Capable
Confident
Connected
Empowered
There is a physiological assault on our nation’s youth that is crippling their development and risking their futures.
To restore health and smiles to our children, families, and teachers, it is a research-backed and physiologically fundamental need that we help them reconnect to natural rhythms and phenomena.
About Danielle Racke
Founder & Principal
Build Your Foundation: Grow Your Roots
For 18 years, Danielle has been helping others learn through the application of science and education principles, and the incorporation of outdoor environments into the learning environment. Building her expertise through education, field ecology, management, and conservation, her experiences inform her systems-based perspective and allow her to apply research-based methods that converge on positive outcomes across many types of environments. Whether developing individual courses for learners or chairing a committee developing a statewide education certification program for teachers, she is known as a passionate advocate for the use of hands-on, inquiry- and project-based methods to drive learning outcomes.
Danielle has always attributed many of her passions and professional successes to her mandated childhood instructions to
“Go outside and play.”
Now, driven from the classroom into larger systems by her own search for healthy, educational options for her children, she is focused on helping schools and outdoor educational organizations to leverage the mechanisms that make the study of natural phenomena and outdoor education such powerful learning tools. She is passionate that all children should be able to benefit from the knowledge that science has given us about how to live and learn well.
“…I knew that her expertise and ability to engage students of all ages was exemplary….I have watched her handle difficult situations with poise, integrity and professionalism….”
— Gretch Boeren, Virginia Science Teacher and Environmental Educator for Roanoke City Dept. of Parks & Recreation
Mission & Vision
Connecting Life to Learning
In a tech-dominated and global environment, we humans are losing our key connections.
Our children grow up increasingly disconnected from natural systems, natural processes, and each other. As adults, they have little concept of these losses. They lose an understanding of the interconnectedness of living and nonliving things; they suffer unabated physical, mental, emotional and social strains; and they miss opportunities to define and seize their dreams in mindful ways.
Parents, teachers, and organizations all try to do their part to create a world where children grow up to be happy and healthy. But how much can one person do when the pressures of life keep them from being an expert in everything? And how much difference can one environmental initiative make when the realities of business overtake an organization’s capacity?
Explore Nature By Nurture is eager to help communities use outdoor education to promote the development of foundational skillsets and an understanding of environmental systems. We empower people and organizations to use outdoor education to foster learner connections to the Earth, Self, and Community.
Nature By Nurture is our Philosophy.
Our approach
Nature by Nurture refers to the scientific phenomenon that acknowledges that individuals are a product of heredity and the environments in which they learn and live. At Explore Nature By Nurture, we believe that healthy, outdoor environments are some of the safest places for people to be, and that appreciation for the outdoors can foster a natural sense of community. We therefore welcome the diversity among our students, be they children or adults, and we strive to cultivate environments that support wholesome growth in outdoor spaces.
We reconnect natural human needs to be in nature by nurturing informed attitudes and behaviors towards nature. Our trainings and lessons are designed to help people appreciate, understand, and interact with their environments in ways that conserve and recreate healthy human-environment relationships.
Our values
Learn constantly. From every question, experience, failure, and success, absorb the lessons that will allow you to adapt and move forward.
Accept yourself and your journey. Ground yourself daily in your best self, and hold your head high.
Be mindful. Be aware of your impacts on your environment, including those generated by where you have been and where you might go.
Be a guide. Share your knowledge and path so that others may learn from you.
Empower others. Advocate for and support others in their growth and journey.