Webinar with Macie Richter and Jessica Burke, Texas Parks and Wildlife

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has made major strides in expanding access through adaptive equipment such as track chairs, hiking carts, adaptive kayaks, and Mobi-Mats. This session highlights how these investments were prioritized and funded, key lessons learned, and the impact on outdoor recreation across the state. Participants will learn how to choose equipment that fits their site, discover funding and partnership opportunities, and understand how adaptive equipment can transform both visitor experiences and agency culture. By the end of the session, participants will gain practical ideas for starting or expanding adaptive equipment programs and the confidence to make access a reality for everyone.

Registration: https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/texaschildreninnaturenetwork/beyond-ramps-investing-in-adaptive-equipment-across-texas-parks

Plant Party is a quarterly webinars series providing advanced plant training to agency professionals, volunteers, and landowners/ land managers, and anyone wanting to learn more about plants! The webinar program is a collaboration between Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service. These quarterly webinars promote advanced training on all things plants and get people excited about the flora of our state.

Each Plant Party includes 5, 15-minute presentations from professionals and door-prize giveaways! Overall themes for each Plant Party vary, but have included plant identification tips and resources, the usefulness of native plants (i.e. for pollinators, wildlife, and livestock), edible and medicinal native plants, systems of plants and varying management goals and techniques (i.e. wetlands, forest, brushlands, and grasslands), and the restoration of native plant communities.

Registration: https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/texaschildreninnaturenetwork/plant-party-advanced-plant-training-quarterly-webinars-designed-to-be-fun

Webinar with Gustavo Rojas Ayala, Editor: Designing Democratic Schools and Learning Environments

Recess is often treated as a break from the “real” learning of the school day. Yet it is one of the few spaces where children make decisions, negotiate differences, build relationships, take risks, move freely, and experience nature on their own terms. Drawing on Designing Democratic Schools and Learning Environments: A Global Perspective, which I co-edited, and particularly on Ángela Ibáñez and Marcial Huneeus’s chapter “Recess in a Learning Landscape: An Opportunity for the Development of Democratic Skills,” this webinar reframes recess and the schoolyard as learning environments where children practice autonomy, inclusion, conflict resolution, belonging, and civic life.

Participants will learn to recognize the developmental and democratic skills cultivated through free, active, risky, and nature-based play; examine how the physical design of a schoolyard can transform an exclusive or underused space into an inclusive learning landscape; and identify practical questions for assessing whether their own recess environments give every child meaningful opportunities for choice, movement, connection, challenge, and contact with nature.

Webinar with Dr. Kelly Albus - Texas Women's University

How do young people move from concern about environmental issues to hope, agency, and action? This webinar will explore how local, place-based environmental projects can help youth see themselves as capable agents of change within their own communities. Featuring the brand new Slingshot Spark video series, which highlights National Geographic Slingshot Challenge winners from around the world, this session will connect global youth stories with themes emerging from Texas students, including motivation, environmental identity, belonging, and the importance of mentorship and support.

Participants will leave with practical ideas for helping young people connect environmental issues to places and communities they care about, recognize how storytelling and peer examples can reduce feelings of isolation or helplessness, and identify the kinds of adult, educator, and community support that help students move from ideas to action. The session will also share informal student survey insights related to what motivates youth to engage in environmental problem-solving and how local projects can build confidence, connection, and hope.

Meet Morgan’s Camp staff who dedicate their time and expertise towards making camping an accessible activity for people of all abilities. Learn about the Morgan’s Camp mission, Fort Challenge, Spur Ranch, and Stockyards, all made ‘Ultra-Accessible’ through the development of adaptive equipment and techniques. Be inspired to open the outdoors to all people, regardless of their physical, cognitive, or emotional fitness.

Registration: https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/texaschildreninnaturenetwork/accessibility-comes-first-at-morgan-s-camp

Webinar with Nicole Thurrell, Institute for Wild Med

In this highly engaging webinar, participants will come to understand the various states of nervous system dysregulation that children and adults alike can experience in and out of the field - especially those states which prevent engagement, learning, and prosocial behavior. Participants will walk away with a toolkit of interventions for prevention, response, and stabilization. All tools can easily be utilized in a nature-based environment and most require little to no supplies other than ourselves and nature!

This course will bring you the very best of what is known about nervous system regulation and how we can bring our best, most resilient selves to the world and support others as they face adversity.

This course is taught by Nicole Thurrell of Institute for Wild Med. She is the recipient of the Massachusetts Award for Excellence in Science Education. She is a passionate educator who loves turning people on to strategies for caring more skillfully for their fellow human beings. She has degrees in Psychology and Recreation Therapy from UNC and has been a Wilderness EMT since 2001. Nicole has decades of experience working in many aspects of wilderness therapy, including expedition leader, health director, and director of admissions. Whether it was leading adventures on the water, on land, or in the air, Nicole has done it all. She has been an adventure racer, a raft guide, high ropes facilitator, a clinician for kids with Autism, a Waldorf high school teacher, and a mom.

Webinar with Joel Romo, Texana Public Affairs

“Understanding advocacy that will impact the mission of a nonprofit requires knowing the resources that are available to you. Resources such as volunteers, stories, partnerships and overall mission of your organization, learn how to leverage your nonprofit’s voice at the local, state or federal level with the resources you have. Joel Romo will walk you through the advocacy pipeline and help your nonprofit advance their goals and objectives and most of all have a seat at the decision making table.”

Registration: https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/texaschildreninnaturenetwork/advocacy-for-impact-amplifying-your-nonprofit-s-voice