Offering the Very Best in Residential Environmental Education.
WAEE Non formal educator of the year 2003

Nature's Classroom Institute provides schools throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota with the very best in residential environmental education & service, dedicated to motivational learning and community awareness.

The beautiful Perlmen Leadership Village is one of our sites. It offers hundreds of acres of wetlands, woodlands and glacial eratics where plant diversity and wildlife are abundant.

By billing ourselves as an environmental education program, one quickly assumes that our primary objective is to provide natural science, ecology, or conservation education. Though all these constitute a large part of our program, environmental education greatly transcends the traditional definitive constraints. It is, in actuality, the educational process dealing with one's relationship with his/her natural and human-made surroundings. Ergo, all education is environmental education.

At Nature's Classroom Institute, we attempt to relate our natural environment (the out-of-doors) to our human-made environment (i.e. school, home, or any other part of a student's daily existence). In the out-of-doors, the student's ability to adapt to a new environment enhances any normal classroom situation, whether it be in their communication skills, concept attainment, personal relationships, or in figuring a classroom physics problem.

What Does Nature's Classroom Institute Have to Offer . . .

To Children?

Nature's Classroom Institute offers a unique educational experience by utilizing a process called "motivational education" where students are enriched academically in areas that interest them most: natural, physical and social sciences, mathematics, and humanities. Because of Nature's Classroom's residential situation, students, also realize the importance of tolerance and community.

To Teachers?

Nature's Classroom Institute offers students and their teachers the opportunity to learn and grow together. In our community, children can begin to envision their classroom teacher as more than a mentor--but a friend and guide through their educational experience. Your children and spouse are also welcome.

To The World?

At Nature's Classroom Institute, we believe that our children are our future. As a result, our instructors introduce global concepts, contributions and consequences of humankind's impact on world ecology. Students are allowed to experience these issues first-hand whereby the ideas are no longer abstractions.