In Praise of Outdoor School, Ed Holzberger, Classen SAS and Oklahoma City Public Schools

This past Wednesday, my 11 year old son and I were on a three mile hike in the Arbuckle Mountains of south-central Oklahoma, heading to “three falls” about a mile from from Camp Classen. I turned to him and said, “Wow, isn’t this amazing? Just think, you could be sitting in school today, and here we are hiking in the woods… But wait a minute, you ARE in school! We laughed and continued on our hike to the falls with about 35 other classmates, parents and teachers.

Thanks to the hard work of many teachers and parents, 148 sixth graders from Classen School of Advanced Studies (a public magnet school) in Oklahoma City Public Schools spent a VERY memorable 4 days together in “outdoor school” this week learning about geology, meteorology, hydrology, fossil hunting, and much more in the best science classroom of all: The great outdoors! Here are a few highlights and reflections from our week of outdoor camp.

Water and rain played a big role in our week, but thankfully it did not impede any of our major activities. On our “three falls” hike, we had to ford or otherwise walk across streams (on rocks or logs) six different times. This was a novel experience for MANY of the students in our group, and probably some of the 28 adults who were sponsors and chaperones. It reminded me of backpacking on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, where (in the summer of 1987) I spent many hours hiking up river valleys and crossing streams. No, the topography of the Arbuckles does not equal New Zealand– but few things can beat the opportunity to experience the challenges and thrills of the great outdoors firsthand, wherever you may live! Many of Alexander’s classmates at Classen may never get a chance to hike in New Zealand, but now they can all proudly say they’ve been hiking– a LOT– in Oklahoma’s Arbuckle mountains!

Our activities were organized on a “matrix” schedule designed by Mr. Ed Holtzberger, who has been taking Oklahoma City Public School students to outdoor camps for several decades. I really can’t praise “Mr. H” enough, along with all the other teachers from Classen SAS who made this week possible. While my son has had a variety of previous outdoor experiences thanks to his involvement in Boy Scouting as well as our own family camping trips, it was phenomenal for him to be able to experience “outdoor school” with his new Classen classmates and be exposed to so much contextually-rich, experiential learning in one of the most beautiful parts of our wonderful state. I wish every student could be so fortunate to have a “Mr. H” working MANY, MANY extra hours to provide an outdoor school experience for so many students and parents. It was a week I’m sure we’ll never forget.

Our first scheduled activity was boating on the waterfront, in rowboats and canoes.

For the majority of boys in our cabin (14 in all) this was their first experience paddling or rowing on a lake. No one capsized, but we did have some high stress levels when a caterpillar dropped down onto the life preserver of one of our students! From his reaction, you’d have thought a crocodile had his leg in his jaws! Lots of memorable experiences were had by all, and many of the most memorable were not expected or predicted! When you get a group of students, teachers and parents together in an environment like this with a flexible schedule for learning, amazing things are bound to happen — and of course, they did!

The archery range was definitely a favorite of many of our students this week. Again, many had never had an opportunity to shoot a bow and arrow previously. The archery range was always open for use during free time, and just required a parent to supervise and manage the range when students used it. I think our cabin group shot at the archery range at least 4 – 5 times this week, to include a final trip this morning after they finished packing and cleaning up our cabin.

A big highlight was learning about fossils and actually finding them. Most of the fossils we found were crinoids, estimated at 400 million years of age. It’s pretty amazing to find something that old yourself in the dirt, hold it in your hand, and have permission to take it home (up to four per student) so you can show your family as well as examine them further.

Snakes and other creepy/crawly animals and insects are always a sure way to get the attention of young people, and Mr. Preston did a great job sharing his knowledge and collection of snakes with our kids. Some students were able to hold snakes. Usually each one would ask as they received the snake, “It won’t bite, will it?” to which Mr. Preston would truthfully respond, “Now I didn’t say that…” (No one got bit, however.)

Mr. Preston’s presentation on “skins and skulls” was one of my personal favorites. This next photo is Alexander with Mr Preston, with Alexander holding a black bear skull (which has molars as well as carnivore teeth, since it’s an omnivore) and Mr. Preston holding a wolf skull, which just has flesh-tearing and eating incisors since it’s 100% predator.

In this next image, Mr. Preston compares a wolf skull (on the left) with a much smaller coyote skull (on the right.) What a difference!

Here are two of my favorite images from the week: This is Mr. Holzberger teaching the kids on the fossil hike about the age of our earth. This is an image of an amazing science teacher, teaching in what must be one of best science classrooms in the world for geology: the Arbuckle mountains!

In this activity, students took 1 step for every 100 million years of earth history, and Mr. Holtzberger had different parents stop and remain at different key times in geologic history. This was a great method for trying to help others visualize just how HUGE geologic time is, especially compared to our short, human history.

I really enjoyed leading some optional geocaching activities for campers and parents on both Wednesday and Thursday. These were the GPS units we used: Five Garmin eTrex units and my Garmin eTrex Legend.

Our groups found four of the five geocaches hidden by Camp Classen staff around the camp. They used small Pelican cases for their geocaches, and each was secured to the ground with a metal wire and stake to prevent it from “walking off” with a camper or an unsuspecting muggle.

One of the caches had not been properly closed by the previous finders, and the effects of water as well as bugs made a clear visual aide for making the point to our students: Be sure to securely close the geocache after you sign the find log!

I could recount more experiences and memories, but I’ll close by again noting how VERY appreciative I am to Mr. H, Mrs. Carlton, and many, many others who made this week’s outdoor school experience possible. Alexander and I are quite proud to now call ourselves Classen Comets, and we’re likely to never forget this week’s experiences in the Arbuckles with his Classen classmates in the Class of 2016!

Technorati Tags:
camp, learning, okcps, oklahoma, oklahomacity, school, outdoor, classen, classensas, sas, arbuckles, arbuckle, ymca

If you enjoyed this post and found it useful, subscribe to Wes’ free newsletter. Check out Wes’ video tutorial library, “Playing with Media.” Information about more ways to learn with Dr. Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after.

On this day..

• Thankful for Brave First Responders in Las Vegas – 2017
• AirDrop Video Sharing, 5 Photo Stories and Narrated Slideshows – 2013
• Devastated at the Forced Closure of the OKC Coworking Collaborative by US Fleet Tracking – 2012
• Reflections on Unlimited Petroleum Wealth from the Persian Gulf – 2011
• Flying Home From Doha [Narrated Slideshow] – 2011
• Platform agnostic developers will help redefine print and literacy – 2010
• Read Free Online Books at the International Children’s Digital Library – 2010
• Dean Shareski at ITSC 2010 – 2009
• Incentive for better learning about communism, capitalism, and government – 2009
• Evidence Bing is Lame – and Google Search Rocks (a NY caller asking for AOL Press) – 2009