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Volume VIII, Issue No.6
In
this Issue: Linking Classroom and Community
by Sandra Ciolino Why Adventure? My husband jokes that in the summer of 1995, he put me on a plane headed for a Hurricane Island Outward Bound wilderness course in Maine. He claims a different woman came home a week later. That wilderness experience challenged me to reach deep within myself and go beyond my perceived limits. I had never in my life felt so empowered. I left Hurricane Island asking myself how I could help my students capture that feeling. Including adventure in my school's physical education program has helped me accomplish this. Adventure is central to the implementation of Expeditionary Learning but can be misunderstood when it is linked only with outdoor education, high ropes courses, and strenuous physical activity. Adventure is a philosophy-a set of values rather than a set of activities-that honors the learning potential inherent in risk, challenge, and the unknown. Its implementation is as appropriate in an academic setting as it is in a physical activity setting if the common goal is to increase students' ability to challenge themselves and work as part of a group. In Cincinnati Public Schools, the bottom line is student achievement. Standards-driven learning expeditions, however, are not enough to significantly raise achievement. Research shows that one of the most important factors in attaining academic excellence is a caring and safe school environment. Adventure education has helped Hyde Park create that school culture. It teaches communication, teamwork, cooperation, trust, decision-making, and problem-solving in an atmosphere of fun and challenge. Adventure at Hyde Park School Adventure differs from traditional physical education programs in that the teacher assumes a more facilitative role. Students learn primarily from one another, and the flow of activities is often spontaneous and unpredictable. Team-building initiatives-challenges that have an unknown outcome-help me introduce these elements of adventure into my class. I try to balance these activities with individual skill development such as juggling, jumping rope, pole climbing, and balancing activities. I have noticed that when students challenge themselves to master individual skills, their confidence grows and transfers to group activities. The physical facilities at Hyde Park School will not accommodate the installation of high ropes elements or even a climbing wall. Consequently, teams of teachers have written grants to fund adventure experiences for older students at outdoor education facilities in surrounding areas. Twenty-five of our seventh and eighth graders recently completed three overnight camping experiences and participated in a series of team-building initiatives and high ropes course challenges. I try to always plan a progression of activities back at school that will help students build on what they learn in the field. The Teacher's Role My toughest personal challenge has been to relinquish my teacher-directed role and trust the adventure process. I want my students to experience the positive outcomes that occur when I permit group dynamics to unfold naturally and allow them to struggle through their own learning. I try to move from a central, visible role to that of a supportive observer. As students gradually assume more responsibility for negotiating rules and resolving inclusion and safety issues, I see how it empowers them. If they can internalize this process in an activity setting, they are more apt to apply it in academic settings as well. The way I model routines, procedures, and the adventure process sends students strong messages about how I perceive their capacity to assume responsibility. If I assume an "enforcer"role, constantly reminding and reprimanding, then I teach students to rely on my influence instead of themselves and each other. I do more waiting for students than I would like to admit, but I view wait time as an opportunity for leadership to emerge from the group. Last year, time off task in several classes was such a problem that I began to use a stopwatch to monitor time on task during class. Each class graphed and analyzed their data. Watching the bars of the graph grow was enough motivation for all but one class to improve their use of instructional time significantly. Debriefing Adventure Debriefing, or guided reflection, is an essential part of the adventure process. Debriefings are purposeful discussions that focus on the transfer of learning to real-world situations. I often stop an activity and ask students to reflect and discuss their interactions before we resume play. I ask them several open-ended questions. Did you feel included and safe? Were design principles evident in our interactions? How can we apply what we learned in this activity in other classrooms, at home, and in our neighborhoods? I try to help the group learn its own lessons from the experience rather than teach them my lessons. This can be a real challenge when students do not see and understand what is so clear to me. In the course of our debriefing, students often confront one another about behavior that sabotaged their goals. Students tell one another that they want their ideas to be heard, they want a voice in the decision-making, and they do not want their physical size or skill levels to disqualify them from an activity. A 45-minute class period is not enough time to resolve every issue, so we agree to deal with the most important ones another time. Adventure and the Design Principles Team Workouts (Team Building Through Physical Challenges, Glover and Midura, 1992) have been extremely effective in making students aware of how the design principles can be a part of physical education. In Team Workouts, each team of six to eight students receives a list of exercises. The team selects an organizer who is responsible for facilitating team decisions. I include a list of praise phrases on the back of the workout sheet, and each student directs several praise phrases to each teammate during the workout. Sharing a high five, a smile, and a praise phrase or appreciation with each student in the class strengthens community. Each team's workout culminates in a final huddle and a symbolic cheer or celebration of the team's accomplishments. Initially the Team Workout strategy required so much repetition, direction, and coaching from me that I was tempted to abandon it. But I saw potential in the process, and its success has been worth the effort. It is very satisfying to see groups of students use huddles, celebrations, and encouraging words with one another in all sorts of situations without prompting from me. Now students can cite persuasive examples of design principles evident during the Team Workouts.
