'That bunny got a fine a** crib!"

Thank you student for that wonderful perspective on cottontail shelter in winter.

If any week is kid quote week it's always the week where inner city students come. As people who don't spend hardly any time in the woods they have some great descriptions of what they see. The students who I worked with last week were all inner city students from Milwaukee. They came here during one of the coldest times in December, and with only just enough snow to do the activities we had planned for them. They were definitely out of their element (it should be noted that if I were visiting their neck of the woods their knowledge would be invaluable). Their time was to replace a gym credit and they were snowshoeing, cross country skiing, and debris shelter building. All week long they kept us busy. We taught them how to snowshoe by playing kickball, taught them about animal and traditional shelters by building their own, and took them cross country skiing to experience a new way to travel.

Seeing the woods from their eyes was very refreshing for me. I can't think of a time where I have looked at the Northwoods and seen is as new. Growing up in Vermont this type of woods are home, and while there is a great connection then with this place there are very few and far between memories I can think of where I thought of my home woods as new woods. Looking around and having the things that happen often be magical is something that I forget. The last place I remember seeing and finding the newness magical was during my time in Skagway, Alaska living on the Denver Glacier. Waking up to 15 in more snow on top of an already white landscape was amazing. I remember the first time I saw an avalanche how amazing the snow looked liked a brief and wonderful waterfall cascading down boulders on the cliff side. I also remember beginning to listen for them, they kind of groan as the snow descends. I also remember how quickly the glacier could go from 80 degree and sunny to 25 and snowing. I also remember when things stopped being so magical, when the sun never setting was routine, and when the dogs howling became annoying.

Its very nice to remember what it was like to be surprised by everything. This is the exact reason why people go places different on vacation. I know I love going to camp for vacation where things are the same, but I also enjoy traveling to places that are new, and feeling the magic of wonder. Trying to describe thing later on to friends and family who weren't there I must sound like our students this week. We try to connect our past experiences to our new ones in order to better connect ourselves to these new and exciting events, thus making the new more relatable.

Thank you students for helping me see this place from your eyes.

Living without Coffee

So I'm now on day 5 living without coffee. I've read that the withdrawal symptoms go away within three days. Mine were pretty much gone day 3. However, I still was exhausted. About the only good thing was I didn't have to make coffee in the morning. On Tuesday I have a cup calling my name, but alas it's Saturday I've got a few days yet.

Are you all ready for some coffee facts?!
In one cup of coffee (I'm talking about an 8 oz cup, not the giant mugs we all use as our 'one cup' of coffee) there are 100 milligrams of caffeine. My coffee cup holds about two and half cups, so there was about 250 milligrams of caffeine entering my body every morning. A safe limit of caffeine per person per day is 400 milligrams. When I was working at the ski resort and a bed and breakfast this is about how much caffeine I was consuming per day. I would wake up, get my large coffee mug full (2 cups) and then I would have a cup between jobs, and one at 4pm (this would help me drive home). Four cups of coffee per day.

For some perspective as to what else has caffeine
 a Rockstar energy drink (8 oz) has about 80 milligrams of caffeine
 however, the Rockstar shot has 230 milligrams of caffeine packed into 2.5 oz.
A Mountain Dew 12 oz can has 55 milligrams of caffeine.

Looking at other hot beverages
Black tea has approximately 45 milligrams of caffeine
If you ordered a Venti (20-24 oz) brewed coffee from Starbucks you're looking at 415 milligrams of caffeine
From Starbucks a Cafe Latte has 150 milligrams for the same size.
Think to yourself 'Fine I'm going to just drink decaf"? haha cute, there is still caffeine in decaffeinated beverages. 30 milligrams of caffeine in a 20 oz decaf coffee from Starbucks.

There is also caffeine in chocolate, per 1 oz of chocolate there is 12 milligrams of caffeine. Other sources of caffeine include:
ice cream (coffee ice cream anyone?)
weight loss pills (why would anyone take these in the first place. want a bikini body? put a bikini on your body)
pain relievers two excedrin migraine tablets have 130 milligrams of caffeine.
breath mints (anyone ever try penquin mints? yup caffeine there)
There are even now caffeinated instant oatmeal breakfasts! What is our world coming to?!

Well, now that I've scared you all with my knowledge of caffeine. Don't worry, there are also reasons why coffee is good for you. Coffee is good for your liver, so if you also drink copious amounts of alcohol, you can counteract that with coffee, just kidding I have no idea. Coffee does have some nutrients in it. This is really only present if you grind your beans at home directly before making your cup of joe. There are also reports that coffee makes your smarter.

Coffee

I decided that I was going to give up coffee for a week. Why? Well because I felt very dehydrated and wasn't feeling very well in general. I also felt that maybe being off caffeine for a week and drinking lots of water would help flush out my system. Being off coffee would also give me insight as to how dependent my body had become on it. I drink a cup of coffee every morning (like most people) and I've been doing so for a few years now. Don't get me wrong, I love coffee. I was just curious to see how I'd feel getting off the stuff.

I know that caffeine is an addictive drug. I was wondering how I was going to be affected going through withdrawal. Was I even truly addicted?

Day 1:
In the morning I was OK. Tired, but still able to function.
Midday the headache started, persistent, behind my eyes
Had a cup of chamomile tea, felt mildly better.
Couldn't concentrate on anything.
around 4pm I wanted to die. My headache had started going down the back of my neck. I also wanted vomit.
Went to bed at 8pm and woke back up at midnight, I felt like a new person, no headache!

Day 2
Morning was slightly better than yesterday
headache didn't start until 2pm still persistent
It's 4:30 and I haven't had the headache drift down my neck yet.
Still can't concentrate on anything.
No puking feeling.

I'm still on Day 2 of caffeine free week. Clearly I'm having withdrawal symptoms. I didn't really think I was addicted until I went off it. So I took an online quiz to gauge caffeine addiction. Apparently, I'm mildly addicted to caffeine. Keep in mind that my norm is 1 cup per day. Withdrawal symptoms from one cup a day is a little scary. I'll keep you all posted on how my detox goes.

Immersing instead of Escaping

I had a very interesting conversation with a high school student at lunch today. At the semester school that I kinda- sorta work at right now (I also work for a nature center an hour and half away). At the school they are doing something called solos. Solos are basically at time for kids camp alone in the woods. They each have spot and they stay out for 24 hours by themselves. I want you all to keep in mind there are several safety precautions which in place to make sure every students physical and emotional safety needs are met. I personally see this as an excellent opportunity for reflection on their semester. I also see it as an opportunity to really connect with their spot.

This girl who I was sitting with said 'Solos are going to be so boring! I'm going to bring a book about the tropics or something while I'm there.'

She clearly wasn't seeing this as an opportunity to connect with the woods. Instead she was seeing this as an opportunity to sit in a tent for hours and read. She was also choosing a book which was going to escape the world around her. Don't get me wrong, I escaped all the time while I was in Benin. Every time I took a bike ride, or read in my apartment, I escaped the frustrations of third world living. This can be a very helpful for sanity. However, I found myself at some low points in Benin where I was completely escaped from the reality around me.

