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Words Live Nature What's happening this week, on our adventure Creatures in Our Schools The school is housed in a small, seemingly nondescript building, offset from the Hesarghatta main road. A lone Singapore Cherry (Muntingia calabura) tree marks one corner of the school. ‘Look, there goes a Haavu Rani!’, one of the teachers casually remarked as she walked into the school. Haavu Rani is Kannada for Skink, it translates to ‘Snake Queen’. More A Bugs Life Is that little piece of paint from the wall moving? Who cleans up the crumbs from my kitchen while I’m asleep at night? Who lives in that little white tent in the corner of the wall? More

Is that little piece of paint from the wall moving? Who cleans up the crumbs from my kitchen while I’m asleep at night? Who lives in that little white tent in the corner of the wall?

At Nature Classrooms, we run collaborative projects using multiple ways of engagement. These include the Suttha Muttha project with schools and teachers in Silvepura Village, Bangalore to enhance stories of local ecology among school communities. We also engage with schools and organisations to develop contextual resources based on the EVS curriculum. Additionally, we have been involved in a collaborative research project that explores how nature features in the social life of urban children. Anchor Charts Anchor charts are a fun way to learn actively or passively! These anchor charts are perfect for visually connecting things- like how a tiny insect relies on a specific plant—and understanding behaviors, interactions, and phenomena around us, making it simple to start conversations and get curious about the living world around us. Ages 5+, Adults Plant Posters Plants right outside our doors are hubs for ecological interactions like shelter, food, pollination, and seed dispersal - revealing a dynamic miniature ecosystem in every leaf and branch. These plant posters offer a close-up, dynamic view of a single plant, highlighting its various parts and the fascinating interactions it has with the most common animals, birds, and insects that use them. EXPLORE Behaviour Tales Like how we humans groom and keep ourselves clean, animals too have fascinating ways in which they do these essential behaviours and adaptations! This resource was made to supplement primary school chapters on human cleaning habits and delves into the amazing world of animal hygiene, exploring how animals employ unique strategies to stay clean. Explore Projects Search Search

-by Anagha S An Internship Diary#01 "How do we bring back the “spark” behind discovering more about nature? How do we associate "wonder" with learning instead of memorising terms?" From a very young age, I was always excited to share what I learned with others around me. My first taste of engaging with nature was during my undergraduate studies in Sociology at Stella Maris College, Chennai. I noticed an energetic group of students from the Zoology department, led by their professors, following butterflies and noticing ant trails. I promptly joined their adventures for the next two years, learning as much as I could. Determined to take this interest further, I enrolled at ATREE to formally learn about ecology, the environment, and everything in between. Leading up to my last semester at ATREE, we had a brief field immersion, where we could choose our own projects at different field stations. I spent two weeks at a government school in Darjeeling, implementing place-based nature education with a mixed group of learners from Grades 5 to 9. I selected topics from their EVS textbooks and contextualised the content to their surroundings. While the students knew concepts like climate change and global warming, they couldn’t understand how they were affected by it because textbook examples like flooding or drought were not a part of their lived experiences. They were able to connect climate change to their lived experience of landslides. Through discussion, brainstorming and games, explore how it could affect their lives. Mahaldiram Tea Estate overlooking the Mahaldiram Jr. Higher Secondary School, Darjeeling (P.C: Anagha S) Those two weeks of preparing lesson plans, teaching classes and interacting with the students gave me some clarity on what I wanted to do. I realised that along with my passion for nature education, I was also interested in discovering different ways of delivering it. Experiencing first-hand what it’s like to create lesson plans, adapting them on the go according to learner needs and refining them based on feedback was an eye-opening process. That’s when I discovered there’s so much planning that goes into delivering a session; it is not just “teaching” them the answers to their questions. It is about facilitating in a way that helps them discover answers on their own. Contextualising Climate Change and environmental studies for learners at Darjeeling (P.C: Priyeta Yonzon) For my final semester project, I knew I wanted to continue exploring nature education. I found myself asking questions that had shaped my own journey so far: How do we bring back the “spark” behind discovering more about nature? How do we associate "wonder" with learning instead of memorising terms? How do we create resources that support educators, keeping in mind their