Who is Wild River?
Meet Kat Owens
They/She
Director and Coach Certified - CO Dept Early Childhood - 2022
ECHO Coach Certified - Early Childhood Health Outdoors -2022
Wilderness First Aid - Backcountry Pulse - 2023
Teaching License, CO Birth - Eight - CDEC - 2017-23
BEES Educator - CU Denver - 2019
MA Early Childhood Education - Arizona State University 2017
BFA Fine Arts - School of Visual Arts NYC, NY 2010
I am a synthesizer, who values understanding how things work. I have taught and facilitated early childhood environments both inside and outside the classroom for 10 years. I am a white, queer, non-binary, chronically ill, radical thinker.
In co-founding Nature School Cooperative (a hyper-local worker-owned cooperative preschool in SE Denver CO) I have developed strategic plans & expanded program capacity at every level of the work. Teaching out on the land, and learning new skills - from accounting to cooperative development, growing small purpose-aligned orgs in the community has shaped my work.
In co-founding the Colorado Collective for Nature-Based Early Education, I have helped to shape a statewide community of outdoor educators who are excited to learn and develop the work of early childhood outdoors through myriad lenses.
I grew up on the salty coast of New England, on the stolen land of the Wabanaki, Pennacook, Pawtucket, & Abenaki people. After spending a decade in New York City, I moved out west. Landing in Denver in 2017, I have worked in a variety of preschool settings to hone my skills in nature-based, child-led learning. My passion is in developing relationships with local communities, incredible families & wildly talented colleagues.
My passion lives in cultivating perceptual reciprocity through meaningful relationships with the human and non-human world. I am an expert guide in playing with and around wild nature-scapes. A careful observer of all beings, I find out what makes people light up, especially through bird language and embodied water knowledge like the Selkie. My apprenticeship was served with the Black Capped Chickadee and salt water currents on the East and West Coasts of Turtle Island.
Coaching Lenses
I offer coaching services aimed at shifting your understanding and empowering you to make meaningful changes in your life, your teaching practice, and your organization.
This approach is rooted in supporting you through a 9-week cycle of transformation, where you can explore new perspectives and unlock your full potential. My focus on early childhood education coaching and facilitation sets this work apart, ensuring that the foundation of every individual's growth is strong and nurturing.
Nature-Based Lens
My entire background is in the lens of environmental education of young children. The innumerable benefits for developing brains center nature as the central component to healing our relationships.
With a focus on being in reciprocal relationship with nature, and in right relationship to the land and each other, we can begin to do truly libratory work.
Relationship-Based Coaching
RBPD Coaching is anchored in centering connection.
Coaching is designed to identify your goals and support you in a cyclical process of continual growth. This work is relational, and we honor that no growth is done in a vaccuum.
MA in Early Childhood Education
With years of teaching experience, comes a bevvy of knowledge. With a Masters in Early Childhood Education comes the research, neuroscience, and best practices in Education from emerging scientific research and professional learning communities.
With a BFA in Fine arts and a MA thesis in the benefits of the outdoors in young children's development, the overlap is creative approaches to enriching, holistic, & immersive experiences
Orienting coaching practices around our collective liberation
Our coaching is centered in creating a radical and justice-oriented space to reflect on your practice and grow as an educator, caregiver, or community leader.
We are committed to providing a brave community and inclusive space for you to explore and challenge yourself in areas of discomfort & growth.
By cultivating liberated relationships - relationships built on equality, respect, and freedom - we can create a society where everyone has access to the necessary care, attention, and connection to feel a sense of belonging, dignity, and safety within their community, essentially achieving abundant justice for all
Positionality & Orientation
Queer Community
As a queer & polyamorous person, I aim to support folks in radically reimagining our work in relationships, where the personal is political.
Inclusive Approach
As a chronically ill person, I center a holistic approach to capacity building, with a lens on ableist expectations. Your spoons matter.
Trans Visioning
Both in my own non-binary identity, and in my continued work to create radically inclusive spaces, trans identities are imperative to visioning the future I want to be a part of.
Decolonizing
Approach
As a white person who benefits from the white supremacist culture we are operating in, conditioned by, and working to change - it is essential to acknowledge the harmful ways this impacts each of us.
Intersectional Feminist
Being socialized as a woman in the dominant patriarchal society, I am committed to honoring every individuals bodily autonomy.
Abolitionist Thinking
In flattening hierarchies, choosing to work through a transformative justice approach, and to focus on harm reduction: I aim to center liberation and justice in my work in all areas of life. I do not believe in the death penalty nor do I believe that the carceral state should exist.
Advocate for Justice
To be clear: I actively support revolutionary visionaries of collectivist futures. I advocate for Black Lives Matter, a Free Palestine, a Free Sudan, and support movements for independence and liberation globally. I also fiercely believe in Public services like libraries, and believe in mutual aid as a community-based revolutionary act of love.
Honoring the Sacred
As we collaborate, and each find our path in this work, I hope to honor each of our innate ways of knowing, finding alignment, and recognizing the divine in each of us. By connecting to each other, connecting to the land and water where we are, and in remembering to always give back more than we take - I aim to be in right relationship throughout my time here.
"To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination."
Bell Hooks – Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, 2003