May 2025 Newsletter - Don't miss 'Country as Teacher' Learning Circle

Welcome to Autumn 2025 with so many environmetnal events to celebrate.

Dear Environmental Educators

Welcome to the May edition of the Australian Association for Environmental Education ACT branch newsletter

As Term 2 begins and Canberra wraps us in cool nights and vibrant autumn colours, it's a perfect time to reconnect with nature and reflect on the links between our environment and key global events including 

• Compost week (5011 May)
• World Bee Day (20th May)
• International Day for Biological Diversity (22 May) 

We encourage you to engage in these events- both locally and globally - to inspire meaningful learning experiences and deepen our collective connection with the natural world. 

May Learning Circle (online) 

13th May 2025 5-6.30pm AEST/3-4.30pm AWST 

Reinvigorating Country as Teacher in Outdoor and Environmental Education 

Join Monty Nixon, PhD student at the University of Canberra and member of the AAEE ACT Chapter Executive Committee. 

More details here. 

‘All we are is a story, and a good story is one of obligation and connection’ – Damu Paul Gordon.

For over 60,000 years, Indigenous people in Australia lived a good story, one bound in relational reciprocity. At the heart of this story, for many Indigenous cultures across Australia, was the knowledge that Country is and always was the central knowledge holder. Subsequently Australia’s first Outdoor and Environmental Education was primarily about young people sharing direct experiences with, and learning from Country and Earth-Kin, largely facilitated by their grandparents and grounded in cross-kinship systems. In this workshop participants will be invited to reflect on the current socio-ecological narrative and how education might open-up new possibilities by taking lead from from Australia’s first environmental educators. To this end, this workshop introduces Country as Teacher, as a pedagogy for Country-and-student led-inquiry, a teaching and learning approach that maintained socio-ecological well-being for millennia. We will explore the foundational understanding of a modern approach to Country as Teacher, based on Senior Custodian for Karulkiyalu Country Damu Paul Gordon’s re-interpretation of this old way of teaching and learning, the 6Ls. As Milroy and Milroy (2010) write the birthright of all children to connect with and learn from Country, coming to know, love, and understand how to care for her through relational reciprocity. Subsequently, this workshop invites participants to consider the pedagogic opportunities to honour this old way of teaching and learning and, in doing so, to help us all live our birthright, a good story of connection and obligation.

Please join Monty Nixon to hear more about this project.

AAEE ACT 2024 Award celebration andAGM

Karon Campbell 2024 AAEE ACT and Julie Armstrong AAEE ACT President