If you’d like to focus on a particular skill, there are usually numerous opportunities to study, apprentice, or volunteer with experts to become more versed in that skill.
Natural building/Green building
There are a number of networks that offer education, mentoring, and other assistance in the arena of building. These include natural building schools or builders that offer opportunities to work on actual builds and learn while you build. Most natural building schools offer classes that involve the students actually building a structure. Others have volunteers working on various aspects of the build. The teacher/builder generally spends less time instructing volunteers and gives them simpler tasks. Some builds have a combination of the above. Below is a sample of what is available in this community.
Workshops and events
http://naturalhomes.org/natural-building-workshops.htm
More study
http://networkearth.org/naturalbuilding/colloquium.html
MOOC courses (Massive Open Online Course)
We have really enjoyed being able to tap into the vast number of mass online courses that many universities around the world are participating in. We’ve continued our education with courses on hydrology, climate change, environmental science, soil, urban planning and much more.
These courses can be monitored for free - if you want a certificate you often have to pay, but they are usually pretty reasonably priced. One can list these on your resume and many people are now doing so. We’ve listed the most well known websites that offer these courses, below.
https://edx.edu
https://coursera.org
Master naturalist programs
These courses have different titles in different states. In Florida, Extension Service offers a series of courses that dive in depth into the three primary ecosystems that exist here, uplands, oak hammocks and wetlands. These are fabulous, rich ways to learn about your local ecosystem from experts.
The course unfolds over 7 days, once per week. The mornings cover theory, and the afternoons are field trips - observing different facets of each ecosystem. These courses were extremely helpful for me as a designer, coming into new ecosystems I hadn’t worked with before, and helped me to understand how to work with nature on more detailed levels.
There are numerous other courses and educational opportunities available - more than at any other time in history. There has never been a time when we’ve had more data available to us. We advise naming a goal, something you’d like to learn, and then finding a resource that can help you learn that, and focus on competencies and skills gained. Do a check in periodically - what skills have I mastered? What do I feel I need more work on or knowledge about?