| March 2, 2009 ENews Update
Saregent Center for Outdoor Education
 
From Rob Rubendall , Sargent Center for Outdoor Education, Director, AEE Board of Directors, Treasurer
Boston University is closing Sargent Center for Outdoor Education on August 31st of this year due to financial concerns. It has historically provided a small subsidy to operate the Center since taking it over in 1930. With money tight, the President has decided to eliminate a number of outlying academic centers that are not fully self-funded to focus on his priorities of the undergraduate education and research in the City of Boston. At this point, there are no plans to sell the land, and proposals are being sought to operate the facility under different terms.
 Sargent Center has been an innovator in outdoor education since Dr. Sargent opened the facility in New Hampshire in 1912. The first programs were aimed at improving the physical conditioning and health of women through the Sargent School of Physical Education. Soon a thriving girls summer camp was opened to improve the health and fitness of younger girls. In the 1950's the "camp" was winterized to accommodate groups of suburban high school students learning winter survival skills on the 700-acre property. It also became a pilot site for year-round outdoor education funded partially by the Department of Defense to prepare young people for a possible nuclear winter.
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After reopening in 1975, the Human Environment Institute was created to provide a group dynamics and environmental education curriculum to children and adults. Project Adventure was instrumental in piloting programs and building the first high ropes courses on site. The expansion of adaptive Outward Bound courses gave a boost to school programs using the center for personal and group development. Later on, Executive Challenge became one of the first programs to offer adventure challenge training to corporate executives from companies like Disney and Wang Computers.
Sargent currently provides programs in three areas - middle school outdoor education, a summer Adventure Camp, and a year-round conference program. Four regional AEE conferences, as well as American Camp Association, ACCT, and New England Environmental Education Association meetings have been here in recent years. Staff members have served AEE on conference committees, the Awards Committee, and the Board of Directors.
The demise of Sargent Center is a red flag for our profession in this difficult financial climate. Organizations that provide important experiential programs often have little or no margin in their budgets, and the loss of funding and reduced family incomes will take its toll. Many of our young professionals rely on these programs for their early development and later employment. It is more important than ever to find ways to support these endangered centers. Until August 31, new business plans and partnerships will be solicited in the case of Sargent Center to allow it to carry on.
From Sean Tierney , teacher at the Hampton Academy in Mt. Holly, New Jersey Sean has been bringing students to the Sargent Center for Outdoor Education since 1979.
Benefits to Students
SCOE is an important part of Hampton’s curriculum each year. Our students benefited from experiential learning using a tradition that spans generations. Participants learn about their own environment addressing the “nature deficit disorder” that is often credited to urban students. The students bushwhack through the woods - hot, cold, rain, snow, come back tired, dirty, but happy. Science education was important, but perhaps more importantly kids learned about communication and community.
Environmental, Science, Leadership and Adventure Education
The location is what makes the environment so unique. Activities include a great swamp walk, bouldering, looking at pond life, climbing a small mountain. There are many different micro and macro environments to study in one area. The experiences that were gained by our students cannot be reproduced. First hand experience is a huge deal when you are trying to teach kids things.
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Member Profile - Deb Ajango, SafetyEd
 