It is a fine line to walk between escaping and immersion. But I think for one night this girl should immerse herself in the opportunity given. Carpe Diem! Perhaps choosing a book that instead of escaping makes her feel more connected to her place. Books like A Sand County Almanac or Walden (even though Walden is based on a place in Massachusetts it's still a very similar climate.) would only work to deepen the sense of place.

Coding

Coding is how interviews are analyzed. What you do is you take, line by line, information from them and try to find what is said most.
So for example if I were to code the above statements I might say these things I found important informaiton

Coding
Analyzed
Interviews
line by line
what is most said

Sounds fun right? Well it's not. In fact it's extremely tedious and time consuming. We were given interviews to code and they were each about 6 pages long, 3 interviews is 18 pages of coding. The idea is those being interviewed are going to talk more often and in more depth about things that are important to them. So if you were to analyze this blog entry words like coding, analyze, information and interviews would probably come up most often. Wow. How amazing.

My roommate suggested that we put our coding into something called a word cloud. A word cloud generates an image based on words found in text. The larger the word in the image, the more often it comes up. It looks cool, it takes very little time, and it's a graphic representation of text. So I did that, and voila, the word cloud came to the same conclusions that I did only faster!

All interviews in the word cloud

I then thought, what happens when I use it to analyze other things? So I decided to use all the posts from September and put them into a word cloud to see what I was talking about most.

September Blog Entries

Apparently I talk a lot about people and going. It good to know that I enjoyed writing about school, work, place, teachers, education and curriculum. Environmental made a show, as well as time. Interesting stuff. Thanks word cloud for making coding more interesting! 

Teaching Sense of Place

A few days ago myself and my colleague had a bunch of high school students come to our nature center. If you look back at my post Standards you will see that myself and the other grad fellow were creating curriculum for this school. Trying to meet the schools curriculum and teach them about nature was difficult. Trying to work creatively within the rigid education standards was probably the most challenging thing I've had to do in the education field. Keep in mind, I am not a trained educator. I'm mostly self taught and I've been learning tricks of the trade through experience, particularly with my old job in New Hampshire.

They arrived, and the day felt like a blur. We had planned everything. We were mostly just along for a roller coaster ride. We talked about the scientific method, random sampling and avoiding bias in your data, making observations, how to orient yourself to a map, and the forest itself. At the end we finally waved goodbye to the students and we slumped into chairs. My colleague said it well when she said 'wow I feel like I ran a marathon' I agree.

Today we looked at our goals for this lesson and the overarching goals of the program and determined if we met our goals or if we needed to revisit them. We found that we did meet our goals and our lesson was in line with the program goals. But we felt that something was missing. The big picture was giving the kids a sense of place, to connect them to their plot. We had only spent 20 minutes at their plots this week. The truth was staring us in the face. We had connected the kids, in small ways, to the property, to each other and science, but we had failed to really hit home what we truly wanted. The vision was to have the students have ownership of their own plot.

I've had a series of posts focused on sense of place. I could talk the talk, walk the walk, but could I grow the feeling in others? Building a sense of place in myself wasn't a challenge but an activity, I could develop that by going out and observing. It's easy to use yourself as the guinea pig. While I was at my spot I had been observing a cocoon. I had been watching it grow and change. For a couple of weeks I would look to see if it was still there. I went the other day to see what it looked like now, and when I looked under the leaf it had been dangling from I noticed it wasn't there. I was sad. Where was it? I looked for the remnants of the cocoon and couldn't find it. I wondered if something didn't eat it or if the caterpillar completed its metamorphosis and flew away. I thought to myself the most I could hope for was that it flew away. Then I thought that this is a slight taste of how parents must feel when their kids go to college. I then realized with a bittersweet thought that my experiment with myself about sense of place, was working. I had become connected to a piece of my spot. I leaned back in the deer bed and looked at the sky thinking. I had succeeded, but why did I feel strange about it? My feelings towards the place changed. If someone had told me that a bird ate a cocoon anywhere else on the property I wouldn't have cared. But because it was my cocoon it meant something more. Even when I tried to rationalize life and death of a caterpillar I still felt uneasy. I determined that I felt this was because my experiment had worked. I had 'duped' myself into feeling emotions about the land. I had irrational thoughts about my place because I had grown to love it. I had fallen for my own experiment. I then had motivating thought, that sense of place WORKS. I had gone having zero connection to my nature center in Wisconsin to feeling the loss of one cocoon a few months later.

It had worked. But how do I get it to work in others. A huge part of my connection with this place is that I wanted to be connected. I was open to what it had to give me. How do I teach sense of place without sounding like a hippy with their head in the clouds? The first step is allowing the kids to spend as much time as possible at their places. It's not that I want to trick them into having emotional connections to their space, I want them to decide that they feel connected to their spot. I am going to work on putting as much time in the schedule to allow for the students just to be at their site. Having planned activities that will force them to look around, notice things will be a great way to help foster sense of place.

Goals are Sexy

People who have goals are more attractive than those who don't. I don't mean 'attractive' in a hot and bothered kind of way I mean attractive in that I want to get to know those people in a friendly way. I've found that people who utterly lost, don't have goals or motivation to do anything aren't the kind of people who I enjoy surrounding myself with.

I was dating a boy just before leaving for the Peace Corps. We had a been together during our college years and we had met in Vermont. I remember watching our relationship fall apart, and in the end I broke it off a couple of weeks before leaving for Africa. There are many reasons why we broke up, but the main reason was he became very unattractive to me. His physical appearance hadn't changed much, but his attitude had. I realized after too many boring days in Africa with only myself to speak english too, that the reason why he became unattractive was his lack of motivation and goals. He had gone to college and during his senior year something changed. His goal of graduating was about the only thing he had, and then after that, there was nothing. After graduation, zero goals. After he graduated he still had zero goals. I watched as he just lived, day after day filling the file cabinets in his mind with the same memory. Keeping the status quo.

There is nothing wrong with floating through life. Having no direction is different than not having goals. To not know how to reach a goal is perfectly acceptable, but to not have goals at all is unattractive. Goals are attractive to me because I have goals. I have a life that I see for myself and I'm working towards it. A goal doesn't have to be strictly professional or career oriented. It could be anything. 'I want to hike to Appalachian Trial' or 'I want to build my own house'. It doesn't have to be a lot of goals, just one is perfectly fine.

I feel that people who have zero goals, even if they are traveling around, changing their situation, the people they see, are stuck. They are just stuck in the same rut and they're spinning their tires, which of course only digs the hole deeper. This is how I saw my ex when we broke up. Surrounded by nothing but his own dwindling motivation.

I don't care how old you are, how comfortable you are with your life or how incompetent you think you are. Remember: goals are sexy.

Sweat it Septebmer

So I've made a challenge for myself... to do something active every single day... even if it's 15 minutes, still counts. So here is my daily list.

