Educators Initiative

The Educators Initiative is an innovative program that focuses on professional development for classroom teachers through the lens of experiential education. The educators will use their Outward Bound experience as a catalyst to transform their classroom during the following school year.

Teachers will be immersed in a collaborative environment where firsthand experiences, hands-on learning, and individual and group reflection are designed to foster professional growth and personal transformation. Educators will focus on how to incorporate experiential education into their classroom, while receiving the support of a network of colleagues to assist them in their curriculum development and delivery.

North Carolina Outward Bound is supporting the participants, known as Kurt Hahn Fellows, throughout the school year with regular coaching calls, mid- and end-of-year retreats, monthly meetings, and an online open source “classroom” where educators can share ideas, lesson plans and curriculum.

In addition, the Evaluation, Assessment, and Policy Connections (EvAP) within the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is acting as a research component to the program, using a collaborative evaluation approach (O’Sullivan, 2004) to a) develop evaluation instruments, b) implement data collection, c) analyze data, and d) provide a summary report of findings that highlight program strengths, identify challenges, and consider unexpected outcomes. The findings from this research will be shared within the national educational community, strengthening the body of knowledge that purports the advantages of using experiential education in the classroom.

The North Carolina Outward Bound School has been running educators courses for over 20 years. The Educators Initiative is using the success of these courses as its foundation.

The courses will be eight days long and take place in the North Carolina Mountains. A variety of components will be used to create a framework of collaboration, problem solving and leadership development, and to build a toolbox of experiential education methodology. Throughout the course, skilled Outward Bound instructors will facilitate discussions, workshops and reflection that allow the Fellows to deepen their practice while opening up to new teaching and assessment methods for their classrooms. The course will end with a workshop focusing on the transference of their wilderness experience into their everyday life at school and home.

Get dropped off in the heart of the stunning wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Your journey begins as you shoulder your backpack and learn how to navigate your way through the woods. In the evening, after learning how to set up your tarp and prepare dinner over camp stoves, your group shares their educational philosophies.

A morning hands-on map and compass lesson leads the group into a discussion on experiential education. You and your group use your new skills to navigate, make decisions, and work together as a team. An after-lunch workshop allows team members to share their personal experiences with experiential education in their classrooms.

The challenges increase as your group gains confidence. An invigorating off-trail hike in the morning leads you to a rewarding service project in the afternoon, where you help protect the local habitats of deer, peregrine falcons, and salamanders. After dinner you walk to an overlook to see the star-filled sky and town lights in the valley far below.

An early morning hike brings you a rock face that you climb with the support of your group. A discussion ensues about the use of challenging experiences to foster character development and reach students with different learning needs. In the evening you participate in diversity activities that you can use with your students back in the classroom, then bivouac under the stars.

A new challenge awaits your group with the high ropes course. Only through teamwork and cooperation does your group work their way through the course, and then debrief the experience focusing on the use of metaphor in experiential education. An afternoon workshop breaks the team into small groups to develop experiential lesson plans and a classroom “bag of tricks,” which is then shared with the larger group.

In the morning, a challenging discussion on which trail to take leads to a productive conversation on leadership styles and empowering quieter students in the classroom. You arrive in a beautiful valley where your instructors set you out on an overnight solo, a period of reflection to look at your practice as an educator, as well as reflect on your life and get some rest and solitude.

In the morning you happily rejoin your teammates, share stories and prepare for your final challenge. The instructors step back and let the group use their skills to guide the team back to the Outward Bound base camp. The group arrives triumphant, filled with a new sense of potential. After cleaning their gear and taking an invigorating shower, the team gathers as a guest speaker facilitates the first half of an engaging workshop on how to allow this experience to influence your teaching and classroom practice. The day concludes with a celebration dinner and graduation ceremony.

Refreshed and recharged, the team gathers to complete the Transference workshop. Participants set goals and meet with the Project Manager, who will be working with each school throughout the year. Participants leave as Kurt Hahn Fellows, and the next phrase of the adventure begins!