Your Teaching Edge

(Right on the Edge)

Photo from Tom Andrews

As I was sitting on my deck today, after a week of rain and winter storms, doing some reading and enjoying seeing the sun after a week. My awareness of the world around me kept drawing me out of my book. I began listening to the birds sing their songs around me, I began to notice how the light changed as the sun passed behind the trees in front of me, and began thinking about the edges of things. I know that my reading was influencing my thoughts. I was reading about Coyotes (Canis latrans) and how they live on the edges of human society. I began thinking about what edges do we work near with our participants.

As a facilitator I have found that from time to time I get into a routine of doing the same activities over and over. Sometimes because of time constraints, and sometimes from simply not challenging myself. And then there are times when I try out new activities or concepts during a program, either experiential or environmental, and I feel more alive and the programs get great reviews. I have a greater energy after these programs and they often push me into trying even more new things. It is a great re-enforcing system!

I challenge you to explore your teaching/ facilitating edge. Look at what you do that is safe and where you tend to be more restrained in your choices of activities, processing tools, and personal challenges. See if there are activities you use to find daunting, or try a new debriefing style, teach something new to your next field group, or expand your talk on your least favorite nature subject. 

Another way to explore and expand your teaching edge is to dive into the opposite side of where you usually fall in a discussion. Look into the other side of the political spectrum from where you usually look, listen to radio stations or blogs you usually avoid, you get the idea. Take some intentional time and explore your edges, and the edges you provide your participants.

Activities to explore:
ECO-SCULPTURES:
Here is an environmental variation of two classic teambuilding activities: Sightless Sculpture from the New Games Foundation, and Artist, Model, Clay from Karl Rohnke.
This activity allow participants to express themselves in an artistic manner in small groups. Take your group and divide them into smaller groups of 4-6 people. The small groups will be representing environmental concepts by creating living sculptures.

Depending on your group you can decide if you want to let their sculptures make noises. Sometimes being able to make noises makes the process easier, and it can sometimes allow the group to rely on sounds rather than their presentation skills. You will give the groups a topic which their sculptures will represent. I usually give each group 5-10 minutes to create their sculptures. After the creation period, each small groups presents their sculpture to the other groups. Here is a suggested progression that I have found to work well:

1) The Food Chain
2) A tidal pool or pond.
3) Recycling.
4) Sustainability.

You can use this activity in a couple of ways. First, simply as an activity to use in the middle of a program to get creative ideas going. You can also use this activity to recap information from another activity. I use this with kids the day after we go to tide pools and after a day of exploring the forests. I have also given out cards that have things that need to be in a sculpture, and then let the whole group come up with a larger sculpture. It is a way to front-load information before exploring an area.


If you are working in a more traditional ropes course based program, you can also use this activity with a group to get them to focus on certain concepts that may serve them well in improving their performance in your activities. You can also use it as an activity to recap topics that kept recurring through out the program. This activity also allows participants to express thoughts and ideas in a non-verbal method. You could use the following sequence of topics with a teambuilding group:

1) Working a plan.
2) Effective Communication.
3) Leadership.
4) Teamwork.

You get the idea. I have also used this with summer camp staff and asked them to build the following sculptures:

1) Camp Spirit.
2) A safe cabin.
3) What a parent should know about camp.
4) What excites them about this summer.

Websites to visit:
The Association for Experiential Education.
http://www.aee.org/

The North American Association for Environmental Education.
http://www.naaee.org/
Upcoming conferences:

National Challenge course Practitioners Symposium: Feb. 24-27, 2010. Boulder, Co.
http://www.leahy-inc.com/nccps_invitation.php

The Connecticut Challenge Course Professionals conference. March 13, 2010. Windsor, CT
http://www.thecccp.com/

Have a wonderful week and if you have any comments, please feel free to leave them here. If you have any suggestions for future topics or other questions, please email me at: 

asinglefootstep@gmail.com

or visit my website:

www.asinglefootstep.com

As a self promotion bit:

I will be at the National Challenge Course Practitioners Symposium-NCCPS

 February 24-27th, 2010 in Boulder CO. 

On the 24th, as a pre-conference offering, I am running a workshop on 

Ecological Debriefing Methods and Metaphors. 

Contact me for more information. 

The Keeping of Experiences

(The Magic Box-A Keeper of Experiences)

There are times when I have been facilitating a group, either experiential or environmental, and I wished I had either written down the results or been able to video tape a specific experience for the learning that occurred. Years ago a ropes course training company I worked for used to video tape training sessions of new facilitators to be used as review material in the evenings. In many cases people would remark that they never remembered things that they saw on the video tapes. We got wonderful feedback from participants on how the video sessions helped them get more learning from the entire experience.

