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, would appreciate your feedback. Please contact her to let her know you’re using it, comments on your experience, or with any errors or typos you encounter. Thanks!
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 course files
The files for the course are below. 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.
Technical notes
Depending on your computer and internet, these may take a while to download, but they only need to be downloaded once.
NOTE on downloading PDF files to a desktop:
- Safari browser: It opens the PDF in the browser window. To download the PDF files to your computer’s designated Downloads folder instead, hold the Option key while you click the link OR right-click the link and Choose “Download linked file”
- Chrome browser: Click on the Download arrow at the top of the browser window.
If you’re using an iPad,
After downloading the Session by clicking the Download button (below), click on the Share icon, indicated by a yellow arrow.
Click on the Books icon to download the Session to your Books app, indicated by a yellow arrow.
Clicking on a link in the materials takes you from the Session materials to a webpage. You can easily return to the now-saved Session by clicking the triangle next to Books in the upper left corner, indicated by the yellow arrow.
Links on the internet change all the time. I try to keep them updated, so be sure you have the latest version by checking the “Updated” date on the title page of each session. For example, ver. 3/9/21 would indicate that the file was most recently updated on March 9, 2021.
Please let me know if you find a broken link and I’ll correct it. Thanks!
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).
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.