Singing from the Heart, an Environmental Education by Andrew Vale My Americorps position granted me the incredible opportunity to work outdoors with high school students in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. I spent the summer sharing tenting tips, demonstrating alfresco cooking skills and teaching a science education that can not be relayed in a formal classroom.
The greatest moments were not imparting hard skills and science, however, it was working with teens on an personal level, striving to create a supportive human habitat, an environment where they could feel included, acknowledged and fortified. The courses which I led included lengthy time in the backcountry, foreign foods, no flush toilets and–at first–strange people, all the ingredients of a potentially terrifying nine days in the woods. By encouraging a loving environment however, trip leaders watched a fourteen year-old girl who had feared sleep-overs since childhood ask for more nights away from home. We watched the “quiet one” rise, stick his chest out a few inches further and lead his peers down the trail. We heard the excited story of one girl’s first “cat hole” experience, days after she swore she would never poop minus porcelain. We watched the “lone wolf” decide he did like joining the group at mealtime–turns out, people aren’t so bad. We saw students evade the cliques so painfully prevalent in adolescence and let themselves shine through the expectations placed upon them by frivolous high school social dynamics.
Fostering the framework that coaxed these magnificent personal gains was the true success of my summer. I would be willing to bet every penny of my Americorps education award that students, upon returning to Hartford, Oakland, Sandpoint and beyond, may not remember how many needles per fascicle are present on a Whitebark Pine, but will remember what it means to emotionally extend oneself to others, face a fear, support a teammate and pursue a goal, not because it's expected, but because it makes the heart sing.
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