September 1st- 45 of yoga focusing on arms and abs
September 2nd- 30 minutes on the tread mill
September 3rd- 3 mile hike in the woods
September 4th- 15 minutes of yoga
September 5th- 3 mile hike in the woods
September 6th- 15 minutes of yoga
September 7th- 2 mile hike
September 8th- 15 minutes of yoga
September 9th- 40 minutes of super stretch yoga focusing on core twists
September 10th- 25 minutes of yoga focusing on strengthening legs
September 11th- 20 minutes of yoga
September 12th- ran after a bunch of 4th graders all day long.
September 13th- 40 minutes of yoga (I like this yoga week)
September 14th- 2 mile hike, I found Stinging Nettle!
September 15th- 45 minute walk
September 16th- 2 mile hike
September 17th- 15 minutes of yoga
September 18th- 20 minutes of yoga
September 19th- 45 minutes of yoga
September 20th- 2 mile walk
September 21st- OK I missed this day... my bad
September 22nd- 5 mile hike
September 23rd- 30 minutes of yoga
September 24th- 1 hour hike
September 25th- 1 hour hike/ bushwack in the search for white pine
September 26th- 20 minutes of yoga
September 27th- 2 hours of housekeeping (think that housekeeping isn't hard physical work? try being a housekeeper.)
September 28th- Was kept busy all day with a program. Hauling water, stacking firewood... totally counts.
September 29th- Housekeeping for the afternoon
September 30th- 15 minutes of yoga

The whole point of Sweat it September was because I wasn't exercising and I feeling more and more like a blob rather than a fit youthful person. I also was very stressed. My pants weren't fitting correctly and I had a a nice belly going on. I knew that everything was going to get better with doing something active.

And so I did.

At the end, I feel much better, I have more energy. That belly is gone, back down to normal size. I also have found that I am less stressed. Walking the woods has not only helped me physically but emotionally as well. I also found that having to update this post everyday for a month really made me continue to be on my game. Doing something everyday is important for me, I know that if I say 'every three day' or 'every other day' I just won't end up doing it at all. Being active is something that should happen everyday, and so I made it a priority. I'll have to think of a clever name for October...

Standards

Early on when I first arrived at my assistantship people were talking about a green charter school that we would be working with. 'Oh yea eventually... you're all going to do something with the school' was about the extent of the conversation. Until we were in the car going to a meeting with our new work partners did we fully understand what we were getting ourselves into. Our supervisor was driving and basically said 'What were you all thinking? We should probably have some sort of plan before we walk in there, the big boss man wants us to do some sort of research that's on going, so lets think'

So we walked in and my supervisor, our fearless leader, and the young teachers supervisor (his fearless leader) sat back and said 'well... this is for you all for you all to work out far as we're concerned'. So here we were, three doe- eyed young professionals being told to do something. Having been in the Peace Corps, and working as an outdoor educator I can pretty much pull it together and a brave give a fake-it-'til-you-make-it face until something does happen. However, this time, I was a little stunned. I'm not a teacher, I'm an educator and working with a school to develop curriculum is something I've never done. The fake-it-'til-you-make-it strategy didn't seem appropriate because these were children. What type of program could we do?

The idea was they would come here every month and do some sort of outdoor programming. It would be a full day every time. In order for these kids to come it had to be not only worth while for students but also worth while for the school. If either one of both of those parties didn't feel they were getting enough out of the programming it could be a disaster. If the kids didn't like it, the program wasn't going to work, if the school didn't feel it was worth it to come, they wouldn't. We have to make it not only ongoing, but also engaging and educational.

We came up with an idea, giving each student a 'plot' or place and get it know it by learning about it. There was also a prescribed burn going on and we were looking to study the effects of that. This project was looking at not only seasonal changes but also changes made from the fire. They were going to take their data and compile it together within a project. They were also going to get to choose one thing to study, a question they would like answered. From our study they would take the methods of data collection that we taught them to answer their question.

The teacher loved the idea. So we've taken it and ran. But having to wade through educational standards to make sure that the students are getting the most out of the program is mostly the problem. Standards and criteria are great. They help define expectations of teaching. However, I can also see where they are cripplingly confining. A creative teacher who sees educational value in nontraditional topics is stuck trying to check boxes. I can't imagine having to work through every single curriculum standard. You would get through most in a year, but definitely not all.

My goals this week were to check the curriculum standards and make sure that we're hitting on quite a few in environmental education and science. Not the most exciting thing I've ever done, but enlightening. It is also interesting to see how much work gets put into a class or program when starting from scratch. I want this program to have more weight, and linking it to the curriculum standards will only make it stronger.

Bottling the Drifter

In the last five years I have lived in Vermont, Maine, Africa, Alaska, California, Wyoming, New Hampshire, and now Wisconsin. Before going to grad school I had to turn down a job in Washington state. I was a drifter, someone who moves from place to place in search of work. I usually only lived a in place for a few months and then moved on to the next job. I would ski in the winter, and was an outdoor educator in the spring summer and fall. Adventure, travel and first hand experience was what my life was about. Being a drifter was only supposed to be until I found a 'real job'. Temporary and seasonal work was just that, in case there wasn't anything better. Full time, year round work was what I really wanted after coming back from Benin. Or at least I thought. Knowing myself better now, I know that full time year round work somewhere wasn't going satisfy me. I'm a free spirit and dreamer. I always enjoyed having my next adventure, a roller coaster life. I also knew that it wasn't a long term solution to any problems.

Financial security sounds wonderful, health care also sounds amazing, being able to afford an apartment is pretty much what every seasonal employee dreams about sometimes. Not having to pack your car or your backpack every three months, not having to purge your clothes all the time, and thinking about shopping somewhere other than goodwill are realities for others, but not the drifter.

But once the drifter does quietly turn into a life of ease, being tired of the aforementioned things, surrounding themselves with the items from their storage unit and sleeping on a bed that has sheets they begin to realize something. At first they think it's great. They might have an oven, a toilet they don't have to share, wifi, a closet, and maybe even a reliable car. At night they don't have to worry about being cold, if it's going to rain and their tent leaks or if they're able to drive their car up the driveway at night. They've found the holy grail, a job that actually pays them what they feel they might need, and an apartment in their budget. So they snuggle in the comfort that financial and long term stability. Then they noticed that they have sacrificed things by living like everyone else. They begin to miss the job search, the unknown, the work hard and party harder lifestyle. They miss all their bum friends, who don't care about their clothes and lack of deodorant. They miss making new friends and family where ever they go. They begin to want that life again. It's a rash on your subconscious, always itching and the more you scratch and think about it, the worse it gets. Old habits die hard and you find yourself job searching, dreaming and thinking about how you're going to pack your car.

To say that I haven't thought this way would be a lie. New adventures are always on my mind. The drifter in me wants to pick up and go somewhere different. But I'll have to put it aside for now. Getting into graduate school on full scholarship is huge. I wasn't moving forward in my career with what I was doing. Something did have to change, and getting a masters degree is going to put me in a better place for a long time career solution. Outdoor environmental education isn't a fun way to spend a season, it's what I want to do. I know this, I know that I can have goals and can reach them. But I think everyone find themselves missing former lives, and feeling a pull from their past. Making the choice that's best for me, means saying goodbye for a little while to my drifter ways.

