Project – June 5-8, 2008
What?
Students took part in a four day outdoor camping, leadership and education program. Participants were kept happy and full with local organic fruit and produce cooked by our Immersed in the Wild chef as expert educators guided them through these lessons:
- Blacksmithing
- Video Documenting
- Outdoor Awareness and Tracking
- Birding
- Climate Change
- The fossil record and past changes the earth has gone through
- Forest and Meadow Ecology
- Watershed Health
- Activism and Non-Violent Civil Disobedience
- Hikes through Giant Sequoia Groves
- Planting 30 Giant Sequoia Seedlings at the Trail of 100 Giants
Why?
Experiential education programs are inadequate in California’s school system. The southern Sierra Nevada region contains many economically disadvantaged communities who are unable to experience the wild places around them. More and more youth feel disconnected from their communities and the natural habitats surrounding them, something that has become know among educators as “nature deficient disorder”. Youth are confined to classroom settings where learning how to take tests replaces opportunities to observe, compare, and comprehend the beauty and mystery of our environment. Immersed in the Wild programs are designed to provide those experiential opportunities for California’s youth.
Who?
12 students from Walt Whitman Continuation High School in Los Angeles joined 10 educators and facilitators at Quaking Aspen campground in the Giant Sequoia National Monument for 4 days of camping, education and exploration.
Where?
Quaking Aspen is located on the Western Divide in the Tule River watershed in the Giant Sequoia National Monument.
