AEE eNews Update August 2010
AEE Accredited Program Profile Second Nature Blue Ridge, LLC
By Kirsten Kindt, AEE, from an interview with Andy Dunn, Field Director, Second Nature Blue Ridge LLC, Clayton, Georgia
What population does Second Nature Blue Ridge, LLC serve and to what makes it successful?
At Second Nature Blue Ridge, we work with families in crisis. A parent may come to us saying, “I don’t know what happened to my kid, I am worried and the situation has gotten dangerous.” Our students are often struggling at home behaviorally, emotionally, academically, or all of the above. The parents have tried “everything” but nothing has worked.
We create an environment where self awareness is built into the fabric of the family. We help them repair their relationships with communication techniques and by helping them to address their problems at their root. A significant part of the process involves creating a space for the students to motivate to want things to get better. On the other side, we work with the parents keeping them on top of their end of the deal.
What are you most proud of at Second Nature Blue Ridge?
I am most proud of the quality of our programming. I recognize a quality wilderness therapy program by comparing students before they start vs. when they finish. A quality program will release kids that are doing better and our program does that. Second Nature was founded on the idea that struggling adolescents and their families deserve quality clinical treatment, combined with sensitivity and compassion, and this approach works.
One of our recent success stories was a male teenager that came to us swearing, aggressive, acting out physically, abusing drugs, running away, breaking things, and failing in school. His hostility was mostly channeled towards parents. After arrival he would say, “I am going to get back at my parents and get out of here.”
We spent several weeks in the woods and after a lot of staff patience and recommendations from therapists a turning point occurred. After a ten-week stay, I saw this student and I am proud to say he became one of the most memorable students I have worked with. The kid ended up a strong leader. By the time he left he was counseling other students and from here he moved on to an upper end academic boarding school. He taught his parents about the process he went through at Second Nature. His parents decided to go into the woods and receive counseling from their son on how to manage anger. Upon experiencing challenges, he showed them that anger is okay, it is what you do with it that becomes a problem. The family left Second Nature saying that it was some kind of miracle.
Their son left a loving and mature kid that they were all in touch with each other for the first time in many years.
Another measure of quality is staff retention. Happiness on the job - good people that stay - has been consistent at Second Nature and that is not the case at many other programs.
I attribute some of this to training and some to staff experience in the field. In the course of working here, when staff feels the positive changes in people, they often want to do this kind of work indefinitely. I feel so good when a coworker moves on to get a MSW or PhD clinical or counseling psychology degree instead of doing so because they are burned out and just want to get out of here. I have heard in exit interviews from staff members more than once, "This is the best job I have ever had. I hope to return to this type of work environment.”
What is the Second Nature Blue Ridge experience like?
Second Nature Blue Ridge typically has 7 groups of 9 students (10 to 18 years old), about 4 staff per group, and a therapist a couple days per week. Students are on rolling admissions, so there are students coming and going at all times. The greatest power for student therapy really comes from the peer culture.
Structurally speaking, we run a wilderness program requiring about 8 weeks in the field on average. Activities like backpacking, and primitive skills training like starting a fire, are the tools we use to set up therapeutic impacts. An important part of therapy comes from removing distractions and reliance on natural consequences. For example, students have to set up shelters so they don’t' get wet. If they take care and learn good craftsmanship and do things right the first time, they are comfortable. This is a tough lesson for kids that have been rescued or sheltered from doing things the right way or receiving natural consequences. Not cutting corners and understanding delayed gratification are heartrending lessons.
Basic communication skills are also tremendously important lessons for at-risk youth. We teach students to lead with, "I feel..." We discuss where feelings come from and how they are related to our expectations. Students must learn to take ownership of their thoughts and feelings and they must express them using the word “I.” They share their hopes for the future and see firsthand that assertive communication will get them there. Passive and emotional behaviors won’t. We intentionally create situations that push buttons their buttons and elevate emotions so they can practice these new skills when it is tough do so.
The students themselves are encouraged to go back and teach their parents.
We work on a phased system, connected with the elements - earth followed by fire, water, and air. We move kids up the scale according to how far they have grown. Very few make it to “air” or student leader where they are given sought after privileges and responsibilities.
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Member Profile: Steve Smith, Experiential Consulting, LLC
Steve is an outdoor program consultant who runs Seattle-based Experiential Consulting, serving the Pacific Northwest outdoor education community in risk management, staff training, and human resources. He is uniquely qualified to serve his clients, with a blend of skills and experiences born from practical experience in the field, formal training, scholarship and outdoor program leadership.
How did you end up as an outdoor program consultant? After formally training in college and grad school to teach English, I spent four years teaching writing classes and serving as Assistant Director of the Washington State University Writing Center, a peer-to-peer student writing tutorial program. There, I refined my practices and approaches to collaborative learning, mentoring, and cultivating positive learning environments. I helped develop some programs that went on to garner national acclaim, and learned a lot by working with great people. Working within the academic calendar gave me summers off which allowed me to pursue one of my growing interests, working outdoors with youth. That was over fifteen years ago.
In my outdoor career, I started off working at small programs and camps before getting hired to work at Outward Bound in the wild and stunning North Cascade mountains of Washington State. I spent a few years as an Assistant Mountaineering Instructor before being promoted to Lead Instructor. This time as an assistant was invaluable, as it allowed me to work with experienced mentors who taught me a great deal those first few seasons. I was able to grow and develop within a progression, without being forced into a role I wasn’t ready for. These days, I often see young instructors in various programs impelled too quickly into roles that they may not be ready for. In my case, I was lucky to have a chance to stay in a reasonable progression as a mountaineering instructor and experiential educator.