Teachers and Environmental Education

I've written about sense of place and advocating for teachers to connect kids more to the outdoors. See my post called Sense of Place. Kids should be outside, they should be learning and connecting to their environment. Start with the backyard, slowly move up to the world. As an adult I feel that I have problems connecting to places that I don't know, empathizing with their problems and feeling like I can talk intelligently about a problem half a world away. I would consider myself an informed environmentalist and if I have problems making these connections than I can only imagine how children feel. 

Who teaches kids about the woods then, who connects kids to nature on their level? Lots of people can! Parents, Boy/ Girl Scout leaders, Youth Group leaders, non formal educators, camp counselors, volunteers, friends, family, and of course, classroom teachers. Classroom teachers have an amazing opportunity for connection. Why? Because our government, and many around the world, has deemed the subjects of math, literature, social science, history, art, music and physical education so important that they will pay for it's citizens to have at least a base line knowledge of these subjects, not only for just one year, but for 13 years if you include kindergarten. Putting environmental education and building environmental connection in a school curriculum only adds weight to the subject matter. Because environmental education is so broad it can be combined with any preexisting course. For example, learning about math by analyzing data collected from trees, learning about the water cycle by collecting rainwater and kayaking down a river, reading about the history of your town and looking at ways the land was used (maybe map some old stone walls!). The opportunities are there. 

Now here comes the hard part. It's a great idea. I can get many people excited and interested in implementing this type of curriculum. They agree that yes this should be done! By someone. Usually when people say 'someone' they could mean one of two things 'someone' meaning YOU or 'someone' meaning NOT ME. There is a disconnect between teachers and environmental education. Keep in mind, I do not mean all teachers, some are great and excited to bring backyards into their classroom. Disconnect number 1) teachers work extremely hard. They are paid very little. They have terrible budgets to work with. 

Let me step on a soap box for a hot minute here: If our military can buy pretty much whatever they want, whenever they want, and millions of dollars can be put into presidential campaigns... Tell me why teachers have to fund-raise for field trips? Tell me why we can feed every prisoner 3 square meals a day but our kids who are in public school have to pay for lunch? Tell me why supplies like new books (I remember only using ONE book in my high school that was less than 5 years old, our history books still had the USSR in the map) graphing calculators and computers are often times deemed 'too expensive'? Ok I'm stepping off the soap box now. 

Going back. The teacher is worked very hard, many days bringing home quizzes to grade, papers to read, progress reports to fill out. They should have enough time to have a life too. Adding something else onto the job of a teacher is not only short sighted but also disrespectful of their time. Disconnect number 2) Some teachers just plain don't like going outside. So because they aren't interested in it, the don't do it. And so instead of a teacher creating a unique lesson plan which was about going outside to learn about chipmunks foraging or migratory Canadian Geese, the students sit inside and learn about penguins. This was my 4th grade class. We learned about penguins. I am from Vermont. I am 10. I have never seen a penguin in my life. I have no idea what South America or Antarctica look like. I only know that penguins are flightless birds that look cute and waddle. We learned about penguins for what seemed like weeks. It was fall and often times at recess we would point out migrating geese and the V shape they make as they were flying south. Curiosity and wonder were running wild. Where did they go? What did they do there? Why didn't they stay in Canada? Why learned about penguins and not geese I still have no idea. I remember clearly our teacher standing at the front of the class after the test and saying how disappointed she was that we all had done poorly on our exam. If I could see her now I would remind her. I was 10. I didn't give two shits about penguins. Our grades reflect your teaching. You failed to inspire excitement and curiosity and you also used an abstract animal. Our development wasn't ready for abstract thought. Good job, you set us up for failure, and then you told us it our fault. 

Another high school science teacher of mine in AP Biology talked about pea plants and genetics. This was a perfect opportunity. Why didn't we have pea plants?! We could have grown and cross pollinated pea plants! But now we learned about it through a book. Thanks. Way to remove real life experiences from your classroom. Some people, just like some teachers, don't like going outside. And so they have the flexibility to choose to learn from a book instead. This is robbing a classroom of direct experience. Even if an activity was there, if it was all set up, easy for the teacher, not any more work perhaps less, that teacher could look outside and say 'well, it's raining, I don't want to do that' and just not. This makes me so mad. I can't choose whether or not I want to learn math in public schools, so teachers shouldn't be able to choose to do an entire course on environmental issues inside. 

Moral of the story: working with teachers and finding solutions to these barriers is going to be the next step in a more integrated approach to bringing kids closer to their place and connecting them in many ways to the environment. 

Being a Good Tourist

I have worked in the tourism industry for a number of years, doing different jobs here and there. I was a ski instructor, a lodging and reservations phone operator, front desk, waitress, housekeeper, tour photographer and now I'm the face of a nature center. I have helped people in and out of helicopters and I have also poured them coffee.

There are great people who come and are willing to pay for the services that these places provide. Many are happy to be there, have a great time, enjoy whatever things there are to do, and leave without too much fuss. These are the people that you want coming back, the ones that are hassle free tourists. These are the same people that graciously accept when there is a problem, understand that things don't always go according to plan and are flexible with their travel plans. It is much easier to find solutions to problems when the person on the other end is understanding.

Then there are the high maintenance tourists. These people are the ones that take up the majority of your time, they nit pick every little detail, they don't appear to be having any fun and they also complain about everything. They are uncompromising, always trying to squeeze every last amenity or service out of you that they can, they look for problems, and worst of all they are entitled. Their attitudes are 'Well I paid for the cheapest option, but I want the best.' They don't see staff as people instead they see them as servants. Staff are forced to grin and bear and apologize for services which were never part of their vacation in the first place, or cirucmstances that were out of their control.

"I'm sorry that you forgot to sign Joey up for ski lessons today in the middle of February break and ski school has been booked solid two weeks"
"I'm sorry the helicopters are loud"
"I'm sorry it's raining outside"
My personal favorite "I'm sorry the puppy you were holding was squirming and fell out of your arms and landed on your foot" keep in mind I was simultaneously trying to comfort a terrified puppy who dropped from a height of four feet and landed face first on a steeltoed boot.

The sense of entitlement 'Because I've paid for this my expectations are so high that they are impossible for you meet them'. They look down their nose at you, you are scum to them, someone they can complain to when they found a spot on the rug underneath the bed, when their coffee wasn't poured for them 5 seconds after they seated themselves, or when the weather isn't cooperating with their plans.

Being the understanding tourist is hard sometimes. When the answer isn't the one that you were looking for, you're forced to reevaluate. I find that remembering the person you're talking to has limitations to what they are authorized to do, helps. Accepting an answer and going up the chain, is sometimes your best bet. Also realizing that the staff are often times very busy, and there might be a larger problem on hand than running towels or lighting your fireplace.

I sometimes have felt the feeling of entitlement well up inside me when I'm on vacation. Perhaps it's because I worked in the tourism industry I begin to get overly critical. It's not a feeling I enjoy. I remind myself that the customer service respresentatives are people too, even if you're not speaking to them face to face. They aren't there to be harassed, or verbally abused by me. They get to go home happy, feeling good at their jobs.

