Our Nature Learning Community Includes...
Rowena Conahan
Rowena is a founder of Nature Learning Community, where she teaches nature connection and outdoors skills and consults with educators seeking to increase outdoors experience for their students. She’s an anthropologist, healer, storyteller and Montessori teacher, with a background as a homeschool parent and assistant in a Waldorf-based forest kindergarten. She attended Tom Brown’s Tracker School in New Jersey and Wilderness Awareness School’s Art of Mentoring and is a graduate of the Kamana Naturalist Training program. She volunteers for the global 8 Shields movement. Rowena is also a founding member of Sunward Cohousing Community, where she’s lived and learned for more than 20 years.
Courtney Klick
Courtney is a re-wilding enthusiast with a passion for bringing nature connection, culture repair and the art of mentoring to our local community. Courtney is a homeschooling mother of three young children, a gardener, former Ayurvedic Practitioner and herbalist, and lover of sacred music. She loves wandering, encountering flora and fauna, and sharing those stories with others. Her daily goal is to spend as much time outdoors as possible, especially with children in the spirit of play and wonder.
Catherine Fritz
Catherine is a lifelong nature-enthusiast. She grew up playing and exploring in the sand dunes along Lake Michigan. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a dual degree in German and Arts and Ideas in the Humanities, she moved to Washington State where she worked for a number of years doing Youth Advocacy and Arts Education. There, she deepened her nature connection by learning the plants and animals of a new bioregion. She returned to Michigan to be nearer family and bring her magic back to the Midwest. In addition to teaching with Nature Learning Community, she's a Music Together Teacher, does youth theatre, and works with Ann Arbor Forest School. She's worked extensively with children and finds them to be an absolute delight.
Fia Ervin
Fia really enjoys the simple complexity of nature; the balance between life and death and how everything she witnesses is a lesson and reflection to her of her. She's passionate about slowing down and observing the world around her and encouraging others, especially children to do the same. Her 12+ years spent with children as a nanny has kept her curious, adventurous and fearless. She enjoys creating things with her hands and is very excited to learn more about: identifying plants, creating shelters, pottery, tracking and so much more.
Syndallas Baughman
Syndallas grew up on the water and in the forests of Michigan and Florida and earned a B.S. in Biology at University of Michigan and M.S. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. Along the way she’s camped and studied plants and pollinators in the Siskiyous in S.W. Oregon, swamps, forests and fields of Michigan, Kauai, coastal and desert California, and the California Sierra Nevada. She taught at El Cerrito Preschool Cooperative, learning from wise and loving mentors to step back and follow and support kids’ ideas. At Wildcat Community Free School she followed kids through creeks and forests, set up experiments, supervised the use of power tools, knives and fire, facilitated democratic decision making and mediated a lot of arguments about Pokemon Card trades. She’s planted native gardens with preschoolers to high school students, and has homeschooled and camped all over the U.S.A. with her two teenage sons.
Syndallas spent much of the past decade at an automotive manufacturing plant where her responsibilities included developing accountable health and safety systems with teams of union leaders, production operators and supervision. She recently served on a Michigan State working group developing guidance for community centers and public events around COVID safety. She participates in consensus decision making with her neighbors at home at Great Oak Cohousing Community. The beautiful wild world is the place Syndallas wants to be! She loves sharing nature connection with people and other living things and you!
Syndallas spent much of the past decade at an automotive manufacturing plant where her responsibilities included developing accountable health and safety systems with teams of union leaders, production operators and supervision. She recently served on a Michigan State working group developing guidance for community centers and public events around COVID safety. She participates in consensus decision making with her neighbors at home at Great Oak Cohousing Community. The beautiful wild world is the place Syndallas wants to be! She loves sharing nature connection with people and other living things and you!
Alex Toenniges
Alex Toenniges is a nature connection mentor, somatics facilitator, community-builder, song-keeper, and social change-maker. She is most at home in the forest and loves teaching primitive skills, fire- and shelter-building, wild edible plants, and medicinal herbs. With a background in nature connection mentoring from the Stalking Wolf/Tom Brown Jr./Jon Young lineage, Alex is passionate about nature as a teacher to create connection and belonging leading to social transformation. She is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner and holds Master and Bachelor of Music degrees in bassoon performance. For more about Alex and her work, visit alextoenniges.com.
Lauren Hunt
Lauren's journey through Environmental Studies led her to biodynamic homesteading. For several years she raised big vegetable gardens, berries, medicinal herbs, chickens, honeybees, biodynamic vegetable seeds, and grass-fed beef. She hunted morels and harvest wild foods such as burdock, nettles, chickweed, violets, wild parsnips, dandelions, etc. She built community as a board member and volunteer with the Driftless Folk School in Wisconsin and learned about plant medicine with local herbalists. Parenting two teens eventually brought her family to Ann Arbor, where her children attend the Steiner School, and she has taught gardening. Along the way, she became a wellness coach and yoga leader (learn more at www.laurenmhunt.com). When we asked Lauren if she’d consider teaching with us, she mentioned a month-long course she took in aboriginal living skills. She made practical things like cattail sleeping mats, made fire with a bow drill and went backcountry camping with few supplies for several days. It sounded like a fit! When she mentioned she’s also a singer and song catcher, we just couldn’t wait to welcome her to class!
