Wachstumshormone

May

31

The Art of Mentoring: Rekindling Appreciation of Nature

Filed Under Outdoor education, Questioning strategies, wilderness | Leave a Comment

mentoringwithnotebookFor the questioning mind, learning never concludes because it is an endless journey with an infinite number of destinations…

by Chris Helander
Head Instructor
Coyote’s Path Wilderness School
(reprinted from The Best of CLEARING)

There are many people who say our current model for learning is ineffectual. Parents and educators are asking “how do you reach young people who seem apathetic and unmotivated to learn?” In old cultures before schools, books, and grades, people learned by being mentored. Using stories, ceremony, games, and survival skills everyone and everything was a teacher. In the modern model of education, learning is force fed, sitting in chairs, listening to an adult spouting out information to be memorized. Modern children learning this way are trained to get their knowledge by memorization of someone else’s knowledge. They do not learn how to develop the questioning mind or follow their hearts to learn from their own experiences.

Read the rest of this article…

May

19

Paying Attention: Being a Naturalist and Searching for Patterns

Filed Under Activities, Environmental Literacy, Outdoor education, Perspectives, Science | 2 Comments

BestofClearingV-layout.inddBy Saul Weisberg
Executive Director
North Cascades Institute
(reprinted from The Best of CLEARING)

I love knowing the names of things. It makes them familiar, like old friends. I also love to look at patterns in nature. Veins on the back of a vine maple leaf. The yellow and black scales on the wing of a two-tailed tiger swallowtail. The striations in a piece of greenschist. The patterns of nature show us the details of life where the wonder lies.

The landscape is made up of details, too. The ways things fit together — the interactions of living and non-living things — tell a story. In order to make sense of larger patterns, in order to recognize them in the first place, you have to know the details. You have to be able to look at the pieces and pick them apart, understand what this thing is, why this lives here and not there, why things work the way they do, and what has changed over time.

The distrust and ignorance of science that is prevalent in society has made inroads in environmental education as well. It is not unusual to see eager and competent educators with master’s degrees in EE who have no knowledge of natural science, and who are unable to identify common birds and plants. These educators tend to focus on two things: the experience of teaching in the outdoors and the big picture — important processes and concepts. But somewhere between the experience and the process we lose touch with the thing itself — the organism and its world. Read more

May

12

Outdoor Education is Boring

Filed Under Outdoor education, Perspectives | Leave a Comment

ranger-kidsby Tony Deis
TrackersPDX

Remember when Outdoor Education was chopping wood, ghost stories, building log cabins, lighting fires and fishing? Nowadays it’s playing nature games, parroting sanitized and co-opted indigenous lore, taking water quality samples and sitting in a sit spot like you’re eating your vegetables.

We’ve devolved from great acts that require great competency to monkeying what kids do when they play without us. Heck, the same goes for a lot of “Outdoor Recreation” programs that work with adults. The educator follows their school’s philosophy like a zombie.

In my 20 years as an outdoor educator I’ve heard plenty of folks say, “It’s our job to get to kids to play again.” While that’s partially true, its also important to remember, we are the guides on [a] true hero’s journey. We are the adults that show kids what’s possible. Equally missing to spontaneous play is your mother and father taking you fishing. Or the old school scout master showing you how to throw a hatchet.

“Child centered education” can often excuse ourselves from training in real outdoor skills and lore. If you yourself dare a compelling and extraordinary life, that will show through in what you share with kids. Adventure will be second nature. No curriculum, visible or invisible, required.

Remember, all models are wrong and some are useful. All methodologies of outdoor education (including and especially Trackers) are also thoroughly incorrect yet serve a purpose. It’s up to you to make those methods real by being real yourself.

A great outdoor educator is not solely someone who has trained to be so. A great outdoor educator is she or he who has chosen to live an epic life out of doors.

http://trackerspdx.com/blog/posts/2011/05/12/outdoor_ed_is_boring

May

9

Logic Models – A Tool for Evaluation

Filed Under Resources | Leave a Comment

From Sunnyside Environmental Schoolby Chuck Lennox
Principal (Consultant)
Cascade Interpretive Consulting LLC

Program evaluation is a valuable process to determine the efficacy of programming being offered to the public by an organization or agency. Sometimes the process can feel intimidating. How do I know we made a difference? How do I get started? Logic models help us develop an evaluation process in an organization or agency. They are also a useful tool to organize information in a succinct but comprehensive manner for grant applications and funding proposals. Using logic model formats encourage us to ask difficult questions that focus our goals and prioritize our efforts.

Introduction
Program evaluation can be challenging for front-line staff and their managers. Can someone who develops and presents a program effectively evaluate it themselves? What is the impact of a program on the public and target audience? How does a manager know if a program contributes to an agency’s or organization’s goals in a cost effective manner? First and foremost in many professionals’ minds, how do I get started in this process? Read more