Competition and Inclusivity Team Workouts help us participate in challenges and competitive games in a way that it is inclusive and compassionate. Striker (Quicksilver, Rohnke and Butler, 1995) is a fun, fast, passing and catching game that incorporates basic offensive and defensive strategies. Although some games require fine motor skills or quick thinking, height and agility are definite assets in striker. If students played this game in a traditional style, the shorter, less-coordinated students would quickly become frustrated and drop out of the game. And at first, they do. But keeping the focus on compassionate competition and interspersing play with short debriefing sessions helps students progress toward group goals. Before we start the game, students devise a list of criteria for compassionate play. This might include respecting personal space, not taking the ball out of another's hands, offering assistance to a classmate who falls down, and ensuring that everyone gets many opportunities to pass the ball. We then start the game on an inclusive note by having the shortest player from each team do a jump ball in the middle of the play area. As more and more students experience the feeling of being included in such a fast-paced game, the level of play spirals upward and enthusiasm builds. Victoria, one of the shortest and least aggressive students in her class, used to slowly make her way to the corner whenever we played games like Striker. With encouragement during the debriefing, she has let her classmates know the reasons why she does not feel included. Now students seem to take great satisfaction in making sure her physical and emotional needs are met during more competitive activities. I have learned from my own experience on the Hurricane Island wilderness course and from observing my students, that if students can honor behavior and safety norms while participating in physical challenges, they will be more likely to nurture the emotional safety necessary for intellectual risk-taking in the academic classroom. This strengthens character and translates into greater achievement for all students-in the gym and in the classroom. Sandra Ciolino is
a physical education teacher at Hyde Park School in Cincinnati,
Ohio.
By Kay Tebbens
Last Fall, when the sixth-grade team at Milford Middle School in Milford, Delaware went canoeing as part of a science expedition called Floating and Sinking, we learned how to paddle, steer, and balance a canoe. These lessons helped us on the lake, but what really made a difference were the lessons we took back to our classroom. On our two adventures, we learned about facing our fears and collaborating to reach a goal. We learned to work as a team to solve problems, and though we experienced failure, we also had a great deal of success. We became a family during those trips, and the warm feelings of accomplishment stayed with us throughout the school year. We saw many of our students undergo transformations on the lake. Jeff is just one example. This was Jeff's third year as a sixth grader. Previously he had only met with failure, and this year might have been a repeat except for his many contributions to the canoeing expeditions. He had a great deal of experience with life on the water, and this allowed him to come to the forefront as a positive member of the group. During the first trip, he unloaded and reloaded the canoes on the tall trailer without being asked. He helped carry the canoes across the road to the pond, and he helped students get launched. Jeff became a leader. His self-confidence got a boost when Mr. Workman, the nature center's instructor, requested that he and Jeff canoe together the entire afternoon on the second expedition because they would be able to react quickly to reach boats in trouble. We saw the impact of this positive experience for Jeff throughout the school year. Earning Mr. Workman's respect taught Jeff and other students that being helpful often leads to greater opportunities. On the trip, Jeff saw us teachers as outdoor lovers, and this gave him a topic of conversation to share with us everyday for the rest of the year. He eagerly brought in discoveries from the natural world to show us. Soon, he became comfortable sharing these in front of the whole class, and sometimes even in front of all three science classes. His new enthusiasm shined through even to the next expedition on Form and Function. At first, I was a little worried that Jeff and his two partners might not focus on their final project of building model habitats. After one day of silliness, Jeff and his group came up with a marsh scene complete with the duck blinds, decoys, and osprey nests they had seen on fieldwork experiences. They worked very hard every day to improve their project, and were very proud of the results. Their oral presentations went well because they knew their subjects so thoroughly. Jeff found a new identity this year, and it was a positive one. Next year, he will be skipped to eighth grade, and have a chance to be moved to ninth grade with his peers. I learned valuable things about my students taking them into the great outdoors. I saw new sides of their personalities, new interests and enthusiasms, and new ways to support their learning. The best part is, I saw students make discoveries about themselves that transformed how they were back in the classroom. Do something exciting early in the school year, and