L'Oreal Hawkes-Williams
L'Oreal has a passion for nature and feels her purpose is to help steward an environment where people can reconnect with nature. Having earned a degree in Ecology from the University of Michigan, she’s coordinated and taught her own ecology classes for all ages. She’s also the founder and director of New Leaf Detroit (No Earth Wasted – Living Ecological Awareness Farm), where she uses gardening as a teaching forum. L’Oreal’s garden is a gorgeous bounty of wild and domesticated food and medicine, which she knows how to use! She’s always looking for patterns – big, small and all in between. No matter where you look there’s always a pattern to be seen. She can sometimes be found looking through the lens of a camera, as she and her husband have a film and photo business. L’Oreal has also attended an intensive wilderness medicine training course through U of M.
Fonsea Bagchi
Fonsea (He/Him/His) grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Mostly you can find him zooming school at Huron High, walking PawPaw Goldenheart (his dog), and running and walking in all weather - trail running, town running, cross country and track and mega-walks (a word he made up with friends). It only rains on the other guys! He loves wandering in the woods, by the river, in the UP, by Lake Michigan, in the desert, and also canoe camping, getting lost in the mountains, checking dumpsters for racoons and possums. He basically loves being anywhere outdoors unless there are swarms of vicious bitey flies!
Fonsea lives at Great Oak Cohousing sharing in community work, including childcare, cleaning, and grocery shopping for neighbors. He loves music and plays the French Horn in band and (kind of) the piano. He likes to create and share music and enjoys its connection to nature. He’s very excited to work as an assistant teacher at Nature Learning Community, he hopes to help kids find their own love and appreciation of nature. He’s been camping since he was very young. He loves nature and nature loves him!
Fonsea lives at Great Oak Cohousing sharing in community work, including childcare, cleaning, and grocery shopping for neighbors. He loves music and plays the French Horn in band and (kind of) the piano. He likes to create and share music and enjoys its connection to nature. He’s very excited to work as an assistant teacher at Nature Learning Community, he hopes to help kids find their own love and appreciation of nature. He’s been camping since he was very young. He loves nature and nature loves him!
Laura Matney
Laura likes to play in the woods. She feels strongly that everyone should have the opportunity to explore the outdoors in a way that opens their minds and helps them understand the world, themselves, and others. She has an extensive background in outdoor experiential education and leadership, as a staff member, camp director and trip leader for Agree Outpost Camp, Tamarack Camps Travel Trips, Farm and Wilderness, Eastern Michigan University and Natures Classroom Adventures. From helping students learn to navigate rapids in northern Canada to teaching cooking lessons on a camp stove in Maine, there's always an adventure to be had and always something that makes us sit back on our heals and say "well isn't that neat!" You can usually find her in Ann Arbor as the Manager at Argus Farm Stop - stop by and say hi!
Alix Gaither
Alix Gaither is currently enrolled in a Master of Science program in Curriculum and Instruction. She also holds an A.A.S. in Early Childhood Education from Delaware County Community College and a B.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from Arizona State University.
Alix has over ten years of experience working in toddler, preschool, and elementary classrooms across the country with both neurotypical and neurodivergent children, as well as three years spent teaching ESL in Japan. With a background in Montessori education, she’s also a certified trauma and resilience practitioner, trained in anti-bias education and restorative practices for the classroom, and a certified children's yoga instructor.
Alix is originally from the Philadelphia, PA area and is married to her high school sweetheart. Together they have one son and live in Ann Arbor. In her free time, Alix enjoys reading, spending time outside, traveling, and taking photos. The foundation of her nature connection is water, and she’s happiest next to (or in) natural bodies of water.
Alix has over ten years of experience working in toddler, preschool, and elementary classrooms across the country with both neurotypical and neurodivergent children, as well as three years spent teaching ESL in Japan. With a background in Montessori education, she’s also a certified trauma and resilience practitioner, trained in anti-bias education and restorative practices for the classroom, and a certified children's yoga instructor.
Alix is originally from the Philadelphia, PA area and is married to her high school sweetheart. Together they have one son and live in Ann Arbor. In her free time, Alix enjoys reading, spending time outside, traveling, and taking photos. The foundation of her nature connection is water, and she’s happiest next to (or in) natural bodies of water.
Chuck Barbieri
Chuck Barbieri spent his childhood on Long Island, NY, very close to the ocean. Outside adventures in woods, swamps and ocean beaches were important daily aspect of his life as a child. As woods and nature areas were converted to parking lots and highways on Long Island he chose a college near abundant natural features. At Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, he majored in Environmental Studies and Biology. Chuck traveled extensively in the Pacific Northwest, took some Outward Bound classes, and went to graduate school at University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, majoring in Environmental Advocacy and Education. He enjoys “rock hounding” across the United States, doing nature art projects and simply sitting and walking in the woods, aimless and joyful. He's taught in many Waldorf schools as the kindergarten afternoon teacher and after-school director. He also directed many successful summer camps.
Claire Maitre
Claire’s original passion is the natural world. And life has taken her on a wander through many related fields, crafting her as a valuable elder mentor whose wisdom and open heart have touched the lives of many. She earned a BA in Anthropology from Wayne State University and a Permaculture Design Certificate. She’s studied Village Building and Activating Cultural Emergence with the 8 Shields Institute, and is a participant in our own Oak Tree Mentorship Program. She’s also delighted in accompanying her grandsons in the Fuzzy Caterpillars class. You can look for her at Chrysalis Transitions, where she offers coaching and classes focused on Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects.