Today was the first day of our three-day training. In September we conducted the Part A of our training for three days with two groups of twenty each and now are conducting the Part B portion with another three days of training of the same people. Up until today we have been visiting teachers in their classroom and providing feedback on how they are using the SPEC (Student-centered, Problem-based, Experiential, Collaborative) approach in their classroom. The majority of them are doing a very good job, especially when you consider that they have only had three days of training. This morning, before we checked in with them we had them create rebus name tags.  A REBUS name tag is a picture representation of the person's name. It was so much fun to see three different languages at work creating their Rebus'. Using English, Arabic, and French they were very creative in making their name tags. After the check in we put them through a challenge (lesson) where they shared in small groups what the highs and lows of  their experiences have been so far and then they created an annotated "map" of their journey to share with the entire group. We also introduced the use of product exemplars to demonstrate how useful they can be in the classroom. In was a fun and very useful exercise. The debrief (based on the question, "what did you learn or relearn about SPEC/EBD?") was insightful. The teachers appreciated the opportunity to review the nuts and bolts of the approach which took the entire morning.
In the afternoon we put the students through a number of exercises to prepare them for the big challenge that we gave them later in the afternoon. We used the initiative game "Tower of Power" to explore process and the need for a process strategy. After the completion of  that activity we gave them our "process strategy cards" which are eleven cards each containing a process strategy step. These strategy cards were developed by teachers in New England and found useful in planning large group problem solving. We asked the teachers to put them in an order that would work for  them. They could discard some, add new ones, or use some as "wild cards". i.e., use them at any point in the process. They efficiently  completed the task at which point my Lebanese teaching colleague provided them with a Knute Rockne caliber pep talk before handing them their big large-group challenge. They received it at 2:45 PM and have to present their findings to a outside panel at 11:00 AM tomorrow. It will be a hectic morning tomorrow but I am confident they can pull it off. They did an excellent job of "chunking" the challenge and determining the tasks to be completed and questions answered. They are fun group to work with and it is a real joy to work with them. My Lebanese colleagues Nawal and Maha are great and I am confident that they and their colleagues Nayla and Georgette will continue on with the work we have started.
Tonight was restful as we have no special work to prepare for tomorrow. I'll download today's photos and call it a night. Tomorrow is a different story. We'll be burning the midnight oil writing up observations and perhaps even preparing a PowerPoint presentation.

This is the first of a three or four part series on my early ventures in the outdoors.

My love affair with the outdoors started in New York State’s unique Adirondack Park, a region roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts that provides a range of outdoor opportunities, from motorboat camping to remote backcountry adventures. My father’s relatives came up during the days when the fresh air of the region was famous for curing tuberculosis. I never met my great-uncle Jack who succumbed to TB in the 1930’s but his charming wife Marnie became my teacher and friend, sharing many adventures with me – her husband’s namesake – and her great nephew. We lived in an old rundown “camp” (summer home) on the shores of Lower Saranac Lake where Mark Twain had spent the summer of 1901. Lower Saranac Lake was a youngster’s dream. The three or four miles of shoreline at our end of the lake were dotted with about thirty or so private summer homes and a hand full of year-round homes. The other three-quarters of shoreline and the fifty or so islands were “forever-wild,” part of New York State’s Forest Preserve constitutionally protected since 1895. The constitution declares that the Forest Preserve “will be forever kept as wild forest lands.”

It was in this setting that my family, cousins, friends and I explored via rowboat, guideboat and runabout, and later by canoe. My sojourns to the Adirondacks in the late fifties were frequently with my family and the “Mark Twain” camp would be our base of operations. We would rent a small motorboat, then my parents would ferry all our supplies and the five of us kids up the lake to “Gravely Point”. We would set up a primitive camp and, although “Leave No Trace” was not part of our vocabulary, my dad would carefully dig a latrine far from shore and set up our sleeping tents out of view of passing boaters. He was careful to warn us against touching the wall of our canvas pup tent during a rainstorm. Doing so would guarantee a soggy sleeping bag by morning. I’m not sure where my dad learned his outdoor skills because, other than hunting, I don’t believe his family were outdoorsy people. My dad was an avid reader, however, and I still have his Ford Treasury of Station Wagon Living volumes 1 and 2 published in 1957 and 1958. These are classics on how to car camp.

