and knowledge sharing -Nature knowledge – the shifting role of the Naturalist during a time of climate change -Wilderness leadership IQ – essential skills, knowledge, judgement and decision making. -Experiential brain teasers, puzzles, problems -Supporting group synergy and emergent behaviour -Multiple intelligences, various learning styles, differing environments -Multiple ways of knowing, multiple ways of showing -Putting it down on paper – journaling and nature writing -Mindfulness and meditation -Celebration and ceremony -Exploring forms of inter and intraspecies communication -Nature’s signs and signals – deep/close observation, tracking, reading the landscape ***Access the conference presentation proposal submission form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdobZeLVrh9lVUbR99hZaUdeRGRg_Fxo1TANI-F0jSdXLyVzQ/viewform?usp=dialog The deadline for submission is June 30th. We will do our best to contact all applicants before July 10th, 2025. (fb)

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