Cottonwood Institute has always promoted a life of learning, loving, and living nature. This means disconnecting from our ever-connected devices and reconnecting to the natural world through all of our senses. We encourage our students to observe animal behaviors, to listen to whispers of the wind through the trees, to feel the texture of the… Read more »
Hannah Melomo joined the Cottonwood Institute team as a Field Instructor this spring, and has already proven herself to be a multi-talented graphic designer and curriculum developer in the creation of our Explore Outside Handbook and summer programs! If it was designed by CI and it looks amazing, Hannah probably had something to do with… Read more »
This year, our lives changed drastically. We could have never predicted that 2020 would be the year where outdoor education was taught through a screen, where we’d be more likely to see our friends through a video app than in person. With every new challenge, however, we are given an opportunity to use our… Read more »
Next up in our Staff Profile series is Field Instructor Chelsea Tossing! Chelsea is one of our new instructors in 2020, and while COVID-19 has put the brakes on her first trip season, she has already become a big asset to the CI team by helping to create the Explore Outside Handbook that supports our… Read more »
I wipe the sweat away from under my mask, take a swig of Gatorade, and get back to work breaking down boxes at Re:Vision Co-op. The CI staff decided to join the finely tuned operation that is Westwood’s No Cost Grocery Program this past Wednesday. The program has been operating to distribute rescued food boxes… Read more »
Between the Ripple Effect Award, Alumni Spotlights, and our community events, we spend a lot of time highlighting the amazing things going on in the Cottonwood Institute community (and there are lots of them)! We thought it might be fun to change it up a bit and share some more about what goes on inside… Read more »
New in the summer of 2020: Cottonwood Institute’s #ExploreOutside online program! That’s right—a program that puts two instructors and a group of students in a Zoom conference to do the exact opposite of what 99% of people are doing on Zoom these days—think about nature and get outdoors! The first session of this new program,… Read more »
The beginning of March is an exciting time for Cottonwood Institute (CI) CAP Programs at Centaurus High School (CHS) and Angevine Middle School (AMS). We play creative games and brainstorming games as we come up with ideas for how to solve problems in our communities. Students form coalitions to lobby other students on their… Read more »
As so many of us have done these last 8 weeks or so, Cottonwood Institute needed to pivot and change how we do things in this age of physical distancing. The biggest concern for our instructors was: how do you turn an outdoor, environmental service learning class into a virtual experience? Lucky for CI, experiential… Read more »
Earth Day Stay-At-Home Challenge Just because you are stuck at home doesn’t mean you can’t do something to save the planet. Here are some great activities collected by the CAP Class at Angevine Middle School, and CAP instructor Erin Angel! Choose at least one challenge from each category and complete it. Each category contains some… Read more »