constraints such as–time, space, materials and support? I looked for an organisation where I could intern and be guided through the process of creating resources for nature education. That’s when I found Nature Classrooms, which works across resource creation, public engagement, research and educator capacity building. For my internship, I was to develop a teaching-learning module for educators on the topic of “Food”. I started by going through school textbooks to map the topics covered and understanding how environmental science was taught to students. I noticed that most textbooks frame topics in EVS from a ‘human-centric’ point of view. However, Nature Classrooms follows a pedagogy that considers humans and the rest of nature on an equal footing, rather than viewing nature primarily through the lens of human experience. This meant that, for a topic like "Food", while students are often introduced to “nutrition” and where our food comes from, it could also be taught in terms of animal diets, how they source their food, their role in the environment, etc. Most students are familiar with oversimplified food chains or broad diet categories like 'herbivore', 'carnivore' and 'omnivore'. Most learners know by rote that a cow eats grass and a lion eats deer. However, they are seldom encouraged to observe what and how animals in their immediate environment, like squirrels and crows, eat. As I flipped through each page of the textbook, my mind was bursting with ideas on the gaps I wanted to address. What do animals eat? How do they eat? Are their bodies different to accommodate their special diets and eating habits? I began to think about how these questions could help learners look at food from the perspective of other animals, rather than only through what humans derive from it. Before starting the project, I tried to put myself in the shoes of the people I would be creating the resource for. What would I enjoy as a learner, and what would I need from a lesson plan as an educator? The answers to these questions shaped the priorities of the module. For learners, I wanted to make the learning experience fun and exploratory. For educators, I wanted to develop lesson plans that provided enough background information to prepare for a session and a module layout that was intuitive to use. Combining these two perspectives, I developed a series of lessons around the theme “Food in Nature”. Starting from a general whiteboarding session with the team about the broad concepts I wanted to cover, I narrowed them down to a few specific objectives. While doing this, I decided which age group of learners I wanted to write for. I then laid out the topics in a sequence that followed a logical progression from simple to complex. Then came the task of deciding on a general lesson plan layout that gave the resource some structure to follow. Every lesson plan began with a warm-up to slowly introduce the topic to learners in a relatable manner, prompts to aid observation, outdoor activities like learning through animal sounds and actions, and games, followed by locally grounded examples, before finally wrapping up the session with circle time for reflection. The following months, I focused on writing the content within this layout. While I had planned out sessions before, it was much different from creating resources for another educator. I had to use simple language and clear instructions because the resource would be used by an educator to understand the topic and also facilitate the lesson with learners. The aim was to make it straightforward so that any educator, even without an ecological background, could pick up the resource and easily adapt it to their classroom’s context. Each lesson plan was then carefully reviewed by different team members to ensure that the resource reflected the Nature Classrooms pedagogy in practice. Their feedback pushed me to think carefully about how the lessons could be grounded in the learners’ local environment. They suggested locally observable animals as examples for various lessons and even paid attention to including appropriate species-specific illustrations so that the examples remained accurate. These decisions helped contextually ground the topics in the learners’ local environment. Resource Development Process (P.C: Anagha S) Once the resources were ready, it was finally time to pilot them with learners in real classrooms. I reached out to several schools, and two were ready to host me and allow me to engage their learners using the newly developed lesson plans. At Sunnyside Learning in Chennai, I adapted these lesson plans for primary learners aged 2.5-6 years old in an alternative (Montessori-inspired) learning space, whereas in Parikrma Centre for Learning, Sahakaranagar, I piloted the module with Grades 5 and 6 (aged 10-11) in a Karnataka state board curricular system. Working across these two different learning contexts also gave me a chance to see how the lesson plans could fit into different approaches to learning. These pilot sessions allowed me to shift from developing the module to facilitating it as a nature educator. I was able to see my work transform from words on paper to actions in real time. Sunnyside Learning, Palavakkam, Chennai (P.C: Priya Darshini) This was the most exciting part of the internship because it allowed me to test