As many of you may experience when working with groups, either 1-day or multi-day, the retention of learning may not be as long lasting or impact-full as we want it to be. In the traditional days of an Outward Bound course where the group was together for up to 30 days, time for transference was much more available. In the shorter length programs that many of us run, debriefing and creating transference of the experience may not get a sizable amount of time.

I want to present a technique that I have used in both environmental and experiential programs. I call it the Keeper of Knowledge, or simply The Keeper. Before I get into describing the process, let me provide a little background. In working on my masters program in Environmental Studies along with my research on Indigenous Wilderness Skills I noticed that many indigenous cultures had members of their societies who held sacred positions within the community and were responsible for keeping certain knowledge alive. Examples are Storytellers, Fire Keepers, Medicine People, makers of certain tools, and Scouts. These positions were often handed down from generation to generation within a tribe or clan.

I began thinking about how indigenous cultures keep their traditions and how they teach their children. In many cases from the Kalahari to The Americas to Australia, indigenous people used non-verbal traditions to pass on culture and to teach place-based education. While we as facilitators and naturalists do use verbal skills for a large part of our facilitation process, I wanted to add an additional method to help participants retain more of the teachable moments of their programs that would also engage participants.

So what I began doing was creating a role for the group called The Keeper. The role has a very specific task. Wether you are facilitating a ropes course group or working with participants in an outdoor/environmental education program, the role of Keeper can be implemented rather easily. In general I have the position of Keeper be in charge of recording data and important actions. I do provide a note book, or in a few cases I have also provided a digital camera and once a video camera. And there is more to the position than simply recording data.

In teambuilding groups I have either given the Keeper a set of tasks to look for or a set of questions to answer. Some sample questions have been "Who was taking a leadership role?", "What ideas were the group ignoring?", "What are examples of efficient and inefficient communication that you noticed?", and  "How well did the group follow the plan they created?". You can really guide the learning if you want to go that way. And you can also go more towards a participant centered process. If you want to involve the group a little more, have the group create the items that the Keeper will be keeping track of during the activity. This way the group is more involved in their own outcomes and the learning they deem important.

In an outdoor or environmental education situation, I have had the Keeper record the learning points of the day, including items we found on our Discovery Hike. I have also found that the Keeper can record key questions that are asked and also help in getting the group together after an activity to record our findings. For example, I have used the Keeper role after a group has gone tide pooling and we didn't bring our journals down to the pools. But after we all finished exploring, the Keeper was able to help record all of the cool things we had found.

I have found that the role of Keeper can also be useful when you have participants that for any number of reasons, are not willing or able to take part in an activity. It can keep people engaged in the process, and help the group enhance their overall learning and retention levels. Be cautious about letting a single person use this role as a way to disengage from the group. I have found that in many cases withdrawn participants have become involved in the group by way of reporting back to the group on their performance and actually become very vital to the group.      

At the end of your program, make sure your group gets the notes and information collected by the Keeper. A corporate group can continue to review the notes if they are committed to group development, and a school group can use the information in numerous ways throughout the semester. I hope you enjoy exploring how to use Keepers in your programming. Let me know how it goes for you. I look forward to hearing feedback from you.

You can always send in comments, and feedback here on the blog, or email me at:

asinglefootstep@gmail.com

The Group Process

( A group of Naturalists working on group development)

We all work with groups in some way shape or form. Those of you in the teambuilding realm may have groups that last a few hours, a day, several days, or several meetings over a prolonged time. You Naturalists or Outdoor Educators may have a single group of kids for up to a week or maybe only a nature hike. In every case, your group will be in some stage of the Group Process, and may move from one stage to another during your program. Having an understanding of the group process may not guarantee a successful group, but it can help you in understanding their behavior and help you be more intentional about activity selection.  

In 1965 Bruce Tuckman presented a model of group development that was composed of 4 stages. He named the stages Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. In 1975 he added Adjourning to the model. Some folks use the term Transforming rather than Adjourning to keep the flow smoother.  Here is a brief description of each stage:

Forming: 

The group comes together and gets to know each other initially and to form the group. People are usually acting civil, and often people are looking to discover where the physical and emotional boundaries are. 

Storming: 

A chaotic period with individuals vying for various positions, often with a good deal of conflict.

Norming: 

Agreements are reached on how the group will operate as a group with the task(s) presented.

Performing: 

The group implements the behavioral agreements and becomes effective in meeting its objectives.

Adjourning/Transforming: 

The process of transitioning the group into another form or disbanding the group all together and moving on.

At the link above, and here, there is much more on the Group Process model developed by Tuckman. However, in a more immediate sense, this information can be useful for you during programs. These 4-5 stages occur in many ways. If you are working with a group for any period of time, one or more of these stages will be occurring. In a multi-day program for example these stages can occur over the whole time the group is together. They can also occur over the period of a single day. And they can manifest within a single activity. The Group Process is not a simple 1 dimensional, linear process. It can be a multi-layered, constantly adjusting model. And, it does provide us as facilitators- on a challenge course, or with a environmental education group- with a template to work with when selecting activities. 

