Teach for the Apocaplypse

Why are Americans obsessed with the apocalypse? Every other show and movie is the end of the world brought about by zombies, a war, a virus, a zombie war virus, deadly rain, an alien force, or a mystery. Either way the result is the same: A world without structure or government, where humans band together for survival, and everything has a gritty immediacy.

So, why do we all love these alternate realities? Do we seek violence? Do we wish to see the world end? At TSFires we think it has a lot more to do with some basic human traits we’ve all been neglecting, and which could really benefit your classroom.

We want our actions to matter. Once the world ends everything we do matters just a little more. In these worlds every decision can be life or death, every mistake can be your last. Humans want to matter. We want to know that what we do has an impact for us and for others, and that there’s a purpose to our existence.

In the classroom we don’t need to raise the stakes quite so high, but you can make it so that actions matter. When we tie the students together figuratively, or literally in climbing, their actions go from affecting a grade that they see a week later, to affecting another human being in real time. This impact can be made real through team games, group work, and project based learning. If you want students engaged, make what they’re doing right now matter right now.

We want good and evil to be recognized. A trope in any apocalypse flick is a leader who has gone mad with power, or a group of scavengers who become cannibals, a sociopath that people follow out of fear and cowardice. Tension and fear come from the zombies, but the real drama comes from seeing how the survivors react to such stress. In each case it is easy, almost rewarding, to recognize evil and root for its downfall. These movies also show us leaders who strive to be good, who act with decency even in an indecent world. These leaders show us the best in humanity. We have an innate desire to help good overcome evil. Read more “Teach for the Apocaplypse” →

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Tied Together, for Better or Worse

Have you ever stood in front a slightly unruly class and for a second got the feeling that it’s you vs. them? Do you ever feel like you alone are dragging along your 30 students? That normal sense of division is unavoidable in even the best classroom. But it never exists in adventure education.

In adventure education, and in the TSFires system, the teacher is the leader, the expert, but is also only part of the larger team. This is concept of interdependent leadership in a teaching role is exemplified in glacier crossing.

As a team of 2 – 5 people cross a glacier they are literally tied together. Glaciers, the massive ice fields that often are part of the approach or accent of major climbs, have a tendency to hide crevasses under thin snow bridges. If you cross alone and fall through a bridge, you’re just gone. You just vanish. If you fall as part of a team, your teammates drop to the snow, arrest the fall, and pull you out. You survive and move forward. Read more “Tied Together, for Better or Worse” →

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Students Need to Fail

There is a difference between a hiker who puts rain gear on because you told them they need to, and a hiker who puts on rain gear because they know they need to. And nothing changes a student from one category to the other like getting soaked.

I often tell the story of a group of young men who went hiking for a fairly dry week during New Mexico’s monsoon season. For the first four days there was little more than a sprinkle each afternoon.

“That’s not so bad,” they would say. “Some monsoon season this is.”

“Perhaps,” I’d respond, “But someday we may really get soaked. Make sure to have your rain gear ready”. After four days of this warning they seemed to think of it as some kind of ceremony more than an actual warning.

But, as expected, day five brought a darker cloud earlier in the day. It began to sprinkle at the front edge of the storm.

“Should we put our rain gear on?” I prodded.

Read more “Students Need to Fail” →

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Some People Just Want to Watch the School System…

I’ve written before on the importance of recognizing education, specifically the existence of a well educated populace, as a necessary public good. Like clean air, drinkable water, roads, fire departments, and all other public goods, an educated populace is something that creates a better society for all, and needs to be paid for by all.

At the same time, each individual’s education, or the education of your own child, is certainly an individual responsibility. Parents have the right to seek the best possible education for their child. This can take the form of moving from one school district to another, choosing to homeschool, or paying for private education. When parents have the resources, either the time or money necessary for homeschooling and private school, it is completely reasonable, indeed expected, that they would take that option. Parents have a responsibility to their child to give them the best possible education, and we should expect them to take whatever measures they can to do so.

At first glance this seems logical, and likely better for everyone. After all, wouldn’t it be better to have a few people in society that are even better educated than the rest of us? Don’t a few highly educated people only raise the average level of schooling among us? Yes, but only if the people who opt for private education also continue to support high quality education for the rest of society. Unfortunately this is not the case. Families that can afford private school do still pay for public schools through their taxes. But an increasing number of families are both requesting to have a tax exemption based on their private tuition (or tax loopholes allowing them to draw on college funds tax free), or even asking for vouchers from the public school system to help cover the costs of private schools. Read more “Some People Just Want to Watch the School System Burn” →

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Steady Foundations: Maslow’s pyramid in Adventure Ed.

I teach at an at-risk school that exists in a grey area somewhere between truancy court and jail. Students float in and out of our classes from lives filled with problems much more pressing than the long term concept of a diploma. Often, to them, their problems are more pressing than the short term concept of sitting in a classroom for an hour, and they just get up and walk away. If I’m lucky they walk out without causing a scene. Some days they do their best to take half the class with them.

As you can imagine, convincing these students of the importance of multiplying radicals in algebra 2 (there is some importance, right?) is a bit challenging. My argument typically goes something like “Well, you will probably never do this exact math in your future lives, but what we’re really trying to build is the ability to think logically and follow a process with an attention to details. Plus, if you focus and try right now, you may get a diploma in 2-5 years, and then over the following 40 years you’ll earn much more than people who didn’t get a diploma.”

“I’m hungry” responds a student who doesn’t always get much food at home.

“Yes, but feeding you isn’t a state standard, and simplifying radicals is,” I answer mentally and never aloud. “So let’s ignore that hunger to build a very small part of an abstract version of your distant future”.

Read more “Steady Foundations: Maslow’s pyramid in Adventure Ed.” →

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