While yes, there are times where a hotel has messed up, where the food is bad, or when your instructor is having a lousy day. It is not always tourists bad attitudes. If you're at a quality establishment then the place will recognize and do the best they can to make it right. If you really don't like the service you are getting, you don't have to come back. But please keep in mind that customer service representatives are people too and often times they are doing all they can for you.

Research

When I applied for Graduate School I learned that the program I was interested in didn't have a thesis requirement. I was so happy. I've heard horror stories of people being out of school for years and while having completed the classes they've yet to complete their thesis. Some advice from one person to another in thesis writing and completion was 'if you're so close to finishing but can't you have two choices... lock yourself in your room with only your computer, no internet for the next 36 hours... or... get rip roaring drunk and in the morning, while you're still semi- intoxicated begin to write your paper. by the time your hangover is done you should be finished.' Neither of these choices seem like great ideas, graduate school could turn into 3 or 4 years rather than just two. No thesis means I got to avoid this scenario. However, we have a project which I was told 'is almost exactly like a thesis.' After being accepted and being in class for a week or so I wasn't going to leave just because of this, but my heart sank a little bit. It came back up slightly when they told us we would definitely for sure be done when we graduated.

Even though I now am basically doing a thesis I feel better about it. Being the one doing research instead of reading the research is encouraging. That I am now on the level of education where I can positively add something to my field. This has also given me the opportunity to really dive into a topic I've been considering for about a year now. My research has been approved, which is great. The topic is looking at combining noncompetitive sports and field science. For example: the study of geology and rock climbing, studying how a landscape changes while backpacking, studying weather patterns by sailing, understanding river ecology by kayaking, studying GIS/ GPS by hiking and geocaching. How combining these two topics not only are you having a longer class (2 1.5 hour classes now are a 3 hour super class) but you also are learning better. Moving physical education toward noncompetitive sports (not 100% but at least somewhat) will engage a larger audience. When I was in phys ed I hated it, I was always on the loosing team, or I didn't play at all. It was about counting points rather than wellness. The teacher cared more about the game and the score rather than the individuals. I realize this is not every gym class. I know I would have been happier if we had been mountain biking, or sailing. Promoting wellness and self esteem in an 'everyone wins' environment makes gym class an emotionally safer place for students.

So now that I've chosen my topic, I'm locked in. I really don't know where this project is going, if it's going to be writing curriculum, looking at in place curriculum and developing a best practices, or is it going to be evaluating the in place curriculum. I must not be the first person on earth to come up with this idea. Somewhere, someone must be doing this already I just have to find them.

East Coast

The old East Coast vs West Coast vs Midwest has reared it's ugly head, before 9am, pre 1st cup of coffee. I didn't even sit down to eat. I took my meal to go. There was no point in arguing with someone about east coast stereotypes when I didn't have the energy. The conversation when a little like this 'So I was in a town the other day and it was very east coast.' another person laughed at the table and asked 'What do you mean?'
'Well it was full of little shops, it was touristy and cute' (facepalm. I wonder what if this person would feel that some rural Vermont roads in spring time were 'cute')
This then sparked a heated debate at the table. If the east coast is cute what does the midwest have? Well what about the west coast?

While this debate was absolutely riveting, I took my cup of coffee to go and ate in the safety of my own apartment.

I am from the east coast, born in raised in a tiny town in Vermont. I grew up skiing, swimming and hiking. Down the road there is a ski mountain which reminds us all where the money is all coming from in the area. My town and the surrounding towns would be even poorer than they already are if the mountain wasn't there. In the spring everything gets muddy and smells bad (did you know that mud has a smell? Trust me it does). Old timers can tell you about dowsing sticks, sugaring and deer hunting. Rural Vermont not only has it's own accent and vernacular but it also has a completely different culture from other areas on the east coast.

Often times when I hear someone describe the east coast, they say the people are closed off, rude and power hungry. Sure there are people like this, but there are people like this everywhere. Another generalization I've found is when people think of the east coast they really mean, New York City, Boston, or Washington DC. They rarely mean Bangor, Maine, Wilmington, NC or Savannah, GA. Same is true for west coast. Heavy hitters are LA, San Francisco, and Portland, OR. They rarely mean Eureka, CA, Eugene, OR, or Tacoma, WA.

Making generalizations about east coast/ west coast/ midwest is ridiculous. Just as my town in Vermont totally different from Boston, which is also again different from Ellsworth, ME, so it is everywhere. To describe a coast about the only thing you can say is that is nearer to either the Pacific or the Atlantic. Each coast has a host of different groups of people with their own values. My point is that stereotypes about such large areas (or stereotypes in general) inaccurately portray the smaller components of a place. The East Coast, West Coast and Midwest are BIG places. Don't scale them down to one or two general sentences.

Oat Harvest

The garden has some potential, as I last posted. Mostly it lies in the oats. Right now they are at the perfect time for harvest. They're easily picked off the plant by running your hands over the stalk. There are other ways to harvest oats than hand picking the grain from the stalk. Another way is to cut the stalk at a uniform length. This was traditionally done with a scythe. Picking by hand takes longer, however you're eliminating the need then separate the grain from the stalk.

 Me, hand picking oats

 It's one step closer to oatmeal! 

The process is never ending. 

The oats were perfect to pick, but they needed to dry for a few days before we could remove the hard shell (chaff) from the inner grain (oat). We brought them inside where we laid them on a sheet. 

Oats with the chaff still on.

Drying oats

So many oats...

The next step in the process is to let them dry until the oat kernel is rock hard. From there we go about threshing the oats. Threshing is removing the chaff (that hard outer layer) from the grain. Once you thresh the oats, depending on your method of threshing, you may have to winnow the oats. When one threshes grain sometimes the chaff and the grain are mixed in a big pile. The point is getting the grain away from the chaff. Nobody likes to eat the chaff. Winnowing is traditionally done on a windy day and the grain is poured from one bowl to another and the wind pushes the lighter chaff and the grain continues to fall straight. After winnowing there should (cross your fingers) be a pile of oat groats ready to eat! I've been thinking about making oat flour and using it in bread or pancakes. Honey bread made with oat flour, or having a few oat groats for texture sounds delicious to me. 

Keep in mind this whole oat business is an experiment. We are still have a long way to go to pick all the oats, and probably won't get to all of them. The idea is that we want to try to get some oats and hopefully be able to make a few things in the kitchen for groups. The plan is to never have the oats milled, and they will always remain oat groats. The reason for this is to save on cost. You can buy a grain mill for about $100. This is a great purchase if you know you're going to be harvesting oats every year. But for our trial run I think that it's best if we harvest oats using hard work and brain power rather than buying expensive, but helpful, products. 

