Environmental Education

We believe that Environmental Education supports students in growing their connections to the natural world, which sustains us all.  Hands-on experience in nature is essential for children's development socially, cognitively, and behaviorally. They become conscientious citizens and stewards of the earth. Our unique EE program centers around sensory exploration, sustainability, reciprocity with the earth, and child-led nature play, all while relying on the philosophy of inquiry-based learning. 

All Cottonwood School students participate in environmental education one to two hours per week led by our Environmental Education and Garden Director, Sivan Gordon-Buxbaum (she/they). Sivan, born and raised in Albuquerque, is a naturalist, educator, and artist thrilled to be teaching in the garden at Cottonwood School. She recently served as the Education Park Ranger at the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park and holds a Master’s in Plant Science from Cornell University, where she focused on garden education and nature play. Sivan is a Certified Interpretive Guide and New Mexico Master Naturalist with a decade of environmental education experience, including work with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Bronx Zoo, Ithaca Children’s Garden, NYC Public Schools, Hudson River Park, and Montessori Day School of Brooklyn. She is passionate about creating an inclusive, accessible space where every child can grow alongside the garden!

Our classes offer students diverse, inquiry-based experiences which includes:

• Care and feeding of chickens
• Garden maintenance such as planting, harvesting, weeding, watering, and composting
• Creating native pollinator habitats
• Botany, ecology, and entomology lessons
• Cooking, canning, and preserving harvested bounty
• Nature art
• Indigenous ways of knowing
• A school Farm Stand which reinvests the surplus back into the Garden program
• Field trips to local farms, orchards, and natural spaces
• Free, open-ended, child-led nature play

The Cottonwood School Garden is a certified Wildlife Habitat in the National Wildlife Federation's network of mini-refuges. Because of the school's conscientious planning, landscaping and sustainable gardening, wildlife may find quality habitat, food, water, cover and places to raise their young. While in the garden, you may see our resident coachwhip snake, a plethora of lizards, bunnies, toads and bugs of all sorts!