Been a story making the rounds nationally and locally about a program called Nature's Classroom. Basically it's a place (there are multiple locations) where schools send their students for a few days for what is supposed to be fun mostly outdoor based education.
Most of it is centered around the environment and ecological education. But at night there are other programs.
Each night parent volunteers arrive to eat dinner with the kids and act as chaperones within the cabins where the kids sleep.
The program that caused some controversy was something called "Underground Railroad". My sons attended Nature's Classroom when they were in the 5th grade along with most of their classmates. This happened to be three years apart. I volunteered and chaperoned one night for each son. It just so happened that both times I went was the night they did the "Underground Railroad".
Now the experience being reported in the local papers that has parents upset is basically this. Students were pressed into the role of playing slaves in this exercise, including African-American students. The experience of coming over on a slave ship was re-enacted along with the experience of being a runaway slave trying to escape to freedom on the underground railroad. Staff members, playing the roles of overseers, slave catching posses, etc. tried to demonstrate how scary this experience was and were abusive in their language. It was inferred that the "n-word" was directed at the students. Students (in this case 7th graders) felt scared and degraded.
Now I have to say this was not the experience I witnessed. Our Underground Railroad experience had all the students (and there were a couple of minority students in the classes but it was basically almost completely white kids) playing the role of runaway slaves. They were supposedly hiding in wagons under bales of hay and blankets (pretend not actual). The parents along with one or two staff members were the "guides" leading them to freedom. Other staff members were the slave hunting posse who stopped the imaginary wagon and were asking about runaway slaves and acting like they were ready to discover the group at any moment. If anyone moved or made a noise the group was captured and "lost". If they stayed silent despite some yelling and staff members getting very close to them the wagon proceeded and then there was a final mad dash to a safe house without getting grabbed by a last group of staff members.
I didn't see if anyone was scared by this. But these were 5th graders. Still it didn't seem like that intense an experience compared to what has been described as what these 7th grade students went through last year. I don't think it impacted my sons at all other than they had a chance to walk through the woods and run at the end.
But then my sons are in their 20's so their experience and the ones I witnessed are far in the past compared to the controversial one that is making the news. No staff member got abusive, and certainly there was no "n-word" thrown around. But like I said it was years ago, and may not have been the same Nature's Classroom site as the one in question.
Still I have to admit to being torn. On the one hand what I saw was nothing like the recent and disturbing experience being reported. But is the experience worth it? We want students to realize that slavery and the abuse (and that is an understatement) of human beings is part of American history. But does this experience really help drive home that lesson? And even if it did, it is not worth scaring or degrading any student to get the point across.
Most of it is centered around the environment and ecological education. But at night there are other programs.
Each night parent volunteers arrive to eat dinner with the kids and act as chaperones within the cabins where the kids sleep.
The program that caused some controversy was something called "Underground Railroad". My sons attended Nature's Classroom when they were in the 5th grade along with most of their classmates. This happened to be three years apart. I volunteered and chaperoned one night for each son. It just so happened that both times I went was the night they did the "Underground Railroad".
Now the experience being reported in the local papers that has parents upset is basically this. Students were pressed into the role of playing slaves in this exercise, including African-American students. The experience of coming over on a slave ship was re-enacted along with the experience of being a runaway slave trying to escape to freedom on the underground railroad. Staff members, playing the roles of overseers, slave catching posses, etc. tried to demonstrate how scary this experience was and were abusive in their language. It was inferred that the "n-word" was directed at the students. Students (in this case 7th graders) felt scared and degraded.
Now I have to say this was not the experience I witnessed. Our Underground Railroad experience had all the students (and there were a couple of minority students in the classes but it was basically almost completely white kids) playing the role of runaway slaves. They were supposedly hiding in wagons under bales of hay and blankets (pretend not actual). The parents along with one or two staff members were the "guides" leading them to freedom. Other staff members were the slave hunting posse who stopped the imaginary wagon and were asking about runaway slaves and acting like they were ready to discover the group at any moment. If anyone moved or made a noise the group was captured and "lost". If they stayed silent despite some yelling and staff members getting very close to them the wagon proceeded and then there was a final mad dash to a safe house without getting grabbed by a last group of staff members.
I didn't see if anyone was scared by this. But these were 5th graders. Still it didn't seem like that intense an experience compared to what has been described as what these 7th grade students went through last year. I don't think it impacted my sons at all other than they had a chance to walk through the woods and run at the end.
But then my sons are in their 20's so their experience and the ones I witnessed are far in the past compared to the controversial one that is making the news. No staff member got abusive, and certainly there was no "n-word" thrown around. But like I said it was years ago, and may not have been the same Nature's Classroom site as the one in question.
Still I have to admit to being torn. On the one hand what I saw was nothing like the recent and disturbing experience being reported. But is the experience worth it? We want students to realize that slavery and the abuse (and that is an understatement) of human beings is part of American history. But does this experience really help drive home that lesson? And even if it did, it is not worth scaring or degrading any student to get the point across.
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