Name: Parks as Portals: Restoring Hidden Histories, Reconnecting Communities to Land
Start: 2026-11-12T09:30:00-0500
End: 2026-11-12T10:45:00-0500

Parks as Portals: Restoring Hidden Histories, Reconnecting Communities to Land

Thursday November 12, 2026 9:30am - 10:45am EST

Fayette Room

Parks as Portals is a community-centered environmental education model rooted in Kentucky’s public lands and Black ecological legacy. Born from one educator’s experience at Mammoth Cave, it centers community knowledge holders as co-teachers, restores erased BIPOC histories, and offers a framework for renewing educators through place, partnership, and truth.

In 2023, during KAEE's conference, Milan Bush walked into Mammoth Cave as an environmental educator and came out changed. Not just by the cave's scale, but by what it held. The memory of Stephen Bishop, an enslaved man who mapped those passages, had never fully left that place. It was waiting. That experience planted the seed for Parks as Portals.

Three presenters bring distinct perspectives: the GGBM founder shares the framework’s origin and community-rooted design; Shaniqua Robertson, Executive Director of ATBHK, presents the integration of Black Kentucky history into place-based environmental contexts; and Ebony Freeman, a Berea College preservice teacher candidate, shares what it means to encounter this model as a future educator, what shifts when community knowledge comes first. A facilitated discussion invites participants to apply the framework to their own communities, followed by collective sense-making and a practical takeaway structure.

This in-progress project investigates: (1) How does historically grounded, place-based environmental education shift BIPOC learners’ sense of ecological identity and belonging in natural spaces? (2) How does centering community knowledge holders as co-educators affect teacher renewal and long-term professional sustainability?

The model is grounded in Freire’s (1970) pedagogy of the oppressed and hooks’ (1994) vision of embodied, socially just teaching, learning as liberation, and community wisdom as curriculum. Place-based education theory (Gruenewald, 2003; Sobel, 2004) anchors the use of land itself as the primary teacher. Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth framework shapes how BIPOC ecological knowledge is treated as foundational strength, not absence. Finney’s (2014) scholarship on Black Americans and the outdoors grounds the Kentucky-centered historical content directly.

Curriculum units are being piloted through ATBHK. Preservice candidates at Berea College are among the first cohort of learners engaging the model. This workshop shares early-stage findings and invites the research community into the work not as an audience, but as collaborators.

This work arrives at a moment of urgent need. In April 2026, the Sierra Club and a coalition of more than 25 Kentucky organizations formally opposed federal executive orders threatening to remove historically grounded interpretation from national park sites across the state. The stories targeted include the exact histories at the heart of Parks as Portals — Stephen Bishop, the Bransford family, and the enslaved African American guides whose knowledge, labor, and skill built Mammoth Cave into the landmark it is today. When the federal government moves to erase these stories from the land itself, community-led environmental education is not supplemental. It is essential. Parks as Portals exists to ensure that no matter what is removed from a sign or a visitor center, these histories live in our learners, our teachers, and our communities.

Speakers

Milan Bush

Executive Director, Go Grow Be More

Milan Bush is a community educator, wellness advocate, and cultural organizer who believes real change happens through partnership, not rescue. A group fitness instructor, environmental educator, and nonformal education practitioner, Milan collaborates with people of all ages to strengthen... Read More →

Dr. Keesha Greer-Effs

Assistant Professor, Berea College

Dr. Keesha Greer-Effs joins Berea College as a visiting assistant professor in the Education Studies Department, where she brings a wealth of experience, passion, and joy factor to the field of Learning and Behavior Disorders (LBD) education, as she works to support pre-service educators... Read More →

Dr. Shaniqua Robinson

Executive Director, Association to Teach Black History in Kentucky

Shaniqua Robinson, a lifelong learner and educator, has joined Berea College as Field Placement Coordinator in Education Studies. Robinson spent her career working to establish inclusive learning environments that cater to students from all backgrounds, regardless of their socioeconomic... Read More →

Thursday November 12, 2026 9:30am - 10:45am EST
Fayette Room 1801 Newtown Pike, Lexington, KY 40511

Research in Action

KAEE 50th Annual Conference

Milan Bush

Dr. Keesha Greer-Effs

Dr. Shaniqua Robinson

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KAEE 50th Annual Conference

Milan Bush

Dr. Keesha Greer-Effs

Dr. Shaniqua Robinson

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