Long time AEE accreditation council member, Deb Ajango, has run her own business, SafetyEd, out of Eagle River, Alaska for the past 6 years. SafetyEd provides teaching, training, and consulting. The teaching aspect includes topics such as "using case studies to improve safety education," "improving teaching methods," and "learning to teach 'safety'." The training aspect of SafetyEd includes workshops such as "train the trainer," "winter survival," and "arctic survival." The consultation aspect of the business typically has to do with safety audits, modification of risk management plans, modification of medical screening documents/plans, etc.
Deb attributes the success of SafetyEd to the effective methods she uses and teaches in “train the trainer” settings. “Experiential Education is the best method to use if you are looking to make long-term changes in behavior, increase retention of material and improve critical thinking skills,” said Deb.
In her teach the teacher workshops, Deb’s goal is to turn out effective trainers that understand the utility of experiential education. On of the more effective tasks Deb has these participants do is to create lesson plans including goals and measurable outcomes. She wants them to focus on figuring out where the students will stumble and where experiential education might be best used. She teaches them to “front load” experiential lessons and to continually debrief and assess progress throughout the lesson.
“I find it ironic,” said Deb, “that outdoor educators’ embrace experiential education, but oftentimes turn around and lecture to staff. Some lecture is necessary, but if that is all there is, only a quarter of the information taught will be retained.”
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The use of experiential education helps Deb get the most out of every student. Many outdoor leaders are kinesthetic learners so Deb spends time teaching trainers to think about when to use lecture and demonstrates techniques that make lectures more dynamic. She also teaches them how to not lose important safety skills when participants have fun during experiential learning activities.
Teaching experientially also allows trainers to become mentors. “Most teachers find it so hard to let students fail, but sometimes you have to,” said Deb. Trainers that interrupt students and take over when they make mistakes are not as effective as those that learn to allow and learn from acceptable errors.
Deb feels that part of the success seen when using experiential education is that it is fun. “Learning should be fun, said Deb, “It’s always very gratifying when students come in expecting so little and leaving stoked.” Deb feels especially gratified when students who take her wilderness first responder courses tell her they have decided to go into medicine.
Deb is not sure how the economy will affect her business. So far the demand for her classes is stronger than ever. She does expect to see fewer organizations spend money on things like safety audits. Part of Deb’s work is in the form of assessing the risk management and crisis response plans for programs, and that type of work tends to be affected when money is tight.
Experiential Education
Deb feels that the biggest challenge for experiential education is that to do it well is time consuming and difficult to effectively facilitate large groups. And unfortunately, large groups and quick sessions are becoming the norm for most school districts.
Background
Deb worked at the University of Alaska, Anchorage for several years. She graduated with a post-graduate degree in clinical psychology and education from the University of Wisconsin Madison, which led to a job at UAA doing Experiential and Outdoor Education. It was there that she became familiar with AEE, attended a conference, and eventually went through the AEE accreditation process.
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AEE Membership
“The most valuable benefit of AEE membership is probably camaraderie and access to like-minded people. As I mentioned, because education has become a business, it can be difficult to be an experiential educator and feel supported by peers and colleagues. I’ve actually had faculty members at a university give me a hard time because the students in my class were laughing. They said that I wasn’t taking education seriously enough; the students were having too much fun. I can’t imagine experiential educators making this type of comment.
Accreditation
“I am an extremely strong advocate for AEE accreditation and that is why I was a council member for 9 years. The greatest benefit of accreditation is going through the process, it is not the stamp of approval - it is becoming educated.
“It is my goal to help the public and leaders in the industry understand what it means to be a good business - that is what accreditation gets you. Comparing how you do things vs. how everyone else does it is incredibly instructive. There are always many things that a program has not thought of. Participants must think introspectively about their organization and how to make improvements. Becoming educated about how the rest of the industry is functioning is also a great benefit.
“The process of AEE accreditation takes around one year and you will be a better organization because of it. Most of the learning actually takes place during what is called a “self assessment” usually around a 12 month process. During this process, organizations are asked to review the AEE Standards Manual for Accreditation. They must document that they meet or exceed all standards. In many cases, organizations are asked to think about things they have not considered or addressed in the past; they are asked to justify their thinking processes and actions; and they are asked to compare the way they do things to how others in the industry operate. Once the self assessment is complete, they send the document to AEE. A team of reviewers then visits the organization to verify the self assessment, documents, and to observe programming.
After the self assessment is complete, a review team comes in to verify that standards are met and figure out what missing. The process is very collaborative, not punitive. A reviewer might say, “In my experience, if you do that process in that way an accident may happen.” Although these programs are often the “baby” of very talented business people, I have always been impressed at how they understand that it is to their benefit to take a hard look at themselves and make some modifications. In doing so, they become even bigger advocates for their own programs, their clients, and the industry.”
Member Profile - Girls, Inc. of Metro Denver
  
From Tammie Limoges , Chief
Development Officer, Girls Inc. of Metro Denver
Girls Inc. of Metro Denver is a non-profit organization that inspires girls to be Strong, Smart, and Bold. We provide after school programs, all day summer programs, and outreach programs to girls ages 6 to 19. In Fiscal Year 2009, approximately 300 girls ages 6-18 will enroll in Girls Inc. programs at our West Denver Center. Our curriculum is designed with a focus on hands-on activities so that the girls can learn about
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Economic Literacy by opening a checking account, balancing that account each month, investing in the stock market, etc.
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Math and science by touring facilities such as Lockheed Martin and learning about various jobs in aerospace engineering from the Lockheed employees.
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Health and Sexuality by making healthy snacks for the class, learning from our anatomically correct doll, Zelda and a myriad of other ways.
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Careers and Life Planning by shadowing professionals in our community and touring college campuses
..And much more!
We have been serving girls in the Denver Metro community for 25 years, and have found that during times like these, it becomes more difficult to find the financial resources but the need of the community becomes greater. Over the past 3 years, we have focused an effort of diversifying our funding to prevent loosing a great deal of funding from one source in times like these. Like all organizations, we are looking at how we can be more efficient, how we can reach more people with our message, and new opportunities to raise money.
In a fast paced, high technological society, the ability to learn with a hands-on approach is necessary. We can teach girls from a textbook about the Stock Market, but they would not retain the information the way that they do when they actually invest in the Stock Market. The impact is greater and the knowledge stays with the individual longer.
I think that experiential education is challenged because the general public struggles with what the term means and that it goes beyond ropes courses and backpacking!
We are a new AEE member as of 2008, and as such we are still discovering ways that we can utilize the membership, but see AEE as a resource to connect us with other organizations that work with a similar constituency and can learn from each other and support one another in our work. In hard economic times, partnering with other organizations is a necessity and AEE provides us the information needed to connect with like-minded organizations.
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