Do some research using the links provided to deepen your understanding of Tuckman's model. And with the next few groups that you work with keep your awareness on what level of the process your group may be in and which direction are they moving. Also keep your awareness on the behaviors you notice in each stage. Keep notes if you want to on your findings. Enjoy the process!

Some things to try: (remember to sharpen the saw)

Overhand Knot:

This is one of my favorite low prop initiatives. All you need is some space and a length of webbing or rope. I use a piece of cordage (again-webbing or rope) that is about 18-24" long depending on the group.  A 24" piece is good to have because it makes the activity a little easier if you have participants who are bigger than others. I also provide some other pieces of the same length for the group to practice with during the activity.

To start with I gather the group around and show them what an Overhand Knot looks like. If you don't know, it looks like this:

I tell this group that this is the knot they use when they first begin to tie their shoes. This is a hint to the solution. Have the group line up holding hands. Then in the middle of the line have the two middle people break their connection and give them each one end of the piece of cordage. The rest of the line remains holding hands.

The goal of this activity is for the group to tie an overhand knot in the cordage without breaking contact with each other. Also the people holding the cordage can also not let go of the cordage. That includes doing little finger dances to manipulate the cordage into a knot. The only hands that can be used to manipulate the cordage is the two free hands on each end of the group line.  

I do allow participants to break hands in order to plan and strategize with the extra pieces of cordage. Also let the group change who are the people holding onto the cordage and even the lineup as long as has equal numbers on each side of the piece of cordage. Allow this between attempts, not during.

Although this sounds rather simple I have seen groups take more than an hour to complete! Other groups have done it in less than 20 minutes. The key is to monitor the group and make sure they are following the guide lines around letting go of the cordage. There are at least 4 methods that I have seen work for this activity. Be forewarned that some groups can become very frustrated while doing this activity.

Disco Hike:

Todays activity is to take a walk through or around where you work with groups. A good Disco Hike lasts about an hour or 90 minutes. A Disco Hike is not some new dance craze. But come to think of it a Dance Hike could be a blast! A Disco Hike is a Discovery Hike. Your only goals, besides having fun, is to notice more and give your participants an opportunity to get passionate about exploration! If you want to make it more "formal" perhaps make an initial inventory of the things you notice so your group could explore more about the objects they discover later on in your program or when they get home. A Discovery Hike is not necessarily a naming or labeling hike. It is about walking around and looking for cool things to discover. Try and inspire before you label everything.

As you walk around, simply be on the look out for things that catch your attention, and more importantly-catch the attention of your group. It could be something you see, hear, or smell. Then go check it out. Try and resist naming the item. Sometimes I provide just a bit of info such as telling the group that a mushroom is a kind of decomposer. If you want to, write a description of the item or take a picture. That way you can look it up later. Just enjoy the process! Have fun, and maybe get a little dirty. As I am leading a Disco Hike I tell my participants that when they notice something they want to share with the group they should call out "Disco!" and then the group will come to them. I do take advantage of a Disco Hike to point out potentially harmful items such as poison oak/ivy/sumac, and other items like property boundaries or off limit areas.

While you are out on a Disco Hike try some of the following things:

-- Just walk and look. You could even try a walk without talking.

-- Listen for various birds.

-- Notice the birds flying overhead.

-- Look for all things red, or blue, or brown, or orange (natural or man made).

-- Count the conifers in the area.

-- See if you can notice tracks or trails.

-- See if you can notice 10 things you have never seen before.

-- Count cool insects.

-- See if the moon is still out.

You get the idea. If you can, try and make taking a Disco Hike a routine. Maybe take mini Disco Hikes everyday with your group if you have them for a few days, or when you get to a new place. I have also done Disco Hikes when a group returns to an area so we can explore and see if there are any changes or new things to discover.


Connections:
A couple of websites to check out this week:


This website, The Encyclopedia of Life, is the creation of E.O Wilson. Quite a cool place:
http://www.eol.org/


Want to learn some new knots, or forgotten a few? Animated Knots by Grog is the place to go!
http://www.animatedknots.com/

Have a wonderful week and if you have any comments, please feel free to leave them here. If you have any suggestions for future topics or other questions, please email me at:

asinglefootstep@gmail.com

As a self promotion bit:

I will be at the National Challenge Course Practitioners Symposium-NCCPS

 February 24-27th, 2010 in Boulder CO. 

On the 24th, as a pre-conference offering, I am running a workshop on 

Ecological Debriefing Methods and Metaphors. 

Contact me for more information.