Eventually, I found that working indoors wasn’t fulfilling me and despite the stable job and community at the University, I decided to walk away from that and pursue outdoor education as a full-time field instructor.
Was it hard to leave your stable, full-time university job for the transient life of an outdoor educator? It was hard in some ways – I missed my community and the place which had been home, but I had so many adventures, worked with great people in wild places, and got to face challenges that made it all worthwhile. My first trip to New Zealand was during this time, partially funded by an Outward Bound instructor development grant. I was climbing about 100 days a year during this period, and a highlights was New Zealand’s Mt. Aspiring, which was one of my dreams at the time. So it was all worth it.
I lived that transient lifestyle on and off for several years, working about half the time for Outward Bound and other regional programs, and the other half climbing in Joshua Tree and travelling. I was essentially chasing summer around the globe before it was time to come back to the North Cascades again each spring. Meanwhile, I kept getting increasing levels of responsibility at Outward Bound, moving from a Chief Instructor (of one course at a time), to Course Director (overseeing multiple courses at once), Staff Trainer, Program Manager and eventually, Staffing Manager. It was a wonderful period where I was learning so much professionally but was very carefree and opportunistic in my personal life.
What did you learn as a staff trainer? I learned a lot! As a young trainer, I worked so hard to foster specific educational outcomes that I was sometimes guilty of short-circuiting participants’ own experiential process. As I became more comfortable in the trainer role, I became much more likely to let staff struggle with concepts, stay in a state of creative tension, and develop confidence in their skills by being pushed to failure. By testing to the point of failure, we develop the best self-assessment of what we can and can’t do. So, I became much more effective as a trainer and was asked to write sections of Outward Bound’s trainer’s manual, which was an honor and a pleasure, using my writing skills and outdoor expertise to contribute to the school’s training curriculum. For me, there’s no greater honor or reward than being asked to train your peers and colleagues.
What did you learn as Outward Bound’s Staffing Manager? As Staffing Manager, I interviewed and hired over 230 instructors to work in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, and Utah (over a two-year period). Then, I had the pleasure of travelling around to different base camps to visit the staff at their New Staff trainings. I loved the fact that the same person who hired staff got to be a part of their training, which created continuity and a chance for me to see how the people I hired based on interviews and resumes actually performed. I learned a lot about assessing staff credentials and their cultural fit for the many different Outward Bound programs around the country, and also enjoyed seeing how our hiring and training strategies coordinated with our staffing, safety and training systems. This taught me how inter-related those functions are and how they can operate together like an ecosystem, if well managed.
After two years in that staffing role, I moved on from Outward Bound to pursue formal training in Human Resources, took classes and earned P.H.R (Professional In Human Resources) credentials, and went on to work as a recruiter in the corporate world for six months. This told me all I needed to know about the corporate world, and I decided to return to my passion: values-based, mission-driven outdoor education.
I returned to work outdoors in a variety of programs, but found that whatever role they hired me for, I ended up doing the same thing: Consulting on risk management, staff training, and human resources systems. I realized that my years spent as a classroom teacher, field instructor, HR recruiter, and trainer had given me a unique lens through which to assess and advise outdoor program elements and systems, and I decided to open my own small business as an outdoor program consultant. The first day, nothing happened…but the second morning, as I was drinking coffee, the phone rang and I got my first project.
How do you serve your clients as an outdoor program consultant? I provide risk management services like policy/procedure revision and safety reviews, emergency response planning, or incident analysis. For the most part, I’ve had the pleasure of helping programs proactively prepare rather than react to field incidents.
One way to be proactive is to offer staff trainings that bring my clients up to speed in current risk management practices, and create common language for them to use. That way, staff members who have never worked together before can still share common language and critical thinking about managing situations in the field, and work together more effectively and efficiently. Some clients are further along on this spectrum, and just want someone to facilitate their own self-reflection on what’s working and what isn’t in terms of their risk management infrastructure.
In the human resources world, I offer support in recruiting and hiring practices, reviews and updates of HR systems and staff handbooks, and advice in handling difficult HR situations. I have a “hotline” that people can call if they need immediate assistance on quick questions.
How are you growing your business? When I started my business, I was lucky to be so well-connected through my years at Outward Bound and elsewhere. Many of my friends and colleagues have gone on to work at schools, colleges, and small programs that have hired me to assist them, or they have referred me to other programs. I do lots of things that basically function as outreach. For example I publish a quarterly newsletter, and I offer workshops at a local university on risk management, staff training, human resources, and best practices in experiential education. I will be presenting this year at the AEE Int’l Conference in Las Vegas, and at WRMC in Colorado Springs.
So I would say that I have succeeded so far based on my relationships with great people around the outdoor education community. I have enjoyed my years working in the field, in the classroom, and in program administration – but my current job as an outdoor program consultant is the best job I’ve ever had. I simply love what I do, and feel lucky to have cultivated this niche for myself. Every day brings new challenges and opportunities.
For more about Steve’s consulting services, go to http://experientialconsulting.com or email him: steve@experientialconsulting.com.
Experiential Consulting is providing a member to member discount of 15%, 20% for accredited members.
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