Growing Botanical Literacy in the Garden State

Explore activities and resources to develop students’ knowledge, interest, and empathy of plants to complement climate-based education standards. Enrich your curriculum with NJDEP’s Botanical Literacy Lesson Plans designed to fulfill the 2020 NJ Student Learning Standards and discover ways to create the ideal outdoor classroom setting for budding student botanists.

Teachers will return to school with plant inspired enthusiam, toolkits and resources to build their own gardens in any size space and a set of innovative new lesson plans!

Tentative Schedule (Rain or shine)

FRIDAY (Optional early arrival to alleviate the stress of morning travel)

• 4:00 – 5:00pm – Arrive and settle in to cabins
• 6:00 – 7:00pm – Dinner – please bring your own
• 7:00 – 7:45pm – Sunset paddle on Lake Wapalanne
• 8:00pm – Campfire + Discussion: Botanical Sense of Place

SATURDAY

• 7:00 – 8:00am – Morning walk (optional)
• 8:00 – 8:45am – Breakfast for Overnighters (provided by NJSOC)
• 8:30 – 9:00am – Arrival for single day participants
• 9:00 – 9:15am – Icebreaker
• 9:15 – 9:45am – Welcome and Introductions
• 9:45 – 11:45am – “A School Yard Garden: Benefits, Engagements and Outcomes” with Dena Corbin, Natural Ground 1
  Discover how a schoolyard garden can transform traditional classroom subjects into hands-on, engaging learning experiences. By aligning gardening activities with curriculum standards, this workshop will show how school gardens promote critical thinking, problem-solving, and holistic student development while building a meaningful connection to the natural world. Educators will gain practical strategies for fostering creativity, teamwork, and academic enrichment.
• 12:00 – 1:00pm – Lunch in Big Timbers (provided by NJSOC)
• 1:15 – 1:45pm – “Frog Hollow Pollinator Garden Tour” with Tanya Sulikowski, NJSOC
  The NJSOC garden was established in 2018 as a habitat restoration project and learning space. Tour the garden to learn about the building process and how the garden is used as a year-round educational space.
• 1:45 – 3:30pm – “Plant Evolution Scavenger Hunt” with Doressa Williams OR “Plant and Pollinator Partners” with Eva Popp, NJDEP
  Participants choose one of two afternoon sessions. Team up on a scavenger hunt to search for different evolutionary plant groups, learn to identify them based on their unique traits, and discover how these traits provide clues about the climate in which they evolved. Or focus on flowering plants: learn to identify flower traits that specific pollinators prefer and conduct a pollinator survey in the field to explore the co-evolutionary relationships between plants and their pollinator partners.
• 3:30 – 4:00pm – Workshop close-out discussion & Think Tank
• 4:00pm – Departure

Presenter Bios

Dena Corbin is a retired Special Education Teacher with 32 years of experience. She is deeply involved in environmental advocacy and community building, serving on various advisory boards and organizations. Dena has received notable recognition for her contributions, including the 2022 Greater Newark Conservancy Nelson Mandela Freedom Award for her service to the Newark community and the Community Vanguard Award for her leadership and dedication to community building in the Spring of 2024. In December 2024 she received the Yvonne Garrett Patterson Community Champion Award from Clinton Hill Community Action. She is the Board President for United Parks as One, serves on the Arts Ed Newark Leadership Council, a member of the South Ward Environmental Alliance Air Monitoring Advisory Board and a contributing writer for the New Jersey Native Plant School Guide and an advisory board member of the Essex County Chapter. Dena’s engagements with her community reflect her commitment to sustainability and positive impact.

Eva Popp is an ecologist and environmental educator who believes that nature is the ideal classroom. Her undergraduate research at Rutgers University earned her the Young Botanist Award from the Botanical Society of America in 2021. Eva has worked with students from pre-k to undergrad in the indoor, outdoor, and virtual classroom. While teaching at an outdoor nature preschool, she became fascinated with how the experiential, child-led, inquiry-based instruction resulted in deeper, more effective, and more enthusiastic learning in her students. Motivated to bring the benefits of outdoor learning to the indoor classroom, she researched and designed NJDEP’s Botanical Literacy lesson plans. As a Project Manager with the NJDEP Green Acres program, Eva facilitates land acquisition for the state by coordinating with private owners, nonprofits, and local governments to secure land for conservation and recreation.

Tanya Sulikowski’s sixth grade field trip to the NJSOC inspired her career path as a field ecologist and classroom teacher and she now serves as the NJSOC Director of Education. In 2016 Tanya earned the Women in Wildlife Award for Education by the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ. She is a National Geographic Grosvenor Teaching Fellow and is currently working with a team of Nat Geo Explorers to launch the new MacroBlitz initiative. Tanya is passionate about plants and, through her Landscape for Life Certification (U.S. Botanic Garden & Ladybird Wildflower Center), she has inspired students and teachers to create their own ecological garden spaces. During her off hours, she is an avid native plant and organic vegetable gardener and loves to hike, paddle, and explore the planet’s wildest places with friends and her husband Bruce.

Doressa Williams has been a lover of the natural environment since childhood and a plant enthusiast since 2016. Her fascination for botany has taken her across the country working various jobs involving botanical field surveys, native plant propagation, small-scale agriculture, and interior horticulture. Over the years, these experiences bolstered her belief that plants are divinely brilliant; yet at the same time, highlighted the disconnect many people have with plants. Assisting Eva with the Botanical Literacy lesson plans has given her the opportunity to dive deeper into the field of environmental education and lend help in enlivening plant passion in youth – after all, her passion for botany came from an educator. Currently, she strives to protect endangered and threatened plant species with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. When she’s not botanizing, she’s mommy-ing or crocheting.

Workshop Details:

Registration fee for overnighters includes breakfast and lunch, overnight accommodations in cabin-style housing (with a short walk to bathrooms) and all workshop materials. The fee for a single day includes lunch and all workshop materials.

Participating educators will receive a $150 stipend, made possible through grant funding, upon completion of the workshop.

Please contact Tanya Sulikowski, NJSOC Director of Education, with any questions. tsulikowski@njsoc.org

Refund Policy:

Your event fee, minus Eventbrite Fees, is fully refundable if canceled 7 or more days before the event. While we appreciate being notified if you are unable to attend an event, refunds are not given for cancellations within 7 days of the event.

If we must cancel an event, your registration fee, including Eventbrite fees, will be refunded.