Sense of Place: The Garden

In keeping with my sense of place theme, I've been working in the garden. The garden is a great place to bring students to start connections. Taking part in the entire process is immensely rewarding. Getting a garden ready for spring, planting seeds, weeding, watering, harvesting and eating the food gives ownership to those who took part in the work. Gardening also teaches those who work on it patience and not to rely on instant gratification. Food tastes better not only when it's fresh but when you know how much work you put into it. Waiting for a tomato to ripen or a pumpkin to grow is fun. It takes time to watch the change, but it happens.

Those who have anxiety about connecting with natural areas might have an easier time connecting to a garden. While the garden isn't wild it teaches people how to care for other living things, and in response the garden grows. It can also teaches people what happens when it isn't cared for. Knowing where food comes from isn't always apparent to people. Summer squash, lettuce and green beans aren't magically grown in the store but instead outside. Just as chicken doesn't come from the Styrofoam it sits in or the factory that packaged it, it came from a real live chicken. More opportunities to connect to where food comes from means people are more thoughtful about the food they buy. For this exact reason, I love farmers markets.

Garden where I grew up in Vermont

The place I work has a garden. It unfortunately wasn't taken care of, and so the first emotional connection I have to the garden is one of sympathy. The beds were overgrown, some didn't even come up they were so choked with weeds. About the only things that were OK were some tomatoes, broccoli, and squash. I saw that there were some dried pea and bean plants, but mostly everything was grass. The year before when there was someone to care for it they had taken 450 pounds of food out the garden. This food when then used in the kitchen and served to the students who were staying at the facility. This year they had only taken out about 4 pounds. Not enough to make a significant impact. The garden itself was in a sad state visually. Grass was everywhere. When we started to work on it, the best idea we had was to use a lawn mower and mow some of the beds.

But there was a glimmer of hope. They didn't plant the whole garden, be it for crop rotation or because they figured it might be too much work. Instead of trying to weed half a garden for no good reason an entire season, they planted oats instead. Many people use oats as crop cover. As a plant they need almost zero maintenance, they cover the ground and don't allow for weeds to come in, and then they die back about the right time. I thought to myself 'What does one do with whole oats?' I found out that once you separate the grain from the chaff they are called oat groats and can be eaten very similarly to oatmeal. It doesn't need to be milled, another thing that surprised me is that you can buy them just like that. I always thought of oats as needing to be milled. Apparently not. My hobby this fall I think will be trying to get oats to a state where they can be eaten. I will have more posts about my experiments with this process. Stay tuned!

A Sense of Place

There is a movement happening within schools, both public and private, to encourage children to connect with their immediate environment. This has come as a result because when a school does environmental curriculum they learn about far away places and their problems. Kids effectively connect more to penguins and tigers than they do animals that might live in their own back yard. They also learn more about destruction of the rain forest or desertification on the outskirts of the Sahara than they do about clean groundwater in their community. This leads to some huge disconnects. First of all, once the curriculum about the rain forest is over the kids are going to be more challenged to continue to connect to a place that is thousands of miles away and completely different from what they're used to. Second of all, once they loose that connection why should they care, how does the extinction of the polar bear affect them?

Now instead imagine northern New England. A place where there are oak, maple, aspen, fir and pine, rolling hills, deer, moose, bobcat, lynx, and coyote. Children from this area can learn about the forest in their back yard. Learning about the trees and making maple syrup will build stronger connections to the environment. Their woods are no more or less important than the rain forest. They can also learn about environmental problems such as honey bee die back, which has been proven to be caused by pesticides. The idea is that these things they can touch, smell, taste, see, and hear. It has been proven time and time again that anyone learns better when they use more senses to learn. Also when the curriculum is over, they will continue to see the forest, or even better visit the forest. Learning about the fall and why the leaves change or spring when the leaves come back out isn't an intangible topic, because in the kids minds IT REALLY HAPPENS!

Children up until almost 8th grade have a hard time with abstract concepts and so starting an environmental unit with 10 year olds 'Ok kids imagine a place thousands of miles away in the middle of the ocean...' you've already lost your class. If a kid has never even seen the ocean, this isn't an effective way to connect kids to that place. It works so much better when you start your lesson with 'Ok kids, we're going outside where you're not going to have to imagine anything because we are studying maple trees you can touch them, see them, measure them, and then we're going to make maple syrup!'

Giving children, or adults, a sense of place is very important. It means that they feel as if they belong and are connected to a place, be it in the forest, one spot, or a trail system. They feel as if they are part of the interactions that take place there. I have been working to feel a sense of place in Wisconsin. Going out and being somewhere, looking closely, sitting, listening, and setting down roots in just one place is important. Those who care and are deeply connected to a place are more likely to hold on to their understanding of that place than those who learn about a place they aren't connected to.

What's in a Name?

You may, or may not have noticed that I changed the name of my blog. It was originally Mal Integre which when translated from french means 'poorly integrated'. I realized that this wasn't how I felt anymore. After returning from Benin I did feel that I was poorly integrated into American culture. I still don't feel that I'm a run of the mill blue collar american, but I also feel much more at home here. So I've changed only one letter, Mel Integre, I have found my own integration and place to belong.

Fear not the web address will not change it will still be malintegre.blogspot.com

The Hodag

In Wisconsin there is a mythical beast. Much like Sasquatch, The Jersey Devil or Chupacabra, this creature spends the vast majority of it's time in the imaginations of the people who live there. Locals dream about them, they 'see' them and give them human attributes. Some are just creatures seen in passing, others seem to have motives. The Pope Lick Monster lures young people to cross a high trestle only to meet their death when the train crosses the trestle. Most cultures have local legends which are part of their culture. Those who study these mythical creatures call their science cryptozoology. Now before you criticize and scoff remember, the Giant Squid and the Okapi were both animals that were only thought to be myths for a time.

Wisconsin has the Hodag. The Hodag was seen in the woods around Rhinelander it apparently was found and then blow up with dynamite after the hunting party was terrified by it, in 1893.

The Hodag has had a few sightings since one was used as an experiment with explosives. The image above was a hoax in 1896. I'm sure some people had a grand time putting this guy together. It is said to be extinct as it's main diet of all white bulldogs (thank god Woody and Buster are black AND white) ran out. What was the Hodag eating before there were all white bull dogs around? Seems to me that the Hodag has a very limited pallet.  

While the actual species may or may not be extinct, the Hodag lives on in the imaginations and hearts of Rhinelander residents. He is the mascot for the local high school, a country music festival is named after him and the local farmers market got it's name from him. There are several sculptures of the Hodag around Rhinelander. Making him a friendly welcoming beast to the town. 

I think that's it's great when a town embraces their culture no matter how quirky. Vermont has two lake monsters Champ and Memphre. It only adds to the appeal of an area. So if you're ever in Rhinelander, Wisconsin be sure to look for the Hodag, or go see the numerous artistic representations.  

The Students are Here!

All 61 students arrived yesterday. 40 girls, 21 boys, and each brought approximately 2 parents/ friends/ siblings. This meant that approximately 180 people were shuffled through the registration process, and the dorms. They got their students moved in and set up for a semester. I, along with two other graduate students were responsible for meeting, greeting, and directing 120 of those people from 9am until 5pm. They're walking around, still have the stars in their eyes and are all interested in making new friends and finding their place here.