Growing up, camping to me was canvas tents, heavy canvas air mattresses and sleeping bags with pictures of pheasants on the liner, Coleman lanterns, coolers with soggy hamburgers in them, marshmallows and corn on the cob cooked (or was that burnt) over the fire. Swimming half the day away and exploring the rest make up most of my childhood memories of camping. It wasn’t wilderness camping in the contemporary sense but it allowed me to grow up comfortable in the outdoors and loving it.

Next up: College Days, the Formative Experience

 There is a great multi-media graphic on the evolution of Bloom's Taxonomy and one person's current vision. Watch it here. (go the the "More" box on the lower right and click "autoplay" for it to play automatically.) It is well worth the time.

The Adirondack Curriculum Project recently held their 2nd annual Adirondack Day at the Wild Center in Tupper Lake, NY. Over 100 students gathered to share their Student-centered, Problem-based, Experiential, and Collaborative projects with each other. Leading E.D.G.E. is pleased to have played a small roll in training the teachers and editing many of the challenges on their website.

Today had me riding an hour up to International College's Ain Aar Campus. It is a middle school on on the side of a mountain on the outskirts of Beirut. My driver up, Nicholas, was great. He navigates the morning traffic, and you've never seen morning traffic until you've seen Lebanese morning traffic, like a pro. Car lanes appear to be superfluous to the Lebanese. When there are multi-lane roads most of the  time drivers straddle the lanes to have a competitive edge in passing. It is quite hair raising. The other thing that strikes me about Lebanon (at least Beirut anyway) is that the U.S. certainly has no corner on capitalism. I don't think I've ever seen so many billboards and signs promoting things per square foot of space as there are in Beirut. Many of the ads are promoting western clothing, movies, and sporting goods.
Anyway, back to my classroom observations. I arrived at the school and was escorted to the teacher's room. Once inside it was like any teachers' room in North America. Teachers milling about preparing for class, talking about the latest news (particularly the events in Syria), drinking coffee (Turkish coffee that you can stand a spoon up in), and sharing teaching ideas. Of course it was slightly different in that they speak two of three different languages fluently (Arabic, French, and English) and mix and match them sometimes randomly. It is fun to listen to even if you don't understand it. One teacher immediately cornered me and asked me to review her challenge (lesson) on the history of soap making in Lebanon. It was a terrific challenge and is part of a field trip they are going on. I loved it when she said, "I don't want them just going on the field trip for the trip's sake. I want them to have an academic focus." That is something we have always advocated.
After a quick look at the schedule we went to Colette's classroom. Colette is an administrator but like many administrators outside the U.S. administrators still teach. It is a great way to keep the other teachers from thinking that administrators have lobotomies as soon as they leave the classroom. Colette was teaching a math class. The challenge was written in French and although my ability to read French is about 1,000 times better than my ability to read Arabic it is still abysmal. It was a neat challenge having the students figure out some not so obvious ways to address the particular math issues. (My math isn't much better than my French) As I said yesterday, you don't have to know the language to see whether they are using the tools and techniques you have been teaching them. Colette definitely was. We visited two other classes one focusing on observing decision making through story, and the other was an Arabic class. They both exhibited lots of the things we had taught them.
The day flew by. It seem we were either doing observations, meeting with veteran teachers we have trained on earlier trips, or eating. That's right, eating. When I arrived in the morning Narwal made sure we ordered lunch. I encouraged her to order some Lebanese food for me. Later I found out that Colette, as Assistant School Director, provides breakfast for the faculty once a year. This year everything came locally. The vegetables (radishes, mint, lettuce, mini-tomatoes, and scallions) came for teachers' gardens. (the season allows for year around gardening) The cheese and humus (or was it the yogurt?) came from a local convent. The bread looked like pita that was over inflated. (I mean way over inflated) Of course it was delicious and I was stuffed as I trekked off to my next teacher observation. Too soon it was lunch time and it turns out that Narwal had forgotten that we were having the breakfast and ordered me two bowls of Lebanese tabbouleh, (tons more parsley and ton less bulgar than the American version) humus, a chicken wrap kind of thing, and olives. (There are always olives.) I couldn't eat it all.
After all our meetings and visitations I rode back with Hussein as my driver. Hussein has been our driver many times and is the nicest guy you will ever meet. When I said that this might be our last visit he encouraged me to come over for recreation and stay with his family. You can't ask for friendlier people.

