owp05

Teaching, Scouting, Coaching, Parenting, and Writing

Pedagogy, curriculum alignment, cultural competency, rubrics and authentic assessment...this is the jargon of academia, but where does real teaching take place?  Prior to my years in college, I had abundant experience working at Boy Scout camps and taught younger boys various skills, like first aid, swimming, life saving, and knot tying.  These experiences allowed me to have numerous experiences with boys ages 7-17.  I was told, however, they were not "valid practicum teaching experiences."

Now, after 18 years of teaching in the trenches in low socio-economic schools and innumerable workshops demonstrating successful practices, I've come to believe that those initial experiences are much more valid when teaching than I ever thought and specifically when teaching writing.  Good teaching includes many natural components of Scouting, coaching and parenting.

Another Time, Another Place

    "It'll take a lot more than one day," Charles chided Alex.

    "It IS a pretty castle, though," Molly added, her eyes wide with excitement and anxiety.

    "It'll be okay, Charles," said Jacob comfortingly. "We'll just pack some extra clothes and food." He turned to the others. "I saw a small handcar near the old station, but the levers are gone," said Jacob.

    "What about the raft?" Alex asked suddenly, sitting up straight in his epiphany. "The sail we used."

    "That wouldn't be too hard to fix," said Charles.

    "Tomorrow, then?" Alex asked.

    "Tomorrow!" the others agreed.

    It took two days to get the handcar to sail, but finally they were ready. They each laid a suitcase on the handcar, stepped aboard and sailed off gently with the constant East wind. The castle was barely seen from across the mist that rose above the early morning waters. The trip across was miles, and the castle was miles beyond that, but if there was an answer, it would be there.  Someone had to know the answers—the life their parents lived before they came to Allistry Island but never told, and the reason for the mysterious train that would drop off passengers who quietly blended into the community.

Great Preparation

Fifth grade was fabulous!  What preparation it was for my life now!  Mr. Haley was my very first male teacher, and he taught us about the same things I loved:  science and technical machine stuff (“technology” wasn’t a word used much then) in addition to math, writing and other subjects.  My dream since first or second grade was to be an astronaut.  I had it all planned out—study as much as possible about astronomy and science in school, graduate and go into the Navy or Air Force and fly a jet, then go on to NASA and go everywhere in space that they sent me.  Unfortunately, that dream was permanently grounded after an optometrist visit at the end of third grade:  I needed glasses!  Dr. Powell rarely had patients bawling on the way out of his office, but I did.  Even then I knew that you couldn’t fly a jet in the Service if you needed glasses—it was too dangerous, and if they broke while flying, it could be disastrous.  But, I never lost my interest for any of it.  To this day, I still have my pages of kid-typed papers of facts from the astronomy books in our elementary school library.

The Trip of a Lifetime

When I was sixteen, Jim, an older friend and mentor, invited me to join him and several friends at a National Eagle Scout Association Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.  What made it particularly unique was that we’d be driving an indirect route from Salem, Oregon, by way of numerous sites—making it quite the sightseeing tour.