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"McCracken Middle School Program" by Gus Pausz It has been 10 years since we first offered adventure programming at McCracken Middle School in Skokie, Illinois. It is my last year of teaching, at least in this particular setting, and I was going through one of the many piles of paper I keep (serious piles) and came across an independent study paper I wrote for my Master's program in Outdoor Education previous to the beginning of our program at McCracken. It is a sequential telling of the steps that were taken to get the program started. I thought the information might be helpful to those of you that would like to begin an adventure program at your school. As you will see, some of what happened may have seemed fortuitous, and some of what happened was thought out with definite goals in mind. I believe the one has to do with the other. Then: 1990 I wanted to investigate the possibility of developing an adventure based curriculum for our 7th and 8th grade students. There were three areas of concern I was planning to address. The first concern was the purpose of the program, and its value to the student and the school. My second concern was how to go about implementing an adventure based program if I got the go ahead from the administration. My last concern was to determine what the final program would consist of, determined by my investigations. In order to determine a purpose for an adventure program I felt it was important to personally experience these programs, and talk to people with experience and interest in the field. To present the concept to the administration I felt I should have as much experience as possible and through this experience I believed I could better determine its value to students and the school. At the time I was taking some courses in outdoor education with Bill Quinn at the Taft Outdoor Campus, Northern Illinois University and was introduced to team building, trust activities, as well as expeditionary learning as part of his classes. With this kindled interest I signed up to take Bill's class called "Designing Adventure Courses". I learned to design and guild outdoor low ropes course events and how to use them. My life would change forever at this time. Keep in mind I have been teaching art for about 22 years at this time and just started our outdoor education program with our 5th graders. In this class I first became aware of the work of Project Adventure and its then director Karl Rohnke. The Project then worked with six Massachusetts school systems on a sustaining basis, and now provides services to other school systems and agencies. Their services range from staff development, ropes course building, program evaluation, and curriculum development. Their book "Teaching Through Adventure, A Practical Approach" helped me determine some of my own approaches to adventure education. I then enrolled in a three day low ropes course training session at Iron Oaks Adventure Center in Olympia Fields, Illinois with Tim Rhodes. This course was designed for professionals who want to become certified instructors and/or want to familiarize themselves with adventure courses as preparation for utilizing these activities in their work. I then enrolled in their high ropes course training. It was in these training sessions that I realized how I could use adventure education in the curriculum. There were nine of us in the high ropes session with two instructors. Seven of the nine were counselors working with "at risk" students. My own philosophy was reinforced by the fact that these concerned people saw adventure based programming as a viable tool for reaching students that were not being reached in the more traditional methods of education. My experience led directly to my working with a group of eight "at risk" students that a concerned teacher worked with 30 minutes before school and during her first period planning. She asked if I could help with some activities in group building. I saw this as a chance to bring some of my adventure education experience into the school with the idea of hopefully expanding into the school curriculum. I spent about three weeks working with this very diverse group of students, first with group building activities, and then trust building activities. The teacher that worked with the students was very impressed with the activities and felt great insights were gained by the students. I also learned a great deal about the power of these types of experiential activities that allow students to learn about themselves through positive/controlled social-interaction. A week after the Iron Oaks course I attended the second annual T.E.A.M. Conference at Northeastern Illinois University. T.E.A.M. is the acronym for Teachers of Experiential and Adventure Methodology which is a service organization housed in the Physical Education Department. Bill Quinn, who now teaches at Northeastern, was instrumental in getting Karl Rohnke and the keynote speaker, Dr. Mark Havens to be part of the conference. Both presenters and Bill stayed in my home during the conference which gave me an opportunity to spend time talking (mostly listening) to some of the experts in the field of adventure education. It was at this conference I attended a workshop on "how to get an adventure program started" with Jeff Boeke. Several weeks before this conference my superintendent, Dr. Vickie Markavitch, suggested we could look into the possibility of designing an adventure course in our gym. She also agreed to allow seven of our teachers attend the conference. It was determined if we were going to move in this direction it would be important to expose other members of the faculty to the concept of adventure education. We also agreed to have Mark Havens of Accessible Adventures along with Bill Quinn look at our faculty and make a proposal for designing an indoor adventure course and along with me presenting the proposal to the School Board. This took place in the middle of June several months after the T.E.A.M. Conference. No action was taken immediately. Since our school was in the process of developing a middle school philosophy and working on school improvement it was an opportune time to introduce the concepts of adventure education. Tenets of middle school philosophy refer to the adolescent's preferences of active over passive learning, interaction with peers during learning activities, and desire for opportunities to participate in practical problem-solving situations. It is stated that the middle school should have a unique program adapted to the needs of pre- and early adolescent students, with the widest possible range of intellectual, social, and physical experiences. Adventure programming showed that through simple cooperative games, high element activities, and outdoor adventure activities and all their components it can play a very important role in educating the middle school adolescent. It is a very important tool to teach