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Coyote Mentoring
A relational, nature-based approach to mentoring that uses curiosity, storytelling, and gentle guidance to help children (and adults) build a deep, lifelong connection with the natural world.
Coyote Mentoring invites us to reimagine what teaching and learning outdoors can look like. Instead of relying on lectures or predetermined lessons, this approach centers on the art of sparking wonder. Mentors—sometimes called “Coyotes”—rarely answer questions directly. Instead, they respond with more questions, offer small hints, or tell stories that invite learners to look closer, listen longer, and follow their own curiosity.
This method draws from Indigenous wisdom, traditional tracking, and contemporary ecological education. It emphasizes routines like the “sit spot” (quiet observation in one place), animal tracking, bird language, wandering, and story circles. The mentor’s role is to tend the conditions for discovery and belonging—not to control outcomes.
At its heart, coyote mentoring is about trust: trust in the learner’s capacity for insight, in the value of slowness, and in the power of questions over answers. It’s a way of creating culture—a community where people of all ages learn from the land, each other, and themselves.
Why It Matters
Coyote Mentoring helps cultivate resilience, creativity, and authentic relationship with the more-than-human world. It supports skills that go beyond outdoor knowledge: listening, patience, empathy, and the ability to navigate uncertainty. For educators and families, this approach is a powerful antidote to standardized, disconnected learning—opening the door to lifelong curiosity, community, and reverence for nature.
References & Further Reading
- Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature by Jon Young, Ellen Haas, and Evan McGown
- 8 Shields Institute
- Wilderness Awareness School
- Article: What is Coyote Mentoring?
- Bird Language and Coyote Mentoring (Children & Nature Network)
Articles and Resources on This Site
A simple forest school lesson on bird alarms became a doorway into presence, perception, and pressure—spanning science, parenting, deep nature connection, and contemplative awareness.
When attention softens, the forest responds. Birds, breath, and baseline become a mirror—not of self, but of tone, pressure, and the wake of thought.
A nature-based approach using curiosity, storytelling, and invisible guidance to foster deep connection with the land, self, and others, supporting cultural repair and renewal.
A child kneels in stillness, pencil in hand, mapping bird language and wind. This is relational learning—seeing the invisible through Sit Spot, presence, and reverence for place.
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