Place-Based Education Immersion Experiences
When it comes to connecting with a locality’s history, culture, and environment, there’s nothing quite like an “in place” experience. In fact, such outings are at the very core of place-based education. Our Immersion Experiences offer you a chance to explore Southeast Michigan. What makes this region unique? What can you learn here about “place” and “stewardship”? How could you apply what you learn in your own community?
Get a “sense of place,” connect and converse with others, and generate ideas for powerful teaching and learning in your own place. Add an Immersion Experience to your conference agenda today!
*PBE Immersion Experiences cannot run without the minimum number of participants. To honor the time and energy of experience organizers, minimum registration numbers must be reached by October 29, 2025.
You can register for an immersion experience as you complete your conference registration. If you wish to add an immersion experience to an existing registration, please click the button below.
Traveling Dialogue: Community Conversations on Ecojustice and Place-Based Education
Location: Various stops in Detroit, MI
Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 9 am–3:45 pm (includes travel time)
Limit: 30 participants
Cost: $75
This immersion experience will give participants a chance to experience how place-based learning centers community issues and priorities across Southeast Michigan including air quality, increasing resilience to the threats of climate change, and maintaining and deepening our sense of belonging and community identity. Designed as a ‘Traveling Dialogue’, this immersion experience will bring participants to the doorsteps and into direct conversation with community educators and leaders employing innovative place-based strategies as a grassroots, community-led approach to addressing issues of ecojustice, while providing critical context and opportunities for reflection, community-building, and dialogue with other participants along the way. Attendees will have an opportunity to listen to the stories of challenges and solutions offered by communities that are contextualized within the larger built structures and natural ecosystems in our region.
Traveling Dialogue stops will include a visit to Salina Elementary/Intermediate School in Dearborn to discuss how students, staff, and community members are coordinating on responses to air quality concerns, a visit to the Eastside Community Network in Detroit to talk with community leaders about their Neighborhood’s First Engagement Model and their place-based leadership development programs including the LEAP Sustainability Fellowship, the Detroit River Watershed Management Plan, and the Eastside Youth Fellowship, and to the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center in Detroit to engage in deeper conversation with longtime advocates of community-led change around how communities organize to learn, take action, and reflect on their practices towards a more just and democratic society.
Throughout the Traveling Dialogue, participants will be supported to reflect on the stories of their own places, create a loving and trusting learning community among other participants, and hold space to explore some of the larger ecojustice issues in which many place-based action projects are rooted.
*Lunch will be provided.
Long-Term, School-Wide PBE: Exploring and Protecting Mill Creek
Location: Dexter, MI
Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 9 am–3:30 pm (includes travel time)
Limits: 20 participants
Cost: $75
Discover the wonders of Mill Creek with Wylie Elementary’s 3rd and 4th-grade students and teachers in an inspiring, student-led exploration! Just a short walk from the school, Mill Creek offers a unique connection to the community’s rich history and natural beauty.
Once the site of a dam built by Judge Samuel Dexter in 1824 to power local industry, and later enhanced by Henry Ford, Mill Creek’s history mirrors the growth of the village itself. Today, this transformed area is home to the vibrant Mill Creek Park, featuring scenic trails, wildlife, and even one of the few visible beaver dams in Washtenaw County.
Wylie students have embraced this incredible resource, grounding their place-based education (PBE) projects in the history, ecology, and opportunities of Mill Creek and its surrounding park. Join us for an unforgettable experience as students guide you through engaging activities along the creek corridor and share their discoveries.
Afterward, dive deeper with Wylie teachers as they reveal how PBE is seamlessly integrated into the curriculum, inspiring a deeper connection between students, learning, and the world around them. Don’t miss this chance to see PBE in action!
*Lunch will be provided.
Starting in Place: Reading Cultural Landscapes
Location: Ypsilanti, MI, and Eastern Michigan University campus
Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 1–4 pm
Limits: 30 participants
Cost: $30
Historian Matt Siegfried’s work has largely centered on connecting local history to broad historical moments. With a focus on race, class, gender and power in our social landscape, Matt believes that the ground and built environment we walk through every day is alive with worlds of history and can speak to us about why we live the way we live. Join Matt—and other PBE practitioners—on a walking/rolling history tour on and around the Eastern Michigan University campus focusing on how to look at your immediate places in different, new ways that create deep impacts to your place-based education practices. Participants will practice instructional design for place-based learning using the Southeast Stewardship Coalition’s (SEMIS) Starting With Place protocol, practice reading cultural-ecological landscapes, and think about the connections between histories of our places and the actions we take collectively to make change.
Natural Connections Through PBE, Part 1: Matthaei Botanical Gardens & Nichols Arboretum
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 9 am–12 pm
Limit: 30 participants
Cost: $40 ($75 if selected as a full day immersion experience with Part 2 at Bruin Lake)
Begin your conference experience immersing yourself along the trails of the University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum. Learn how the Gardens responded to the return of the American beaver (aka Castor canadensis or amik in the Ojibwe language). The ensuing excitement, public inquiry, and concern provided educational engagement designed to support community-wide relationship building and stewardship. The Gardens’ education team’s approach to biodiversity awareness—centered in place-based learning and experiential engagement with diverse age groups—will provoke curiosity and opportunities to explore how to implement keystone species inquiry practices and stewardship projects in your own community. Through this experience, you will consider relationship building, systems thinking, biodiversity, and play as dynamic elements of place-based inquiry and action.
* Snacks will be provided.
**At the conclusion of this experience, participants will have the option to either return to EMU (and possibly join an afternoon immersion experience) or continue on to the Woodlands at Bruin Lake.
Natural Connections Through PBE, Part 2: The Woodlands at Bruin Lake
Location: Gregory, MI
Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 11:30–4:30 pm (includes travel time)
Cost: $40
Experience is full!
The Woodlands at Bruin Lake and the Thriving Educator Institute features 120 acres of forested wildlands and serves as a dedicated retreat center for teacher and administrator professional development. The program emphasizes impactful learning through project-, problem-, and place-based approaches, with a focus on STEM, eco-justice, literacy, and educator wellness. Participants will discover how the natural environment can be leveraged as a dynamic context for experiential, hands-on teaching and learning, fostering meaningful connections to the environment, the local community, and one another.
During the immersion, educators will explore how experiences at the Woodlands can inspire student stewardship and translate into deeper, more interdisciplinary learning outcomes in their own classrooms. The serene setting, including a newly constructed labyrinth, offers opportunities for reflective practices that highlight the benefits of mindfulness and personal well-being. Participants will leave feeling rejuvenated, equipped with strategies to sustain their own energy and to empower student voice—intentionally shifting learning ownership to students for greater engagement and growth.
*Lunch will be provided.
The Woodlands at Bruin Lake and the Thriving Educator Institute are operated by Washtenaw Promise, a local non-profit serving Southeast Michigan and beyond.
Weaving Place into Your Pedagogy: A Practical Guide to Place-Based Education
Location: Ypsilanti, MI
Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 9 am–3:30 pm
Limits: 24 participants
Cost: $60
Experience is full!
This immersion experience will develop a foundation for place-based teaching and learning. Heed a ‘Call to Action’ by assuming the role of a student engaged in a place-based teaching unit centered around a local environmental issue, school materials (waste) management. Seek to understand relevant data using two Michigan data portals, Michigan-specific/Great Lakes regional curriculum and partner resources, and a cross-curricular approach aligned to Michigan state standards. Explore Ypsilanti to witness how local community partners help to foster a relationship between youth and their community. Tour Ypsilanti neighborhood schools to see place-based education in action. Synthesize the day’s learning with time to plan your own place-based education unit with support from workshop hosts, community partners and resources, grant and funding opportunities , and continued professional development.
*Lunch will be provided.
**There may be an opportunity to join for the field excursion part of this experience only.
Belle Isle: An Urban Learning Lab in a Nature Oasis
Location: Detroit, MI
Wednesday, November 12, 2025, 9 am–4:30 pm
Limit: 30 participants
Cost: $75 (includes entry fee to the Belle Isle Aquarium)
Experience is full!
Spend the day exploring a cherished and historic urban oasis–Belle Isle Park–including activities at the Belle Isle Nature Center, Belle Isle Aquarium, and Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory. Belle Isle Park is a 982-acre island park in the Detroit River, offering a mix of natural beauty, historic landmarks, and recreational attractions, and serves as a hub for both relaxation and community engagement in Detroit. The day will begin with field activities on the shores of Belle Isle where the Detroit Zoological Society’s (DZS) conservation program monitors the mudpuppy, Michigan’s largest amphibian. Next on the agenda is a visit to the Belle Isle Nature Center to explore strategies for building a sense of belonging in place. Tours of the historic Belle Isle Aquarium and Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory will then explore robust educational partnerships in place throughout the island, including the BIG Belle Isle Lesson (BBIL), through which teachers from Detroit Public Schools Community District bring students to the island for a week-long experience to learn about the island’s resources.
*Lunch will be provided.