Now I'm back in the apartment and we're getting ready to go out to eat once again. (click on the photos below for captions)

Today we visited International College teachers' classrooms who have been through the first three days of our six day SPEC training. We did the first three days of training in September and will do the second three days starting Thursday. I visited classes in the Ras Beirut school (a five minute walk from where we are staying) while Bruce visited Ain Aar campus which is located about an hour from here. It is always fun to see what the teachers are doing and to see if they "get it". Many do, some don't.

The students in this picture are studying Arabic language. Their task was to, in groups of four or five, look at a photo of a bluebird and write about it. I'd describe it in more detail but I don't read Arabic very well (i.e., not at all) and my understanding of the task was interpreted to me by one of our wonderful hosts. You don't need to know the language however to see the tools and techniques that we have taught them being put into practice. As I understood it the different groups were to interpret and write about different aspects of the picture. For example one group was to write about what they specifically could see in the picture such as the bird itself, the tree, etc. Another group had to write about how they felt about the picture. The teacher used a nice warm up activity that only took about thirty seconds but got the students' attention. She used a variety of our tools to get the students working in teams, keeping them focused, and producing quality work. It was great fun to see. You can see in the photo that technology is common here in the way of the Smart Board. Tomorrow we trade places and I go to Ain Aar and Bruce stays in the city. Oh by the way....for those of you in the frosty Northeast USA, it was in the low 70's today with bright sun and no wind. I wore a fleece vest to work but it was too hot to keep on. :-)

After 19 hours of uneventful travel we arrived safely last night at about 9:00 PM (2:00 PM Saturday afternoon EST). Our travels through Toronto and London went very smoothly other  than the fact that we needlessly went through British Customs only to turn around and go back through security to get to our flights. The only problems is that every time I got through security, thanks to my metal hip, I set off alarms and then need a full body pat-down. The Air Canada plane was very plush. First class was exceptionally comfortable looking and was hard to walk through seeing the passengers in full recliner mode and their feet up. Even our class was relatively classy with usb jack to charge our electrical toy of choice and a 110 volt outlet to keep the computer charged. The choice of personal movies was almost unlimited. I watched 127 hours (much better  than anticipated) and The Fighter (outstanding). Our flight from London was late and as a result we were late arriving in Beirut. As usual we were exhausted but weren't too hungry as the airlines kept us well fed. We got to our apartment, got a late snack of local tangerines and apples and watched Aljazerra (English version) news to see the latest regarding international events. Certainly news of demonstrations in Syria to the North and Israel's bombing of the Gaza are of concern but not so much that it impacts day to day life here. We were asleep by 10:00 PM. The first sleep in nearly 24 hours was appreciated. I slept through the night, woke up at 8:00 AM had some breakfast of cereal and went back to sleep until 1:00 PM. We then took a walk and bought some groceries and tonight we will go out for dinner with our host Nayla. Tomorrow we do a series of classroom observations. It is always fun to see how the teachers have taken their new found knowledge and skill and applied it. That's it for now.

Today we closed out our old website at www.realworldlearning.info and moved the domain name here. Please note the new address.
We have been working on this site for quite a while now and it is still a work in progress. Please feel free to make suggestions regarding what you would like to see. Thanks for visiting!

We head to Beirut Friday for what will probably be our last trip working with the faculty at International College. They have been wonderful to work with and their willingness to embrace the SPEC/Critical Skills classroom model has be wonderful.

It has been a hectic week getting ready for the trip, boiling maple syrup, working with Parent to Parent, the Adirondack Curriculum Project's Adirondack Day, and visiting the Visitor's Interpretive Center to brainstorm possible future projects. April brings lots on new projects.

Check back during my trip to see updates.

This is the third and last of a series of old magazines featuring Paul Petzoldt and/or the National Outdoor Leadership School. This article appeared when I was all of two months old. Colliers had long gone out of business by the time I was regularly reading magazines. Paul was 41 years old when this was written. I have to say that I was disappointed by the content. It isn't very insightful as to why people climb mountains. Maybe that's a topic I should tackle in a future blog post. What do you think? Why do you climb mountains?

To read the other articles click on the links below:
Article 1 - Life Magazine - 1969

Article 2 - Field & Stream - 1972