Looking at this from the perspective as a student this is perhaps what the day might have gone like:

5am: Wake up and drive for about 6-10 hours. You planned to sleep during this time but you can't because you're so excited.
11am: Still with mom, dad, and little brother walk around and register. Lots of forms and paper pushing which mom sorted out before you even got here. You and your parents gawk open mouthed at the facility
noon: Lunch time! Eat lunch with other students and their families. Feel overwhelmed
1pm: Health screening! For 15 minutes talk to the nurse, potentially about embarrassing things you might have such as asthma, your medications, and have to listen to your mom say 'I don't feel comfortable with you giving my child such and such'
1:30: Go see your room! Be greeted by a graduate fellow (me!) and be shown your room, be asked the usual questions "do you have any contraband items?" or my personal favorite "do you have any questions" and while you're trying to process the HUGE amount of information that is in your head and thinking of a good one your mom instead says 'I have some."
1:30-2pm: Take a tour of the building with mom while dad and little brother lug things upstairs and pile them in no semblance of order outside your room completely in the way. Your mom is asking lots of embarrassing questions which you don't care about like 'where is the laundry?' 'can they cook?' 'What will the food be like?' or making statements like 'oh hunny look! a drying rack so you can air dry your bras!'
2-3pm: Mom helps you unpack your things, she makes your bed nice (the ONLY time it will look like this), puts your toothbrush in the toothbrush holder, and folds the clothes in the drawer. Dad and little brother are sitting on the common area couches.
3-5pm: During this time you're all unpacked, and now lots of other girls have arrived and they want to meet you, to talk to you. Your parents and little brother are going to tour the facility and make you know where you're going. They also leave during this time.
After they leave and before anything else happens: You're stuck. You don't know anyone. You try to be nice, cool and accepting during this time. You look at the other girls dorms and assess their sense of style by what they're wearing and how they've decorated their rooms.
5-7pm You do an opening ice breaker with the whole group which makes everyone feel uncomfortable, awkward and potentially a little inadequate. You eat dinner and everyone makes small talk with each other.
After that opening ceremony and bed!

While looking at it from this perspective the kids are still on information overload and we're trying to squeeze in as much as we can. They still walk around with stars in their eyes, they don't see themselves as part of place yet and they're curious to get the year started. I could see myself in the students. When I was a freshman in college I remembered leaving my parents and having that same scared but excited look on my face. I'm looking forward to seeing how these students learn and grow throughout the semester.

Dyscalculia

How many people have you heard ever say 'oh I have number dyslexia'? I bet there are a few people. Guess what? It's its own thing. It is called dyscalculia, I know it kind of sounds like Dracula, but trust me it's not a vampire related learning disability. If you haven't put a face to this learning disability yet, I have dyscalculia.

I have struggled with math all my life. This is not an exaggeration, I really have. In high school I understood the processes and what to do to solve problems, but on tests and homework I would do all the right work, but my answer would be wrong. I know many of you are saying 'Well there are lots of kids who do that' but do they transpose numbers much like someone who has dyslexia would transpose letters? Do decimal places come and go? Do negative signs pop up and disappear in places they shouldn't? I was often told to double check my work. I would solve the same problem the same exact way six different times and end up with six different answers. I was also told to work slower, but no matter how fast or slow I worked it didn't matter. I could retake tests multiple times, but still nothing really helped. My teacher in high school once told me, 'Melissa, your work is all correct, you're doing it right, it's just the answer that you're having the problem with. I don't understand it'.

I passed math well enough to graduate and go to college and I took my last math class, and struggled once again through chemistry (this can be a story in and of itself so I'll spare you the painful details of my college chemistry experience). In my freshman year in college I took a work study position basically pushing papers around in the Disability Centers office. I said something once to my boss that I hated math and she asked me why and I told her, in jest, that I had number dyslexia. She told me that I should look up dyscalculia because it was a thing that I should develop strategies for if I hadn't already.

Reading the symptoms was like reading a book about my life and math. What kills me is that nobody really knows about it beyond a handful of people. Teachers now still don't know what to look for and how to recognize it. Kids all the time are slipping through the cracks. Apparently the national average of students who have dyscalculia is 1% over half of those students were previously diagnosed with ADHD. I feel that this number is much too low and the reason is because nobody knows that it's a thing to look for and document. Or if they do know to look for it's because the student is already having trouble.

So the reason why I wrote about having dyscalculia is because nobody knows about it. So, now my blog readers, you know. It's a thing.

Wallyball

You might ask... What is Wallyball? I would tell you that it possibly one of the most fun games you can play! Completely absurd and hilarious all at the same time.  I discovered this amazing game here at grad school. I know I should be studying, but wallyball is a great distraction.

So Wallyball is a game much like volleyball. There is a net, players on either side volleying the ball to win points. However, what makes the game more fun is that you play it in a racquetball court and can bounce the ball off the walls. You can also get the ball up and over the net by bouncing it off any part of your body hands, feet, head, shoulder, knee... I'm sure you can see how hilarious the game gets.

My friends and I have found that we really enjoy playing wallyball as a way to unwind from our day. I usually laugh so hard I cry at least twice a game. I've also noticed that it's a great workout. Lots of jumping, arm swinging and moving around all the time. We usually play for a couple of hours. If you ever have the chance to play wallyball you should, so much fun is waiting to be had.

My Parents Came to Visit!

My parents decided that they were going to take a weekend to come see me. I had only one big request. That they bring the dogs. They brought the dogs along with lots of other things that I asked for. 

Woody riding in the car on the way here. Looking out the window.

 

Buster would actually prefer to fall asleep when he gets in the car.

They arrived and I gave them a tour of the place with the dogs.

My dad and I in my kitchen

On Saturday we also toured Bond Falls.

This is my deck. Makes me laugh all those people who would call in at Okemo asking if their room had a 'deck' and would get SUPER mad when it didn't. I didn't even ask for one and I got one! Everyone has some sort of patio/ balcony though.

My room

Laundry room below. 

Living space.

Dining area

My drum found a place above the gas fireplace!

My car Otis has a garage!

 



Fire pit in the common area.

Boat launch.

Recreation Center

Garden, it used to be a softball field.

Dogs were tuckered out!

Walking into my dorm, my apartment is up the stairs to the right. 

Knitting

Many of you may or may not know that I enjoy knitting. I learned to knit from the internet, no joke. I've knit lots of hats, mittens, gloves and scarves.

Friends/ co-workers at Okemo last winter were having a baby. I knew that mom-to-be had admired my knitting for a little while. So I figured I would knit them a baby sweater. It zips in the back so that the little guy can't wiggle out of it too easily. I wasn't able to see the baby in the sweater though as it was knit for a larger than newborn but they did send me pictures of him wearing it. What a cutie!

 

Coincidentally, this is a family knitting pattern. All babies born my generation and after have all received this same sweater knit may times. Glad that I was able to pass on a family tradition! 