see if the dividends do not pay off for you too. Kay Tebbens is a sixth-grade science and math teacher at Milford Middle School in Milford, Delaware. The following article is excerpted from a chapter in Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound's latest book, Literacy All Day Long (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 2000). Early in the Literacy and Environmental Studies Program, instructors worried whether Bryan would succeed in the program. We spent the first week of the course at our base camp, where we focused on adjusting to the new environment and our structured academic routine. We introduced writing in morning journals on the second day of the course, and Bryan had participated minimally. During introductory lessons on the local ecology, he was both distracted and distracting. While he enjoyed our day of rock climbing, the instructors were concerned about his level of commitment to the course and whether he would play a positive role in the group. For the past three years, the New York City Outward Bound Center has run a six-week summer program designed to help students improve their literacy and environmental science skills. Deep in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, students backpack, rock climb, canoe, complete a two-day solo, perform service, and run a final mini-marathon. Between wilderness experiences, students return to a base camp to focus on an academic learning expedition. According to pre- and post-testing, our students have improved on average by two grade levels in reading, writing and verbal comprehension during the six-week program.1 Our program is based in part on Language Experience Approach, which holds that students learn language best when real experiences form the topics for reading and writing assignments and as a source for new vocabulary.2 The extraordinary and vivid experiences of climbing rock faces and backpacking through the mountains become the raw material for students' literacy development. Intense collaboration in the field and community rituals gives students the skills they need for peer critique. In essence, we have been able to develop literacy while simultaneously helping students grow as individuals. This should be good news to educators who may feel torn between responding to student behavior and responding to important educational needs. We recruit our students from Erasmus Hall Campus: High School for the Humanities and Performing Arts (Humanities). As in many high schools in New York City, nearly 80 percent of the entering freshman at Humanities are functioning below grade level in reading.3 Students from Humanities apply to become part of the program, and all participants receive full scholarships. Though students elect to come, we are not always sure how committed they will be. Bryan was a good example. Despite our fears, Bryan agreed to join the group for their first hiking expedition. He surprised us. Strong and athletic, he used these two skills to carry extra weight for the crew and to provide encouragement when others lagged behind. Over the course of this five-day expedition, he established himself as a leader, and he started to speak more positively about the course. Upon returning to base camp, the instructors began a section on poetry. Bryan chose to write about his rock climbing experience earlier in the course. For the first time, he showed interest in an assignment. His approach to the challenge of writing poetry reminded us of his approach to carrying a heavy backpack or scaling a rock face. The confidence he earned through his efforts on the expedition seemed to carry over to this new challenge of expressing himself using the written word. His reluctance to participate earlier may well be explained by his struggles with literacy. However, the passion he felt shines through in his work below:
Like all of our students, Bryan's performance varied, but overall he continued to grow as a writer and develop as a leader within his crew. His ability to do this had not been clear to us before he had an intense and positive experience on his first expedition. For most of our students, the extraordinary activities of an Outward Bound course provide two essential elements needed for writing: confidence and raw material. In the case of Bryan, the hiking expedition helped him believe in himself as an individual and later as a writer. For other students the discipline needed to work with a group, hike with a heavy backpack, or climb a peak gives them the framework to work through another difficult process--expressing a range of emotions and thoughts in writing. For all of our students, the Outward Bound activities insure that they have a wealth of content to include in their writings. Many of the activities students do on this course, such as hiking, canoeing and rock climbing, can not be done by all teachers, but vivid experiences happen and can be created in all classrooms. Conflict is always present, and challenges inside and outside of the classroom can provide ample material for writing. Our experience leads us to believe that for students to be motivated to write, the material they are addressing needs to be as personally meaningful as possible. We've found that the following activities help students process their Outward Bound experiences and improve their writing. These assignments could provide follow-up to any form of powerful learning experience.
