Outdoor Education: Shaping Resilience in the Great Unknown

How many schools can boast graduates who have summited Mt. Tumanguya in the Sierra Nevada? What about Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park? How many students get to sail 50-foot wooden ships from San Pedro to Santa Rosa? Raft down the Klamath River? Surf California’s west coast?

 

Through Poly’s Outdoor Education program, thousands of Poly students have had these experiences and dozens more across California and its neighboring states, as part of Poly’s commitment to educating students both in and beyond the classroom.

 

“It’s one of the reasons I came to Poly,” said Laura Marion, Upper School English teacher and 20-year Director of Outdoor Education, as she remembered her first visit to campus. “Seeing Poly changed what I thought a school could be. For me, the main thing was the Outdoor Education program and the realization that we spend a week of the year not in classes but in the outdoors. And everyone does it!”

 

It’s not unusual for Poly visitors to express amazement at the systematic integration of outdoor education, which is not just an enrichment program but a part of the curricular experience in which all middle- and high-school students participate.

 

An outgrowth of Poly’s mission to “develop the unique intellect, talents, and character of each student,”  the Outdoor Education program complements the rigorous academic program by teaching what cannot be learned in a classroom.

 

“Our lives often feel very controlled,” Marion said, “but in the outdoors, you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s going to rain, or the trail you thought you were going to go on is inaccessible. Maybe an animal is going to eat all your food, and you have to figure out how to work together to adapt.”

 

“Poly's Outdoor Education gives students the ability to develop grit in a new environment,” as Taylor Hathaway Zepeda ’03, P ’38 said, “to work with your friends and your community, to push through things that are new and hard in an environment that you're not used to.”

Education, whether in classrooms or outdoors, begins with unfamiliarity. For students who have never taken a hike, cooked for themselves, or slept outside a building, the wilderness can feel unfamiliar and even uncomfortable at first.

 

“It’s one thing to be in a classroom or on the field,” observed Matt Smith ’03, P ’38, “but it’s another to take a group of people and move them to an entirely different spot and expose them to new challenges. It makes you a tighter community.”

 

When students face difficulties together, they grow together. They come to realize how much they are capable of doing. For Michaela Mares-Tamayo ’99, P ’33, now Poly’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the challenges in the Outdoor Education program were pivotal to the Poly experience.

 

“Outdoor education shaped not only my understanding of my own tenacity and ability to get through various challenges,” she remembers, “but it also shaped my understanding of my connection to my classmates and the way that we could support each other through common challenges.”

 

“My outdoor education experience shaped my friendships,” says Anuj Gupta ’98, who recalls deep conversations under the stars. “I still remember, to this day, talking about religion, talking about our future. I think the setting, being out of your comfort zone, out of the classroom and the campus in nature really prompts some unexpected discoveries.”

 

Anuj’s reflection is only one of hundreds that chronicle what generations of Poly students have learned about themselves, their friends, and the world they live in on Outdoor Education trips.

 

“Something surprising that I learned was just how beautiful the state of California is,” says Mares-Tamayo. “I was born and raised in Pasadena. To actually get a chance to spend a week in all of these different locations throughout the state was something I otherwise wouldn’t have done.”

 

Though Poly is situated in the suburbs on the periphery of the nation’s most populous county, one need not go far to sample the vast wonderland that is California; the state is home to 20 national forests and nine national parks, more than any other U.S. state. 

Not continuing to support the growth of the Poly Outdoor Education program would be a missed opportunity, especially in a world where the importance of conservation becomes more apparent every day. Poly’s Outdoor Education program not only encourages students to enjoy the natural world but enjoins on them the duty of stewardship.

 

“We are members of this bigger environment,” said Matt, “and it’s important that we all appreciate the fragility of the natural world. There’s no better way to learn that than by experiencing it firsthand.”

 

In response to a changing climate, Poly has adapted by bringing into focus the impact that humans have on the world we live in. “We have added more looking at the cost of what we do on our environment,” said Marion. “We try to be aware of the carbon footprint of a trip, or how we pack things so as not to create waste.”

 

Other innovations of Marion’s tenure include the introduction of a Risk Advisory Board tasked with mitigating and understanding the risks associated with outdoor activities and the offering of training in Wilderness First Aid (WFA) and Wilderness First Response (WFR), which equip faculty members better to serve as leaders on trips.

Outdoor education is an institutional experience that Poly community members look on with fondness and appreciation. And at 50 years strong, the program is still growing and evolving. This year, Poly will host its first-ever fifth-grade Outdoor Education trip, hosted by the Catalina Environmental Leadership Program (C.E.L.P.).

 

The upcoming school year will see the inaugural collaboration between Outdoor Education and PolyGlobal: “We’re working on a two-week trip to Namibia,” Marion explains. “It’s a trip all about conservation and sustainability, as well as learning how a country that doesn’t have a lot of resources is able to manage.”

 

A new leadership component to Poly's Outdoor Education is also in the works. Laura hopes to offer the same WFR training that teachers receive to interested students, as well as the National Outdoor Leadership School’s Leave No Trace and Leadership programs. “It’s incredible training,” she said, “and it gives them medical skills that enable them to guide other groups.” Students who completed the forthcoming program would leave Poly with two marketable certifications in a variety of skills.

As we enter the second quarter of the 21st century, Poly’s Outdoor Education program remains as important as ever. In a world where forests and national parks are increasingly unfamiliar to us, the need to reinforce programs that educate younger generations about the world outside their walls is as pressing as ever.

“It’s becoming even more important as we’re becoming more technological, more disconnected,” observed Marion. “This is an antidote to what ails us today.”