the assumptions I had made while formulating the lesson plans. I had prepared each lesson plan with a certain age group, an estimated session duration and possible learner questions in mind. However, the pilot sessions helped me see how these considerations played out in an actual classroom. This helped me identify gaps in the lesson plans, add more scaffolding and include facilitation insights that would be useful for any educator picking up the resource. Parikrma Centre for Learning, Sahakaranagar, Bengaluru (P.C: Anagha S) What stayed with me most from the pilot sessions was how learners’ questions could take the session in unexpected directions. I still cherish a moment from my first pilot session with children under six. At the end of the session, one learner remarked, "But we are not animals. We make our own food while animals just collect theirs." I quickly reminded myself that my task wasn’t to give them a concrete answer or explain; it was to lead them to the answer through a few questions. I thought of some relatable examples and asked where honey comes from. When they answered, “Bees”, I prompted further: “And yet, do we not collect it?" When I posed the example of milk as well, it became clear to the learner that humans, like other animals, often collect food that other animals make. A lot of my sessions also had me thinking on my feet to navigate through some challenges. For example, sometimes, when taking learners outdoors to experience nature, they might naturally feel curious to touch and feel things that they find around them. However, they might channel that excitement in different ways, like touching or poking an insect to see its reaction or chasing a reptile. In these moments, I felt like there was a learning opportunity, but I also had to discuss these actions in a way that didn’t sound like a lecture or a warning to stay away from experiencing nature. For example, there was an instance when I took learners from middle school to a nearby park for a nature walk. We paused beside a tree to observe some bark spiders. While trying to show them the features of the spiders and how they move, I noticed that some of them were trying to poke it to make it move. Two-Tailed Spider on a Bark, Observed in the Park with Learners (P.C: Anagha S) I was initially unsure how to address the action because while the core value of Nature Classrooms was essentially outdoor hands-on learning, it was personally crucial to me that they observed nature without necessarily disturbing creatures in their habitat. I was still learning how to navigate these situations as an educator, and they reminded me that nature education involves not just what learners come to know about the natural world, but also how they learn to relate to it. The pilot sessions also showed me how differently an activity could unfold from what I had imagined while writing it. For instance, I had designed a card-based activity for learners to match different foods to the animals that eat them. When I adapted it for the younger learners aged 2.5-6 years at Sunnyside Learning, Palavakkam, I found that they were more interested in holding and examining the cards than matching them to the animals. This made me rethink how I designed activities, from the materials I used to the instructions I gave, so that they are age-appropriate for different learners. During my last month of internship, I documented these classroom experiences, adding tips for educators throughout the lesson plans and then focused on the design. I was thinking from the perspective of a teacher who would pick up these resources for their sessions without prior knowledge of how they were created. So, over visual aesthetics and appeal, ease of use was prioritised. At the end of my internship, I felt that working with Nature Classrooms had given me a much deeper understanding of what it means to be a nature educator. I learnt to confidently pitch my ideas, work with a team, write educator resources with greater nuance and understand the technicalities of design. More importantly, I walked away with a deeper understanding of how much thought goes into creating and facilitating a session. As someone starting my career in this field, I know these experiences will have a significant impact on the way I approach future sessions with children – not simply by thinking about what I want them to learn, but by thinking about how I can create the space for them to observe, question and discover. I carry so much gratitude and love in my heart for the kind educators and learners at Sunnyside Learning, Chennai, and Parikrma Centre for Learning, Bengaluru, who welcomed me into their spaces and allowed me to conduct the pilot sessions. Those real classroom moments, and everything they taught me, are what ultimately shaped the teaching-learning resources into the form they have taken today. Written by : Anagha S, Alumni of Nature Classrooms Food in Nature Lesson Plans by Anagha and her internship report: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CXYUZ2LESewNfZ-80vspo_UoZU3otiNf If you are an educator looking to engage with articles and opinion pieces on nature education and pedagogy, a student looking to explore discourses in nature education, or just curious about these things - here's a curated list of essential readings available online.