Packing in the Porcupines

My friends and I this past weekend decided that we wanted to hike. I'm not talking about a measly two miles in, pitch a tent, get out the 24 pack of beer and have a campfire. I'm talking an 8 mile hike where at the end you have your campfire but your dinner is pasta sides because you didn't want to pack anything else in. I wanted to come home sore, tired and content.

And so a hike was planned. We headed a little ways north to the Porcupine Mountains. We started along a river and hiked about 7 miles to the shore of Lake Superior. Coincidentally, we were on the North Country Trail which is where we hiking before while visiting Marquette, Michigan. The Porcupine Mountains are very old growth and the forest feels that way, old. It has history and it commands respect. The trees were mostly deciduous and hemlock, it would be beautiful in the fall. After hiking for 7 miles along the river we saw Lake Superior. Lake Superior looks like an ocean, in fact it has tides.

The Porcupine Mountains have campsites ready to go with bear hangs set up. We got to one we had heard was nice but unfortunately it was taken, along with every other campsite along shore. Thankfully we had a back country permit (necessary when going camping in the Porcupines) which allowed us to camp anywhere we wanted as long as we set up a bear hang and didn't have a campfire. So we set up our camp along the shore. We couldn't find a clear spot because there were so many thimbleberries we ended up just putting the tent right on top. Unlike raspberries or blackberries their stalks don't have thorns and the leaves are real soft, they also don't get really woody stems.

We cooked dinner on the beach and took a swim. The stars were amazing and the moon wasn't out. We stayed up late taking sips of whiskey with apple juice chasers as we watched the shooting stars fly by. The milky way was also out in it's full glory. A rare sight with all the stars out like that. Very few times do you get such a clear view.

Overall we hiked about 17 miles going in and out. We did a loop going back in along a very muddy trail and then visited a waterfall on the way out. Tired and content, just like we planned, we rolled back into school.

Trips like this remind me of why I am out here learning about environmental education. These wild places have immeasurable value, they add in ways that we wouldn't even expect. What kind of price can you put on a weekend like that? What would you pay to see not one, but many shooting stars? The price: 10 mile hike in, sore feet and exhaustion. I feel that's more than fair.

Water Week

My week at grad school has gone something a little like this: becoming a canoe instructor and getting wilderness water safety certified. A week of water training. In and out of canoes, in and out of the lake. Luckily it was sunny for most of it.

I always assumed that canoeing was this lumbering antiquated way to cross a lake. It was really for those who hadn't discovered kayaks yet. I always thought that kayaks were much easier to handle in the water and went better. Steve at River Sport Adventures definitely showed me wrong. Our beginning course went far beyond anything that I had ever learned at summer camp. We were doing figure 8's, going backwards, learning the best techniques to make paddling easier and we were of course having fun. We spent all day in the canoes from about 9am until 4:30. I got a few blisters on my palms from the paddles but with them just about to worn raw I got my certification. We also did tip tests and T- rescues. A tip test is when you try to flood your canoe while still maintaining a level of control if you've done it right you will still be sitting in your sunken canoe. A T- rescue is what you might use when a canoe has capsized and dumped it's passengers. Another canoe, or two canoes that are still upright will come over and link up creating a raft. They will create the top part of a T shape to the sunken canoe. One of the people who dumped their canoe will stand on the end of the swamped canoe away from the rafted ones. This will cause the tip of the canoe to go in the air. The passengers in the upright canoes will drag the canoe onto their own and once it is fully out of the water they will flip it, and put it back in. Now the hard part comes in, getting the dunked canoers back into their now upright canoe. There are a few ways to do this and none of them are graceful. All of them involve your canoe fighting back and giving you lots of bruises. The canoes just had to remind us of how stupid we were to flip them in the first place. However after two very tiring days that was done.

Then we had a day of rest, and did paperwork while our muscles stopped screaming.

It was then time for Wilderness Water Safety! We all basically became backcountry lifeguards. I have never been to a lifeguard certification class before. Honestly the thought of saving someone in the water is downright terrifying. It still is. I've actually avoided getting lifeguard certified so that I wouldn't ever have to feel like I was the responsible one. I learned how to successfully carry another person into shore, how to find them on the bottom of a muddy lake and still I feel that everyone should be wearing their life jacket... even while swimming. 12 people in the water at once is a huge deal. just wear your life jacket and make it easy on me. Thinking back on some of the things I've done makes me cringe.

Overall good week of training and lots of knowledge that was passed on. Thanks grad school for seeing that this was valuable to our training and knowledge bank!

Grad School: More Commitment

This past week my friends and I here at school all worked hard. We had a final to study for, after only two week of class. Our accelerated ecology course was the first environmental science course I took since graduating college in 2008. Three hours of class every day and a lab after lunch left little time for the information to truly absorb. We were all feeling a little strung out.

The final itself was set up differently from any other final I have ever taken. The professor had at the beginning of the course in his syllabus had 33 different questions all relating to main topics and ideas of the course. On final day each student was going to draw a question at random, it could be any one of the 33 in the bucket. They would then have 5 minutes to answer the question to the best of their ability, making sure to hit on key points presented during lecture. Other students would then be able to add to the discussion, as long as they were keeping on topic and adding positively to final. The final is 75% of your grade, 25% is class participation. That's right, you have ONE SHOT to impress the professor enough to get a good grade.

My friends and I studied hard the week before the final. But keep in mind a week before the final we only had half the information to answer the questions. We would do some alone studying and then get together and study in a group. The group study proved to be very useful. However, it was clear that the reason why it worked so well was because not one of us hadn't studied before hand to get the most information.

On final day I felt that I did pretty well. I got in, answered questions to completion and got out feeling like weight had been lifted off my shoulders. But the coolest thing was that everyone had clearly taken this final seriously and wanted the best grade they could get. The level of commitment from the fellow students made me feel honored and humbled (I know, opposing ideas) to know that I was part of this amazing group. We are all committed to learning and are taking the opportunities we've been given seriously. This makes for a productive learning environment. I couldn't ask for a a more worth while place to go back to school!

Hiking in Marquette

Last weekend I went hiking in Marquette, Michigan along the coast of Lake Superior. I really didn't expect much other than a very large lake and some trees, but the area surprised me. It was 45 minutes west of Munising, Michigan where Pictured Rocks are located. (See previous post). It looked a lot like the rocky coast of Maine. very beautiful. The trail we were on was the North Country trail. It was running along the coast of the Upper Peninsula of Michgan. North Country Trail which I didn't know until just now when I went to look it up and put on my blog either starts/ ends in New York along the Vermont boarder and begins/ ends in North Dakota. It is 4,600 miles. This is Longest National Scenic Trail. Coming from Vermont where we have the Long Trail and the Appalachian Trail I have a soft spot for long distance hiking trails.

Ok North country trail folks, it would be SUPER cool if you could connect this to Killington Peak in Vermont so that on the top of Killington could either go North to Canada, East to Maine, South to Georgia or West to North Dakota. Although after looking at this map it's far from complete. I'll have to do some more research on this trail...

This is along Lake Superior

We climbed a hill we lovingly named sugar cube.

We then hiked inland and stayed at a lake. On the way out we climbed this hill!