This soil ecology teaching workshop will bring together soil ecologists and teachers from various educational levels with the objectives of discussing the integration of research and experiential activities into our soil ecology courses and curricula and building future teaching collaborations. We will use conceptual outcomes from the 2007 Soil Ecology Society workshop that took place in Moab, UT, to guide discussion, and we expect that participants in this ESA workshop will benefit from a more focused discussion about creative, hands-on approaches to teaching soil ecology. In the workshop, we will briefly introduce the philosophy of and general approaches to learner-centered teaching and some previously developed soil ecology teaching activities. Workshop participants will be asked to share their ideas and develop additional examples of experiential, learner-centered soil ecology activities in small groups. After these group discussions, all workshop participants will engage in dialogue about the challenges to and opportunities for integrating experiential activities and research projects into our classrooms and curricula. To enhance the discussion and demonstration sessions, we will contact some workshop registrants prior to the session to invite them to bring their own specific ideas and practices to the workshop. We invite scientists and educators from various educational levels (K-12 through undergraduate and graduate schools) to participate in the workshop, which will provide opportunities to interact with soil ecology instructors at their own and different educational levels.