-by Tanaya Rele How do we assess our work as nature educators? Are there tools that can help us do this meaningfully? And perhaps the most unsettling question of all, how do we even know if our interventions are working? Assessments are important! That is what we and almost every nature educator we interacted with believe. At Nature Classrooms, conversations about assessments were always somewhere in the background. Sometimes emerging during formal meetings, sometimes post workshops, and sometimes during casual reflections on the work we were doing. The questions kept repeating themselves. How do we assess our work as nature educators?Are there tools that can help us do this meaningfully? And perhaps the most unsettling question of all, how do we even know if our interventions are working? Nature Education Assessment Framework (NEAF) Assessments help us understand whether learners are gaining something meaningful and, importantly, whether our nature education programmes are designed effectively. But anyone who has tried to conduct them knows how demanding they can be. Assessments take time (and mind space). They require documentation, response sheets, and often a fair amount of data analysis. Certainly important, but with a flipside of quickly turning into something overwhelming. Overwhelming not for practitioners alone but also for the learners who attempt them. While these questions and dilemmas were looming around, surfacing in conversations and sometimes yielding potential ideas for a new project, the Inlaks Small Grants Programme issued a call for proposals. We thought, why not apply and attempt to actually build something around these never ending questions? That was the beginning of what eventually became the Nature Education Assessment Framework (NEAF). In the early stages, we imagined NEAF quite simply as a toolkit. A guide containing easy-to-use tools that practitioners could use to assess their programmes. But once we started conversing with educators, that idea began to transform. We spoke with nature educators who had been working in this field for decades, and to those who had only recently started their careers in nature education. Despite their varying levels of experience, one thing was consistent, almost everyone agreed that assessments were essential. Many educators also expressed something interesting. They wanted ways to assess themselves and their own practices. Something reflective that could help them examine their programmes more thoughtfully. At the same time, almost everyone described assessments as tedious and overwhelming. Much of this had to do with the heavy reliance on data interpretation and analysis. While these conversations continued, I simultaneously began exploring literature to see what kinds of assessment tools already exist. What I discovered was useful but also seemed to reveal a gap. Many of the tools that I encountered were also rooted in the Global North. They were thoughtful and rigorous, but I often wondered how well they translated into the socio-ecological realities in India. I also came across studies and assessments done in the nature education space in India. They were definitely helpful and gave direction to my cluttered thoughts, yet, something seemed to be missing! A tool from NEAF being trialled with government school students in Shivad, Gujarat This highlighted an important gap. Many aspects of nature education such as curiosity, emotional connections with nature, shifts in attitudes or behaviour are deeply qualitative experiences. Yet, they are often the hardest to capture through conventional assessments. Conventional assessments, focuses largely on knowledge gain, and sometimes tends to overlook how knowledge and attitudes can be shaped differently. An assessment of one cannot be the measure of the other. Gradually, the idea of a toolkit began to evolve. Instead of simply designing tools, we began visualising NEAF as something closer to a practitioner’s guide. It organically started shaping itself as a framework that could help educators think about assessment in ways that were reflective, flexible, and adaptable to their contexts. One of the early decisions we made was that assessments should consider three broad areas: knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours since educational interventions often influence all three. But that decision opened up an entirely new set of questions. How honestly can we capture attitudes and perceptions? How do we ensure that our own biases do not influence interpretation? Can behaviours truly be assessed in meaningful ways? Another question stayed with me throughout the process: how do we account for the knowledge and experiences learners already bring with them? Children do not enter programmes as blank slates. They come with relationships with nature shaped by their families, communities, and everyday experiences with the spaces they engage with and occupy. If we observe shifts in their knowledge, attitudes, or behaviours, how can we know whether those shifts emerged from the programme itself or from other interactions in their lives? These questions often surfaced during the design process. When the journey began, the idea was much simpler. We were trying to answer a set of questions that seemed relevant and important in our work as nature educators. As the project