Joyful
Energetic
Connected
“There is a physiological assault on our nation’s youth that is crippling their development and risking their futures. It’s an unacceptable situation.”
— Danielle Racke, Founder and Principal Consultant
In a tech-dominated and global environment, we humans are losing our key connections.
Why are we “here”?
Our youth
Our children grow up increasingly disconnected from natural rhythms, their inner Selves, and each other. They suffer unabated physical, mental, emotional and social strains, causing them to miss opportunities to define and seize their dreams. As adults, they have little concept of these losses, and live lives that are less curious, less meaningful, less joyful. Some eventually find their way to fulfillment, and many never do.
Our adults
Parents, teachers, and organizations all try to do their part to create a world where children grow up to be happy and healthy. But even as adults, we struggle with our own health, our relationships, a belief in our purpose.
No one taught us how to safely navigate a world of ultra-processed food, social media, instant access to nearly anything we want, and devoid of green space. We must wade through the noise, sifting and experimenting, trying to find what works - usually, driven in reaction to fear or pain.
Our schools
Occasionally, the knowledge and hopes that adults have for children become mandates or one-stop-suits-all solutions for schools. But all too frequently, information, processes, and desired outcomes become disconnected and distorted as they make their way from governing systems designed to be efficient into operational systems desired to be effective.
Information is incomplete and applied out of context.
Processes are incompletely designed or incompletely implemented.
Desired outcomes are misaligned with practiced rewards.
Under the pressures of failing performance, leaders become coldly rational or emotionally overburdened, creating top-down strain through schools. Eventually, frustration, anxiety, hopelessness, and loss of health overwhelm educators and administrators. All of the stress destroys the safety of the instructional and physical environments.
Students fall between the cracks.
But what if we could…
…improve teaching and learning conditions despite mandates, budget constraints, and limited time?
The science from multiple fields shows us the way to build healthy, high-quality instructional environments, and healthy, high-functioning schools, by creating a foundation of a healthy brain-body connection within each individual and value-oriented relationships between individuals.
We can. We must. We will.
“Live, lead, and teach with joy and energy.”
Our MISSION:
To help school administrators and educators stop burnout and improve their health and wellness through strategies that honor each unique system, including its community and goals.
Our VISION:
Educational environments that are healthy, joyful, and curiously energetic, so that every student can live and learn well every day.
Our UNIQUE VALUE:
A systems-based perspective that points to a human-centered path for overcoming persistent system challenges, and the expertise to help you customize a plan and pull it off.
“Nature By Nurture” guides our approach.
Every human is a system-within-systems.
Nature by Nurture refers to the scientific phenomenon that acknowledges that individuals are a biological system - the product of heredity, physiology, and the physical and social environments in which they live and learn.
In our work, we honor each individual as a system, and we honor the variety of environments - or systems - in which individuals operate.
All environments matter.
Externally, youth are immersed in two to three types of environments during key years of development. These include both physical and social elements of home, school, and community.
If our children are to learn well, and to live well, then the physical environment must support biological health, and the adults around youth must be able to show them the way.
To immerse the full system in many elements is to create resilient, high-functioning humans.
Human development and performance are inextricably tied to the brain and body’s relationships with natural phenomena - such as water, air, sunlight, darkness, and temperature.
By their presence in the physical environment and through their impact on individual physiology, natural phenomena also critically influence the social environment.
The human system must be immersed in healthy, natural processes to perform to the high levels that society demands.
Values guide our process.
Be purposeful.
Be curious.
Be mindful.
Be a guide.
Be empathetic.
“We are educators: lovers of learning and sharing. It’s time for us to learn to live, lead, and teach with joy and energy, so that we may share with our children how to do the same.”
— Danielle Racke, Founder of Explore Nature By Nurture, LLC
Explore Nature By Nurture’s Story
Founder Danielle Racke began her career as an ecologist, lab manager and college science educator, eventually moving into conservation and environmental education. She was always passionate about being in and getting others outside, which showed in her academic and professional outcomes. Her leadership has led to many new educational activities and courses, research opportunities for students, and even professional certifications for teachers.
Explore Nature By Nurture, LLC, began as Danielle’s natural professional progression and passion-project to help educators take students into their schoolyards more frequently. She wanted to help them overcome financial, resource, and confidence barriers, so that they could help their students achieve the academic, emotional, and social benefits that high-quality outdoor learning consistently produced. In 2023, she began looking more deeply into *why* outdoor learning worked. At the same time, she heard teachers and parents describe the deteriorating post-covid teaching and learning conditions in schools. She made the connection between nature-based outcomes and school conditions, and her realization shifted ENBN’s purpose.
The deepest value of outdoor learning wasn’t about getting better scores or having higher engagement from students. It was about rescuing students and adults alike from physiological deficits that were keeping them from doing their best work. Solving those deficits was what led to higher engagement and better scores. And in order to get kids and teachers outside, there were bigger barriers to deal with than financial constraints. To begin, no school can consistently deliver high-quality instruction, outdoor or not, when the staff are burned out and turnover is high.
Armed with the science behind the brain-body connection, and enlightened by her own fight to overcome the lingering effects of toxic relationships and professional burnout, Danielle repositioned ENBN to help where the help is truly needed. ENBN now prioritizes its systemic support for educator retention for schools through a dual top-down and bottom-up approach. We consult with leaders whose vision includes bringing joy and energy into the teaching and learning environment, who recognize value in relationships with nature, and who are brave enough to follow a different path to higher teacher retention and mental health support for staff and students.
ENBN has proudly assembled an expert team that boasts more than 125 years of experience getting goal-oriented results in education. Our customized consulting services and implementation support begin with a unique school readiness assessment through interviews and on-site walk-throughs. The report provides a goal-oriented framework that keeps districts from wasting money by showing them scaffolded paths to professional and systemic development matched to their goals and community needs.
Meet Danielle Racke
Founder & Principal Consultant
Danielle has always attributed many of her personal and professional successes throughout her life to her mandated childhood instructions to
“Go outside and play.”
And many other successful leaders - whether they taught outside or not - once heard these words as well.
Since beginning the search for healthy options for her own child’s care and education, Danielle has come to know why and how her outdoor experiences shaped her successes. And why outdoor time is no longer optional in schools, but desperately needed.
For 20 years, Danielle has built her expertise by doing outdoor ecological research, incorporating the outdoor environment into high-impact learning, and training others to do each. Now, driven from the lab, field, and classrooms into larger systems, she is focused on helping K-12 schools leverage the brain-body connection to get better results for their staff, students and communities. She is passionate that children and the adults who surround them should benefit from the knowledge of how to live well and learn well.
Danielle could talk for days about ecology, the links between natural phenomena and our health and learning, creative lesson planning, and the antics of her young child. She also loves hiking and camping, reading (paper!) to learn and relax, playing board games and sports, and enjoying all of these things with friends and her delightful young daughter.
…A daughter whose curiosity and growth constantly remind Danielle that no matter how much she can talk, there will always be a lot more to learn.
Onward!