students cooperative learning through experience. It allows students to understand the connection between experiences in an adventure activity with concepts they deal with in the classroom and at home. Adventure programs not only answered middle school philosophy, but also many belief statements developed by our strategic planning committee made up of schoolboard members, administrators, teachers, and parents. Once you are able to show the direct impact of a program on what the district has determined to be important to the education of the students, it becomes an easier task to incorporate it as part of the curriculum. Whenever the opportunity arose for me to show how effective adventure programming could be I did. When we were developing our advisory classes for our eighth grade our counselor, Gayle Fitzgerald and I volunteered to pull out 16 of our most "at risk" students determined by teachers, administration, and counselors. We would work with these students using some adventure based activities to help bring about positive change. By doing this we felt it would give fellow teachers a more positive attitude toward this type of program. A favorable decision was made by the school board and the program was allowed to go ahead. The Principal thought we might integrate it into the physical education program because it seemed the most logical direction. Other schools had taken this direction and adventure programming at Northeastern Illinois University with Dan Creely and Bill Quinn was part of the physical education program. At this time I recommended that we do not integrate it into our P.E. program. At the time the P.E. teacher did not show much interest in the program or in being trained. Since I am the art and outdoor education teacher I recommended that the program become an extension of my outdoor education curriculum in 5th and 6th grades. After the administration worked on the scheduling for the next year they were able to schedule me with the 7th and 8th grade in a nine week program called "Experiential Education". It was not part of the P.E. curriculum but stood as its own program. We felt we could integrate some adventure programming along with a continuation of our outdoor education programs until we decided on a more clear direction. This year will be experimental from the standpoint that we will be using the adventure based activities as part of the advisory period and as part of the new experiential program. I felt it was more important to move slowly at first and get a good foundation for expansion of the program later. Along with the possibility of an indoor course Dr. Markavitch suggested an adventure trip rock climbing, camping, and caving, a trip she took a number of years ago with a group of "at risk" students from a school in Michigan and recognized (my good fortune) what a powerful experience the program was for these students. It is hard to know what the final product will be in the future, but it is good to know that we started in the right direction. It is also good to know that I have administrators, such as Dr. Markovitch, who are supportive toward this type of program. Now: 2000 It is now 10 years later and well over a thousand students have done trust falls from our stage, climbed the climbing wall, over seven hundred ventured up the rope ladders to enter the high ropes, and there were many, many circles of students and facilitators "processing" the meanings of these experiences. Over 1500 students have been on the rock climbing, caving, and camping trips sitting in a circle around the fire, passing the "talking stick" and sharing their experiences. There was excitement, tears, bravado, fear, compassion, insight, reflection, hope, and I could go on and on with descriptions of what the students and facilitators experienced as they participated in this thing called "experiential education". Some called it "challenge education" and some called it "adventure education". Whatever the name, it is very powerful in how it can transform people. Some subtly and others profoundly. My own experiences in the field as student and facilitator affected my own outlook on how I teach and interact with students and fellow workers. I've seen students that have expanded their own awareness of themselves and also how they see and interact with their peers and adults around them. I have had parents tell me and my fellow facilitators what a difference this program has meant to their child. It was always a great feeling as an art teacher to have a student that was very proud of the art they created, but I think the experiences students have in experiential education have more impact because they reach deep down into the core of each person and allow insightful meanings about the experience. We need students that can problem solve, work with others, and that have compassion for others. Experiential education gives the student the opportunity in a very direct way to develop these skills. This in turn will affect all those around them. The "ripple effect". Our program has developed continually over the past 10 years to be one of the best programs in Illinois offering 9 week courses to students in 6th, 7th and 8th Grade. Our school counselor, Gayle Fitzgerald, and our two P.E. teachers, Mary Jane Amato and Mark Petriko, have all been part of that growth almost from the beginning. The first year was a combination of outdoor education and teambuilding with all portable ropes events. A climbing wall was installed during the second year and a couple of years later Bill and Dan Quinn from Cliffs and Cables installed our high ropes course. Later we received a $5000 grant from the Japanese Chamber of Commerce to upgrade our ropes course and put in a traverse wall. I have been involved with the T.E.A.M. organization working on the conference planning committee with a group of dedicated individuals, presenting an occasional workshop, and constantly trying to learn more about the field from the experts. I have learned a great deal from Dan Creely and Bill Quinn at Northeastern and always like to watch other facilitators work. If there is anything I have learned, it is that there is always more to learn and that you have to be prepared for that by having as much experience yourself in the field as possible so when the time comes to start your own program you will be ready. We at McCracken have been very appreciative of the support we have always received from the School Board, Administrators, fellow teachers, parents, and of course the students for their enthusiasm in expanding their own comfort zones. I want to leave you with the words of our past School Board President, Mark Cohen, who stated in an article on experiential education, "In personal as well as societal outcomes, experiential programs offer returns on investment that cannot be ignored." Gus can be reached at McCracken School until June, 2000, and after that
at 773-283-1211.
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