At the end of each week, we have our students individually answer a few questions about their time at High Trails.  Students share what they learned and evaluate us, their instructors, on our performance.

The question that I am perhaps most interested in, the last question on the form, asks what they will remember in six months.

Instructors are often mentioned, but the most common answer by far is “I will remember that I had fun!”  Here’s the kicker:  I have never seen “I will remember the nitrogen cycle!”,  and I don’t expect to anytime soon.

I asked a number of current staff members whether they attended a program similar to ours at a young age and, if yes, whether they remember anything from that program.  It’s been quite awhile since we were in middle school, but the answers I received are pertinent nonetheless.  One instructor recalled looking through a microscope.  Another told me about snakes.  Certain details obviously stuck, but the nitrogen cycle?  Specific types of water pollution?  No way, not even among environmental educators.

It is an unfortunate aspect of teaching everywhere, not just in an outdoor setting, that much of the information we energetically present, review, and debrief is lost.

Still, we are here with our smiles every Monday morning, ready to fix toilets and prepare lesson plans.  Some instructors say they do it to be outside all the time, to have meals cooked for them, or because kids say really funny things sometimes.

Yes, these are perks of the job, and they don’t end there.  It’s satisfying in a larger sense to know that we are working to help the next generation learn how to care for the earth.  But if our students won’t remember most of it anyway, does it really matter to them whether we show up?  Does it matter that High Trails exists?  I say yes, absolutely.

We do our best to have students understand and remember certain specific facts and concepts, but even if they leave here unable to regurgitate a single one, their time would not have been wasted. There are a few lessons we convey to students that can’t be found in any of our classes.  They cover a broad scope, so I call them Big Picture Lessons.

Some of these Big Picture Lessons deal with education, some with personal improvement.  If we do our jobs well, kids should have at least an unconscious understanding of these lessons when they leave here.  The fun that our students will remember in six months falls under the first of these Big Picture Lessons: Nature Is Not The Enemy.  In the coming weeks, this idea, as well as big-picture lessons two and three, will be further developed and analyzed.

3 Part Series!

This is just one part of a three part series. Read them all. Because Danny rites vary well.

Introduction
Part 1 is cool.
Check out Part 2.
Here’s Part 3.

At High Trails Outdoor Science School, we literally force our instructors to write about elementary outdoor education, teaching outside, learning outside, our dirty classroom (the forest…gosh), environmental science, outdoor science, and all other tree hugging student and kid loving things that keep us engaged, passionate, driven, loving our job, digging our life, and spreading the word to anyone whose attention we can hold for long enough to actually make it through reading this entire sentence. Whew…. www.dirtyclassroom.com