unfolded, these questions led us to far more complex questions and reflections than we had imagined. There were many moments of doubt along the way as well. I often found myself wondering whether I had the experience to build something like this, or whether we were overcomplicating a problem that probably isn’t perceived as one. Questions of positionality surfaced frequently too. Who was I to design a framework in a space where many practitioners had been working in for decades? Will my own biases affect the way I design tools? Are they really going to capture what I believe they should ? Are we adding to an already overburdened system? What helped maintain the momentum was the methodology we adopted. The process was deliberately iterative. We design the tools, trial them, ask for feedback, review, refine, and trial again! There were many iterations of the framework. Many moments where I wondered whether we were missing something important, overestimating certain aspects, or underestimating them. Each round revealed something new. Some tools worked well. Others needed rethinking. But with every iteration, the framework became more grounded in real contexts. Gradually, NEAF moved away from being a one-size-fits-all model and began to take shape as something practitioners could adapt according to their contexts. One of the most memorable moments in this journey happened during the trials with Earth Focus Foundation in Kanha, Madhya Pradesh. It was also my first time testing NEAF tools directly on the ground with students. One of the tools we were trying out was called Feelings Towards Nature. Students were shown images of animals, birds, plants, and landscapes and asked to respond to them. A tool from NEAF being trialled with government school students in Gudma, Madhya Pradesh What struck me most was how expressive the students became during this activity. They were animated, curious, and emotionally engaged with what they were seeing. They spoke freely, reacted strongly to the images, and shared their thoughts with enthusiasm. At some point I realised that it didn’t feel like they were participating in an assessment at all! Assessments can also be fun if we want them to be! A tool from NEAF being trialled with educators and teachers in Madhya Pradesh Of course, not everything worked perfectly during the trials. Some tools needed refinement. But that was exactly the purpose of the trials, to reveal what worked, what didn’t, and where the framework needed strengthening. Another important learning came during trials with students in Gujarat. Initially, the students seemed less engaged with the assessment activities. I wondered whether it was because we were new to them or whether the activities themselves felt too heavy. But conversations with the Earth Focus education team revealed something important. Many of the students were first-generation formal education learners and were not entirely comfortable with reading and writing tasks. The challenge was not the assessment itself but the way the tool was being used and how it was being facilitated. A glimpse into the Nature Education Assessment Framework (NEAF) This pushed us to rethink how the tools could be implemented and to make it more inclusive. We began exploring variations in how activities could be conducted, adding facilitator notes, guiding prompts, and warm-up exercises. The aim was to ensure that assessments felt accessible and welcoming rather than intimidating. Slowly, NEAF began to take shape not as a rigid instrument but as a guided framework that practitioners could adapt according to their contexts. As NEAF becomes available for practitioners, the hope is not for it to be seen as just another assessment tool. Instead, NEAF should be considered a guiding reference which nature educators can interpret, adapt, and reshape according to the needs of their learners and programmes. More importantly, I hope that NEAF encourages a shift in how we think about and interpret assessments in nature education. A glimpse of Nature Education Assessment Framework (NEAF). The hope is that these assessment exercises and tools can become spaces for reflection, peer learning, experience sharing, and deeper understanding of our natural world. That they can feel welcoming and engaging rather than intimidating. And perhaps most importantly, assessments should not be about judging learners alone. They can also help us reflect on our own practices as educators. Assessments in that sense are less about measuring outcomes and more about helping us learn how to do our work better. In the last two years, what began as a search for assessment tools slowly turned into a journey of conversations, field trials, iterations, and reflection. Somewhere along the way, the complex questions that would linger in our minds gave rise to the idea of a simple toolkit which has now evolved into what we call - the Nature Education Assessment Framework (NEAF). NEAF design: Shivangi Thakkar Image credits: Tanaya Rele Written by : Tanaya Rele, Manager (Research, Resources, Training), Nature Classrooms If you are an educator looking to engage with articles and opinion pieces on nature education and pedagogy, a student looking to explore discourses in nature education, or just curious about these things - here's a curated list of essential readings available online.

