Journal Entry October 14th, 2015
Today I woke up to Jazzy Jeff in the kitchen whippin’ up
some gravy for some biscuits. Aww Yeah!!!! We slammed some biscuits and then
ran around like a bunch of chickens with our heads cut off trying to pack up
our stuff (at least I was). Sometimes a therma-rest and a sleeping bag are more
tempting than packing up a day pack at 11pm. Today was the first day at
Yosemite National Park and we met with an agency called Nature Bridge. Caleb
and I met with our educator, Deebs, who was in charge of a group of sophomore
high school students from the San Francisco Bay Area. The main activity of the
day was called “take a stand”. In this activity, students would stand in
between two trees, labeled strongly agree and strongly disagree, based on their
opinion on issues brought up by the instructor as well as give reasoning where
they were on the scale. It was really cool to see high school students so
engaged in an activity like that and the level of respect they had for each
other was phenomenal. Our last activity of the day was to help remove the
invasive species, Virginia creeper, from the park. All of the students were
really pumped about it and I must admit that I have never seen a group of high
schoolers so excited about getting dirty and pulling up plants. It just goes to
show that if your instructor is excited, the students will become excited as
well. We finally ate lunch and students reflected on how their week went. Just
by the excitement of the students and hearing how this week opened them up to
outdoor education, you could tell that they were itching to get back. If the
rest of American high schoolers are like this group, we will have a lot less
problems on our hands. It just goes to show what type of impact a program like
this can have in shaping our youth.
Steve Nutt
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