A thing or two

This week's Outdoor school group is mostly inner-city kids. I had my first clue as to how the week would progress when on day one a guy balked at kneeling in the gravel for fear of dirtying his jeans. Uh... outdoor school... outdoor school... in my mind this conjures certain images of feet wading through streams, knees down on the ground, hands sifting through dirt, and yes, jeans potentially getting dirty. But this concept was somewhat foreign to our lively bunch of twelve 8th graders... Yes, this week was going to be fun.

Today our topic of study was trees. We drove to Mariposa Grove for some awesome tree encounters, (mainly Giant Sequoias). Our trail of choice was a loop somewhere between 5 and 6 miles... give or take a few. I decided to use the same approach with this group that I had used with the previous weeks group - one continuous hike to Wawona Point and back with short informational/educational stops along the way and lunch at the point.   

I now know that the continuous hike plan is not the most effective for this type of group. Sweat pours, feet ach, blisters form, shoulders stoop, moral drops, and before you know it your whole crew is ready to mutiny! Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but the Point was definitely too far away to have as the only "real" destination for this bunch. Yes, there were "sub-stops" along the way, but they weren't permanent enough destinations. I could tell the general mindset was, "Get to the Point, eat lunch, get back to the vans." The destination had become a distraction rather than the motivation I had hoped it would be.

Tomorrow we'll be taking the "multiple destination" educational approach. We will have no final destination to act as a distraction all day long. Instead, we'll have a variety of destinations that go unnamed until arrived at. I'm anticipating that this will dispel most complaints and keep attention focused on the experience at hand. We'll see how it goes.       
 
This whole education thing is definitely a learning experience... hopefully the kids are taking away a thing or two as well. ;)