-by Priyanka Prakash An Educator's Diary#9 Who wants to even talk about emotions? Do they matter in the space of conservation or nature education? Do teachers even care?   I facilitated my first training workshop for Nature Classrooms a little over two years ago. Newly out of a Master's degree and stepping into the world of nature education, I stood in front of 30-odd teachers freshly under training themselves, with their eyes fixed on me, wondering what either of us was doing there. I had 4 hours with this group to get them not just excited about nature and nature education, but also to push them to take this to their classrooms even after I am long gone. And as someone who had never facilitated this kind of workshop, the pressure was high, and the nervousness was much higher!  As I took them through different nature educational approaches, activities, and discussions, I kept wondering what they felt  every minute of this workshop. Were they here because they were asked to? Does any of this even feel relevant to them? Am I assuming that I know a lot more than they do and that they need to be trained? Do I have sufficient understanding of their contexts and lived experiences? Am I truly adding value to their journeys as educators?  I guess I will never know the answers to any of these questions. But what brought about these feelings and questions in the first place was the research I had going on in parallel in the field of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and other feelings-based approaches to education. When Vena Kapoor, my programme lead at Nature Classrooms, recommended that I pick this up as a part of my Master’s internship work, honestly, I was deeply sceptical. Who wants to even talk about emotions? Do they matter in the space of conservation or nature education? Do teachers even care?   That’s it!  “Do teachers even care?” - that was the question that piqued my desire to untangle a lesser-talked-about relationship between emotions, education, and nature. Some may say - “Do they even have a connection?” But after months of reading, talking to teachers, and facilitating workshops, I truly believe that they do. And for whatever reason(s), as nature educators, especially in India, we are only now beginning to recognize the crucial role of understanding socio-emotional complexities when teaching about and building connections with nature.  A Pedagogy for Feelings towards Nature  Why do people care or not care about nature? What shapes our admiration, our phobias, our actions, or even inaction towards nature? Can just asking people to “Save the Planet” make them save it?  - This began my journey into a rabbit hole of understanding the role of social-emotional contexts in teaching-learning. And I guess I am writing this blog piece, not with the intent to present my work or the framework, but rather to process and share what the journey has been like so far - to imagine practices in nature education that allow for feelings and experiences to become an integral part. And oh! That has not been easy, and remains a work in progress!  The Social-Emotional learning  framework is just one among the many frameworks that explore the importance of bringing in the social and emotional contexts of a learner into education. It is also a  great and relevant starting point for any educator to reflect on how their curriculum and pedagogy can go beyond academic learning. When I began imagining a ‘ Nature-based Social Emotional Learning ’ Framework (a mouthful title for sure!), I tried reflecting on some difficult questions: How does nature shape our sense of identity and belongingness? How does our emotional state affect the way we interact with nature? How do our social, historical, political, and cultural contexts influence the way we perceive, value, and engage with nature? What is the relationship between nature and human well-being? How does the changing climate influence how we feel about nature and even learn about it? And most importantly, how can all of this be integrated into teaching-learning curriculum and pedagogy?  These questions slowly began to shape the practices I started developing (and continue to develop) as part of my work at Nature Classrooms. I was also fortunate to meet Nirmal Govindaraju and Gurpreet Kaur, the founders of the Eikas Foundation, who began mentoring and guiding me as I navigated the complex and evolving space of Social-Emotional Learning. With that, I arrived at a broad purpose for my Nature-based SEL work. Through teacher training and capacity-building workshops, I hope to create spaces where teachers can pause and reflect on their own relationships with nature. The intention is to move beyond the familiar conversation of how nature supports human well-being and instead explore what it means to understand our relationship with nature from a more nature-centric perspective. The goal then is for teachers to deeply reflect on how all of this