Would you like to be a good steward of your home landscape? Would you like to provide habitat for wildlife and create a healthy, joyful yard for people, too?
Caring for Our Piece of the Earth is a FREE six-session discussion course that will help you learn how to create an earth-friendly yard.
Participating in the course also provides a welcome opportunity to have thoughtful conversations with fellow community members about something that matters: supporting life on earth, beginning right in your own yard, neighborhood, and community.
Janet Allen, the author, welcomes your feedback. Please choose the “Discussion Course” drop down on the Contact Us Form to share your experience, report errors, typos, or broken links, or let her know you’re using it. Thank you!
Organizing a course
You’re welcome to study the course materials on your own, but it’s more useful — and more fun! — to study the course in a group.
A group of eight to twelve people is ideal, but smaller or even larger groups can work, too.
This is a self-facilitated course, which means there is no official teacher or “expert” needed, aside from the materials themselves. Anyone can organize a course! It’s not difficult or time-consuming.
Advice about organizing a course is in the Introduction (below). It describes the roles of Course Coordinator, Session Facilitator, and the optional roles of Opener and Notetaker.
Posters
You might find the one-page Course Description poster useful in recruiting participants. Or you could use this streamlined poster alone or in combination with the previous poster.
The Session Materials
If you click on the underlined name of each session, you’ll be viewing the PDF file in your browser. If you click on the Download button, you’ll download it to your computer (usually into the “Downloads” folder). As with other PDF files, you can also open them on the computer, tablet, or smartphone or in an e-reader, such as Kindle or Apple Books.
IMPORTANT: The Introduction is short, but it provides important tips on how to organize and participate in the course. Please read it first.
Other discussion courses
This course is modeled on the courses available at EcoChallenge.org (formerly known as the Northwest Earth Institute). I encourage you and your group to explore their offerings when you complete this course.