Like most of you, I often times wonder about the impact we make on students and what they actually learn and take away from their experience here at High Trails.

We are in the unfortunate position that we do not get to see the long term effects of the hard work and efforts we put in every week. However, this week I was lucky enough to be able to spend some time with two teachers from the Cypress School District who have truly seen the growth of our program and the long term effects we can have on children.

John has been coming to High Trails for ten years now while Kurt has seen our program for seven. I wanted to get their opinions on the long term effect we have on children in what I believe are the three most important aspects of our program. I talked to Kurt and John about the improvement they see in their students after High Trails in team building, their involvement in the push for environmental awareness and if they enjoy and appreciate the outdoors and being active more than they did before.

Team Building

John said after his students’ week at High Trails he can always see a rather dramatic improvement in them from the team building activities that we do in our program. Students being more empathetic and understanding of each other were the two improvements he focused on the most. Kurt also alluded to his students being much more relaxed and understanding. This is especially worth noting due to the family backgrounds of Kurt and John’s students. Their students do come from typically rough and unstable families and lifestyles; both Kurt and John mentioned that our program helps allow their students to let their guards down and act more like the kids they are.

Conservation

Every week the hundreds of students that pass through High Trails say they are going to continue to conserve water and energy and help to clean up and better the areas they live and come from. While we all certainly hope this happens, we again never get to see the end result of our efforts to get the generation we work with more involved.

Both John and Kurt see a peaked interest in their students surrounding the environment after their experience here. They see their sixth grade classes year after year being more conscious of turning off lights at school and trying to conserve water when possible. However, the biggest improvement is their students ability to relate material they are discussing in their earth science class to the impact it could have on our environment and some of the concepts discussed by us.

Get Outside

The last topic I discussed with Kurt and John is where I feel we can make the biggest impact on our students. I wanted to know if John and Kurt see a genuine increase in appreciation for nature and an increase in activity level. John has seen this experience open up hundreds of his students’ eyes to nature and be more active, realizing there are other forms of entertainment and fun than video games and television.

He also believes one of the strongest impacts of our program is that we help students to realize their full potential, that they can do far more than they would ever have known without experiencing our program. For John and Kurt’s students this is the first outdoor experience of their lives and this can have a lifelong lasting impact on them.

So as our season rolls on, never forget about the long term impact we make on our students. You may not realize it, but students from this year will remember you and some of the things you teach them for years to come. Every week we are given the opportunity to make these impacts and changes; every group of students deserves these experiences.

Kurt put it well when he said “you guys can make more of an impact in five days on our students than we can in an entire school year”.

 

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