Lara S. Beaulieu has been course director for the New York City Outward Bound Center's Summer Literacy and Environmental Studies Program for the past three years. Matt Brown instructed and acted as course director for North Carolina Outward Bound'' Summer Scholars Program. He is currently a doctoral student in Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. 1. Results obtained through the Weschler Individual Achievement Tests. These test were analyzed by Dr. James Pann for his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Miami, The Effects of an Adventure Education Intervention on Self-Concept and Verbal Academic Achievement in Inner City Adolescents, August 1999. 2. James, Thomas, 1988. "Old Allies in the Field: Outward Bound and Public Education,"The Effective School Report, p.4-5, as cited in Clark, Susan, 1996. Master's Thesis School for International Training, p.15-16. 3. New York City Board of Education, 1997-98. Annual School Report, Erasmus Hall Campus: High School for Humanities and the Performing Arts.
By Joshua Miner
The following is an
excerpt from the book
Outward Bound USA, (New York: William Morrow, 1981) written by
Joshua Miner and Joe Boldt. Miner taught at Gordonstoun, the school
launched in Scotland by Outward Bound founder Kurt Hahn. Inspired
by his work with Hahn, Miner returned home and helped to start Outward
Bound in the United States.
When I first started teaching at Gordonstoun in 1951, one of my early responsibilities was The Break. The Break was Hahn's unique contribution to physical education. Four mornings a week, during a fifty-minute break in what Hahn called "the sedentary hours,"each boy took part in two of a half-dozen events--sprinting or distance running, long or high jumping, discus or javelin throwing. He competed only against himself, trying to better his previous best performance. The frail youngster who broke ten feet in the long jump for the first time in his life got as big a cheer as the track team star beating his previous mark at close to twenty. Every boy had to do every event. That same star jumper might be a dud at throwing the discus. It was as important to overcome a weakness as to develop a strength. When I was put in charge of The Break, I became a fascinated witness to its remarkable results. The great satisfaction lay in seeing the physical duffer discover that through trying from day to day he could do much better than he would have dared to dream. His newfound confidence would carry over into his peer relationships, his classroom performance, and the quality of work on his project. When I returned to the United States and started teaching at Andover, I suggested we try incorporating The Break. John Kemper, the headmaster, and Reagh Wetmore, his new physical education teacher, supported the idea, but the faculty did not want to surrender any morning time. The only concession the faculty made was to let me work with those students who were so low on the physical motor scale as to be clearly in need of special attention What a great bunch of students they were! Heavy students, frail students, and students who had never done anything physical. Most of them eventually gave it a good try, and these surprised themselves by what they could do. This confirmed my Gordonstoun experience. But I knew the results obtained with a handful of boys who were physically subpar were not going to sell the program to the faculty. At this point Jack Hawes, an English teacher, came to my rescue. Jack was impressed by the improved physical prowess and heightened self-concept of my students. Jack said, "Why don't you take my dormitory next year? Put them through the program, measure their progress, keep track of their classroom records, and compare them with the boys in Rockwell."Rockwell was the other ninth-grade dormitory. This looked like a way to gain credibility for The Break. We managed to persuade the faculty to approve the experiment of excusing the fifty boys in Williams dormitory from a one-hour study period two mornings a week, but it was a reluctant approval. We settled on six events: the broad jump, high jump, shot put, discus, seventy-five-yard dash, and the half-mile run. We set "Standard"and "Silver"levels of achievement for each event according to age. As always in The Break, the competition was only with oneself. Once again the combination of release from "the sedentary hours"and self-challenge worked its magic. In the classroom, it was easy to spot the ones who had just come in from The Break. They were more alive and alert. You knew that