influences the ways in which they bring nature learning into their classrooms. Nature-based SEL in Practice   And so I had identified my starting point. Even before thinking about the application of this framework in classrooms, I was keen on designing activities and practices that pushed teachers and educators to recognise their social-emotional relationship with nature. And how they think this can translate into their pedagogy. I began by trying to integrate some of this into Nature Classrooms’ larger teacher training and capacity building workshops. One of my personal favourite practices invites teachers to explore their Environmental Identity . Using the metaphor of a tree, its parts and life cycle, they reflect on how their interactions with nature shape their sense of self, belonging, and emotions, and how these experiences influence the way they perceive and engage with the natural world. This activity often leads to powerful reflections. Many teachers share that they have rarely paused to think how they personally feel about nature, or how deeply their childhood experiences have shaped that relationship.In another workshop we conducted with the Aga Khan Foundation for primary school teachers in Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, we explored an activity that unpacked the region’s Socio-Ecological Identity. Teachers mapped the rivers, forests, and biodiversity of Bahraich alongside the folk songs, traditions, and cultural practices rooted in its landscape. As they reflected on how these relationships are shifting with changing environments, many observed how such local narratives rarely appear in formal EVS curriculum. The discussion ultimately led to a shared realisation: for nature learning to be meaningful, it must first nurture a sense of belonging to the landscapes we call home. Another way we bring Nature-based SEL into our workshops is by opening up reflective conversations about how our relationship with nature is changing alongside the changing climate. We introduce ideas like shifting baselines  and discuss emotions such as climate grief, anxiety, and burnout. These discussions invite teachers to reflect on how classrooms, instead of leaving students feeling numb or powerless, have the opportunity to become spaces where they process and understand environmental changes in age-appropriate and mindful ways. In Closing…  I vividly remember the very first interview I conducted as a part of my research with an Anganwadi teacher in Pachmarhi, Madhya Pradesh. In addition to asking her all about her socio-emotional experience as a teacher and her connectedness to nature, I casually asked, towards the end, “ What do teachers truly want? ” And she replied, “All we want is for people to ask us how we are.”  I carry that response with me to this day.  When we, as external facilitators, NGOs, researchers, scientists, practitioners (or any of the other hats that we identify with), enter into an education space, we often carry our preconceived notions, assumptions, and experiences. We enter these spaces believing that the people of that space need what we have to offer. Seldom do we pause to understand what is important to them, and what they are already doing within their contexts and capacities. Bringing in this sense of mindfulness to our work could be the first and simplest step we all could take as nature educators to bring a Nature-based SEL approach to our work!And, as for how I imagine Nature-based SEL shaping nature teaching-learning? I see it as a way to create spaces where teachers and students connect with the nature around them, not just through knowledge, but through feelings. A space where they slowly discover their own relationship with the natural world, through their socio-cultural-emotional contexts. I imagine our schools becoming a space to pause, cope with, process, and express the many changes unfolding in nature around us, so that we do not begin to feel distant from nature, but instead be reminded that we are part of it, together. Because perhaps the most meaningful way to learn about nature is not just to understand it, but to truly feel that we are a part of it!  Acknowledgments:  My sincere gratitude to Nirmal and Gurpreet from the Eikas Foundation for their constant guidance and support. I’m grateful to all the teachers and educators who participated in the pilot workshop and to those who continue to engage in the Nature-based SEL sessions through our workshops. And to my wonderful Nature Classrooms’ team for believing in me and the work!  Image credits - Priyanka Prakash, Aditi Rao Written by : Priyanka Prakash , Senior Manager (Education, Training & Research), Nature Classrooms If you are an educator looking to engage with articles and opinion pieces on nature education and pedagogy, a student looking to explore discourses in nature education, or just curious about these things - here's a curated list of essential readings available online.