March-April 2000

Character Building in an Outdoor Classroom

By Cathleen Ann Steg
Photographs by Walter P. Calahan

In Winston-Salem, N.C., the local school district and Scout council have formed a dynamic partnership using the BSA's Learning for Life program for character education in classrooms and at special camp sessions.

• School-Scouting Partnership Is a Key to Council Success
• Learning for Life—and About Scouting
• Students, Researchers Agree: Learning for Life's Impact Is Real

It looked like a junior high class picnic at Camp Raven Knob, with lively students in baseball caps, sunglasses, and sandals. It sounded like a picnic, too, as the happy shrieks of wet oarsmen carried across the lake. It even smelled like a picnic, once the adults started cooking chili dogs.

But these seventh graders from Wiley Middle School in Winston-Salem, N.C., were not here just for the fun of it. They were learning. Learning for Life.

'We're building character here'

"It looks like fun, but we're building character here," said Wayne Brown, assistant Scout executive for the Old Hickory Council.

Brown, who has helped introduce the Learning for Life program to schools in North Carolina since 1991, gives high praise to outdoor experiences such as this balmy April event.

A subsidiary of the BSA, Learning for Life supports schools in their efforts to prepare students for the complex world they face. It also brings the values of the Scouting program into the classroom, through a series of grade-appropriate lesson plans that support the school curriculum.

Even better, though, said Brown, "We take the classroom and put it outdoors here at our council camp."

Throughout the school year, Wiley students experience Learning for Life program components in class. Brown and the others on the Learning for Life committee tailor the program to meet teachers' needs.

And several times a year, Wiley seventh graders get to take to the hills near Mount Airy, in northern North Carolina northwest of Winston-Salem, and challenge themselves even more.

The power of teamwork

This spring outing began in the shade of Raven Knob's chapel, where the Wiley students assembled before breaking into teams.

The 100 students were solemn while assistant principal Elaine Pegram led them in a moment of silence "to give thanks for the gifts that we've been given, that we can be here today and be with our friends." They quickly snapped back into lively junior high form when the sound of bullfrogs from the nearby lake broke the silence and the mood.

After dividing into small groups, the students headed off with their adult advisers for the first of eight activity areas. These ranged from rowboating to archery to a low-course exercise in the Project COPE (Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience) area.

Math teacher Fran Travison, leader of the first group to row the boats on Raven Knob's lake, explained that the activities were chosen with challenge in mind.

"Boating is fun, sure, but some of these kids are afraid of the water," she said as she prepared to set out with a trio of girls in one of the boats. "The students get to try things here that we just can't do at school, and they work together as a team to conquer them."

Skimming the water with clean, quick strokes, a boat of boys conquered whatever fears they might have had and easily beat all other teams in a race to the dock.

"We just had the power, the team power," explained students Nick Johnson and Darryl Tuttle.

Dealing with diversity

Working together, even if not with your usual group of friends, is one of the lessons taught in the outdoor classroom. Students may choose one or two friends for their group, but the teachers create the majority of each team.

"Our school is quite diverse," said principal Ron Rash. "So we make sure the teams are diverse, too, with students interacting with some kids they probably don't spend much time with back at school. You really see the benefits back in the halls."

The improved interaction between various groups of students is the main difference between Wiley and other middle schools that do not use the Learning for Life program, especially the outdoor camp session.

Even more, though, "it's the relationship of the kids with the adults in the building," Rash noted. "We can talk to these kids a little differently out here; and when they go back, they will know the adults better, and respect us more."

Total school staff involvement

Rash is committed to including all his staff in the outdoor Learning for Life event. Teachers, secretaries, and housekeeping staff are rotated between the fall and spring outings.

At the spring session, Richard Austin, head of housekeeping at Wiley, ran the Project COPE low-course events. While helping teams resolve their toughest logistical problems, he showed an uncanny ability to give just the right degree of encouragement.

When a group of boys had difficulty figuring out the best way to get each other through a suspended tire swing, Austin refused to tell them how it should be done. Instead, he pushed them to search for solutions themselves.

"You guys are old enough and smart enough to figure this one out; I know it," he encouraged them. When they finally invented a working solution, Austin beamed at them, yelling: "All right! All right!" as the last boy dived through the tire.

Though some events were pure fun, students found themselves pushed to the limit in others. Danielle Prysock lost a shoe maneuvering down a steep hill while roped together with the rest of her team. Holding her bare foot gingerly, she exclaimed: "I almost fainted! My feet are dirty; my shoe slid off; I just got too scared."

Moments later, however, Danielle was helping her team create a bucket brigade in a challenge to fill a leaky barrel with water from a stream.

"Hey, teamwork—let's try some teamwork!" she called out, soothing her feet in the cool stream as she handed two buckets of water to another girl.

Enhancing school life

Positive character traits, such as the perseverance so aptly demonstrated by Danielle, are applied in real-life situations in the Learning for Life program, according to Bill Moser, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County health and character education specialist.

"It's very exciting to see the school and the BSA working together to build character," Moser said as he watched the students at work.

The daily life of these students also is greatly enhanced by what they accomplish at Raven Knob. "Junior high social pressures disappear when students have to help haul each other up over a 12-foot-high wall in the woods," Moser explained.

"Instead of acting older than they really are and talking to only a certain group of kids, they can have fun here and behave naturally," added English teacher Michele Hamby.

What happens on that wall, though, is a lot more than just natural behavior. Though some of the groups managed to grab the attached rope and scamper over, others found it impossible to get every member over the top.

Instead of losing patience with team members who couldn't make it, one group of boys chose to work together, straining their muscles, screaming encouragement, inventing more and more ways to heave the last member over the wall.

Did they make it?

"No," acknowledged Richard Austin with a grin. "I knew that group was doomed from the start. But you know, they were about the best group all day—they were all such good sports."

Finally, as the tired students boarded their buses, Learning for Life staffers enjoyed soft drinks on the porch of the hand-hewn log cabin that serves as Raven Knob's headquarters. They expressed satisfaction that strong messages about character and life skills had come home to the students in every one of the day's activities. Perhaps the strongest message of all, in the words of teacher Fran Travison, was also the simplest:

"Enjoy life—for the good of it."

Contributing editor Cathleen Ann Steg is a volunteer Scout leader. She lives in Fairfax, Va.

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