the student sitting back there bright-eyed and bushy-tailed had made a quantifiable gain that day--one he could measure and send home. One student, Frank, was a short, chubby thirteen-year-old who at the start had complete disdain for the program. Fearful of revealing how subpar he actually was, he refused to extend himself and made a comical act of his poor performance. He seemed to enjoy the jeers he induced. Then, in spite of himself, he began to improve. Gradually his attitude changed. One day he ran the dash two seconds better than his previous best time, faster than a lot of the others were doing. He forgot his act. The day he first put the shot twenty feet--nine feet better than his starting effort--the onlookers gave an acclaiming shout. You could see the new self-respect in his face. He went on to earn Silvers in both these events and a Standard in the discus. His late start cost him his Standards in the other three, but he had won a great discovery--that through trying, he could do what he thought he could not do. I made a report at a faculty meeting in April 1954. I gave the impressive statistics of the overall improvement in physical competence. Near the end I quietly dropped a bombshell--the comparative academic records for Williams Hall, the ninth-graders who had been in The Break program, and Rockwell Hall, those who had not. The data told a persuasive story. The average IQs of the two groups were virtually identical. In both terms, The Break group had a higher average grade and higher average rank. They won honors in many more courses than the control group, failed in far fewer, and showed greater improvement from one term to the next. I said only, "It is apparent
that the program was not detrimental to the academic interests of
the boys involved,"and sat down. There was a long, silent moment.
Then Harper Follansbee, Rockwell's housemaster, stood up and said,
"Next year I want my boys to have that program."That did it.
A Wise Alligator and An Adventurous Dog By Greg Farrell
We all have a need for adventure. It makes us more alive. It induces learning of the sharpest and most memorable kind. When I used to read bedtime stories to my boys, I discovered the best writers of children's books were writing primers for life and knew all about the importance of adventure. One of my favorites was William Steig, whose adventures seemed like Outward Bound stories to me. Steig's Dominic features a dog-hero who, feeling restless, sets off on an expedition. On the second day of his journey, he comes to a fork in the road and finds a witch-alligator who offers to tell Dominic his fortune. Dominic says he would prefer to be taken by surprise. "I hope you don't mind if I tell you this much,"she said. "That road there on the right goes nowhere. There's not a bit of magic up that road, no adventure, no surprise, nothing to discover or wonder at. Even the scenery is humdrum. You'd soon grow much too introspective. You'd take to daydreaming and tail-twiddling, get absent-minded and lazy, forget where you are and what you're about, sleep more than one should, and be wretchedly bored. Furthermore, after a while, you'd reach a dead end and you'd have to come all that dreary way back to right here where we're standing now, only it wouldn't be now, it would be some woefully wasted time later. "Now this road, the one on the left," she said, her heavy eyes glowing, "this road keeps right on going, as far as anyone cares to go, and if you take it, believe me, you'll never find yourself wondering what you might have missed by not taking the other. Up this road, which looks the same at the beginning, but is really ever so different, things will happen that you never could have guessed--marvelous, unbelievable things. Up this way is where adventure is. I'm pretty sure I know which way you'll go."And she smiled, exposing all eighty teeth. Dominic thanks the witch-alligator for her advice and high-tails it up the road to adventure. If you read the book, you will see that adventure activates the very best in Dominic: courage; generosity; and prowess in all things. Not only that, but it also leads him finally to the right dog for him - Evelyn who lives in an enchanted garden. What happens then? "Let's leave right away,"she said. "I've been here so long, I want to be out in the world again." Dominic realized he was at the beginning of a great new adventure. "Let's go,"he said. Greg Farrell is the
president of Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound.
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