Working for Campus Rec's Outdoor Adventures is great for many reasons but one that I was reminded of recently is professional development trainings. Some trainings I have been a part of in the past were customer service, winter skills, portables (team building facilitation/ activities), and caving, among others. Recently I attended Foundations of Facilitation training and thoroughly enjoyed it. Last semester I took a class on experiential education. This class only had 3 students in it, was largely discussion based, and was taught by the most amazing professor who literally wrote the book on Kurt Hahn (the founder of Outward Bound). It was through this class that I was able to put words, research, and meaning behind experiences that happened to me. To sum it up, I had participated in a month of travel and a month of wilderness, and found myself dramatically happier, healthier, more resilient, confident... than I had been before. This class hit me: I felt deep down, to my truest core, that I so believe in this type of education because of my amazing experiences with it. Something that was really reaffirmed for me when I took this class is that experiential education is a process. Developing non-cognitive skills such as empowerment, resilience, independence, compassion, courage, and so on... can not simply be bestowed on a person. Development and self-growth is a process that must be facilitated (Shellman 2014). As a facilitator, I am extremely invested in how I can make that process as easy (facile = easy in latin), supportive, and engaging as possible for students. Circle back to the Foundations of Facilitation training, and this is the perfect training for me at the right time. The training had a morning classroom session and an afternoon activities (games) session. In the morning session we talked about a number of topics including:
The point was that no matter if you are going into outdoor recreation or not, you gain skills from this job that are applicable anywhere. Working for outdoor adventures is experiential education in itself. Full circle.
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