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| navigate: home: magazine: fall 1999: article | |
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Shaver’s Creek Educating young people to be future leaders By Kerry A. Newman | |||||||||||||||
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“Think globally, act locally” is not just another environmental message point to the staff at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. It symbolizes their philosophy on educating children. At Shaver’s Creek, they do more than educate children at the local level; they train young adults to be the future leaders who will educate the world. “We train the trainers of tomorrow,” said Shaver’s Creek director Gerald “Corky” Potter. “The one thing to keep in mind when thinking about Shaver’s Creek is that it is a training center—training is our core value.” He adds that Shaver’s Creek cannot focus solely on educating the youths of the community and the state but must think more globally toward training the future trainers who will potentially impact hundreds and thousands of children. The impact of the center’s outreach to the state and community is twofold—Shaver’s Creek helps enrich the lives of program participants while allowing the students to help facilitate the programs and develop their teaching skills. “Shaver’s Creek was created to be a place where, in the field, we could practice what we learned in the classroom,” Potter said. As a Penn State laboratory facility, Shaver’s Creek falls under Outreach and Cooperative Extension’s Division of Continuing Education. Nestled deep in the Stone Valley Recreation Area in Huntingdon County, the center offers recreational access to hundreds of acres of woodlands and the 72-acre Lake Perez. Amid the calls of the resident birds of prey, the laughter of children participating in one of Shaver’s Creek’s many youth programs can often be heard. In addition to being a training facility and offering community workshops and team-building programs, Shaver’s Creek each year provides hundreds of programs designed to meet the educational needs of children, youth and teachers. A staff of six program directors, each possessing specialties in the areas of environmental education, outdoor education, interpretation and recreation, plan and lead numerous youth-oriented programs. Resident interns, Penn State students and volunteers assist with the programs. According to Potter, the program portfolio is arranged around the seasons. It includes camps during the summer, school field trips and the Outdoor School during the spring and fall, on-site school programs during the winter months, and teacher-training workshops at dates and times to fit the schedules of busy educators. These programs have dual roles: they educate youths and serve as hands-on training for the Shaver’s Creek interns. Five summer camps geared toward specific age groups are held from June through August:
Regardless of the activity, each camp focuses on teaching youths about themselves, the natural world and their interconnectedness. School field trips and on-site school visits are other programs tailored to youths. Like the camps, field trips to the center focus on teaching elementary-aged children about the wonders of their natural environment. On-site school visits are custom-designed to supplement and complement the classroom curriculum. Subject areas include endangered wildlife, birds of prey and winter themes like hibernation. Shaver’s Creek has hosted the residential Outdoor School for more than two decades. Thirteen times a year, fifth-graders from schools across the state spend a week in the Stone Valley Recreation Area learning about the natural world and their place within it. Through cultural history lessons, team-building exercises, role playing and ecology lessons, the students learn the meaning of interrelationships between the natural world and themselves. The goal is for students to leave at the end of the week with an increased awareness of their interconnectedness. In addition to youth programming, Shaver’s Creek offers year-round professional development opportunities for educators. Many of these interdisciplinary programs provide teachers with new environmental education ideas and lessons to be incorporated into their curricula. Some offerings may be within the classroom, while others are hands-on, in the field. Among them are graduate-level credit courses and programs that meet the Intermediate Unit credit requirements. Besides its role as a natural learning destination for youths and teachers, Shaver’s Creek serves as a learning laboratory for Penn State students, faculty and educators from around the world. Every semester, international students travel to Shaver’s Creek for the hands-on experience. In addition to teaching Penn State classes and developing new programs, the program directors work with these interns and evaluate their development into leaders. As mentors, they advise students about problem solving, decision making, teamwork and action planning. “The faculty mission is to train the interns and college students,” Potter said. “We provide hands-on, frontline teaching opportunities.” Shaver’s Creek also works in collaboration with other Penn State colleges to educate youths and train teachers. Each summer, Shaver’s Creek staff members partner with Penn State faculty to conduct programs like the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Agricultural Sciences (PGSAS) and ORION, Penn State’s Freshman Wilderness Orientation program. PGSAS is an intensive five-week-long program for academically gifted high school students. Working with faculty members, the students conduct research in the fields of science, agriculture and natural resources. Laurie McLaughlin, a Shaver’s Creek program director involved with PGSAS, said, “My passion has always been to develop programs that can help individuals to learn more about themselves, each other and their relationship with the natural world. The end result is a desire among people to work together and take action to solve environmental issues. [PGSAS] has been a great learning experience and truly an adventure to be part of.” ORION—held in collaboration with the College of Health and Human Development and the Penn State Outing Club—is a weeklong program for incoming Penn State freshmen. Students prepare for their collegiate careers by engaging in intense physical activities like orienteering, hiking and outdoor survival. Mentally, the students are challenged to make their own decisions and act as a team for the survival of all group members. The photos on these pages illustrate some of the challenges ORION participants face. They emerge at the end of the week with new friends and self-confidence that will last throughout their Penn State years. Potter envisions more partnerships in the future. An important role of Shaver’s Creek is to work with area resources to assess the educational goals of the community and state. Together, Shaver’s Creek and community groups can meet those needs. “We must be stewards to our community and beyond,” he said. New educational training programs that will benefit youths and teachers across Pennsylvania are currently being developed. Shaver’s Creek is partnering with Penn State Cooperative Extension and the College of Agricultural Sciences to develop a leadership training program for 4-H agents across the Commonwealth. Shaver’s Creek staff members are collaborating with their colleagues on the design and facilitation of this pilot training program. In the future, the program may be offered on a much larger scale, including to participants outside of Pennsylvania’s borders. Developments are also under way for Shaver’s Creek staff members to facilitate a day of activities during the Governor’s Institute for Environment and Ecology–a summer program for Pennsylvania teachers. An initiative of the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the goal of the institute is to move education into the next century by creating a new context for learning through the environment. “When I think about my personal philosophy, why I love to teach and how those reasons tie into the mission at Shaver’s Creek, I am left with one thought: I want to make a difference in the lives of young people,” McLaughlin said. | ||||||||||||||
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