Winter 2001
Volume 3, Number 2
  


Explorer Camp hits a home run for ecology

By Karen L. Trimbath

A Japanese boy clung to a sharply vertical cliff that rose through the trees in Huntingdon County, 23 miles from Penn State’s University Park campus. He glanced down, first at his friends, who shouted encouragement in Japanese, then at the adult instructor, who gave instructions in English that were translated into Japanese. Finally the boy let go of the purple rope secured to his harness and climbed all the way to the top as everyone cheered.

The boy was one of 13 members of Japan’s national Little League team, who learned more about ecology than baseball during an International Explorer Camp held at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center at Penn State. The Japanese children were in Pennsylvania for the Little League World Series in Williamsport.

Team members joined 17 area children between the ages of 12 and 13 from diverse countries and backgrounds, including Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Sweden, among others.

All children participated in teambuilding and adventure activities that fostered the exchange of cultural understanding, said camp coordinator Robinne Weiss, program director at Shaver’s Creek.

“The camp helped the children discover how they fit into the natural world and how to preserve it,” she added.

The Japanese children live in Musashi Fucho, a town in the Tokyo region, and none of them had ever visited the United States before. Their participation in the camp at Shaver’s Creek became possible when the Tokai television network, located in Japan, asked East Company, a television production company, to produce a documentary on the team’s stay in Pennsylvania.

East Company decided to sponsor an ecology camp in which team members would not only learn about nature, but also get to know children from other parts of the world. Producers chose Shaver’s Creek after consulting with Dr. Minoru Iida, professor of outing sports at the University of Tsukuba in Japan.

Iida, a 1976 alumnus of Penn State, never forgot the three years he spent as a graduate assistant at Shaver’s Creek and the two years he spent as a volunteer with the State College Little League team.

“State College is my hometown,” Iida said. “I will always consider Penn State as the best university for educating children. It has so many good and natural human resources here. I selected Shaver’s Creek for the team’s camp because of my many good experiences here.”

East Company staff learned that Shaver’s Creek provides outreach programs that help people learn how to live and interact harmoniously with each other and the natural world. The center offers environmental and outdoor education and teambuilding programs for all ages. It also features a raptor center for injured hawks, owls and eagles; herb gardens; and hiking and cross-country skiing trails.

The Japanese Little League team joined the State College-area children at Shaver’s Creek and stayed in cabins in the Stone Valley Recreation Area. Their schedule was packed with environmental activities and daily baseball practices.

Activities included ecology walks to learn more about the forest and streams, as well as rock climbing, caving and swimming. During an insect ecology walk, campers rolled over logs and swept a meadow with nets to collect insects for observation.

Halfway through the camp, the children attended a barbecue picnic hosted by the State College Little League team. After chowing down on hamburgers, hotdogs and watermelon, the two teams exchanged gifts and played an impromptu game of football. Even though the Japanese children knew very little English, they participated fully in all activities with the help of interpreters, many of whom were Penn State students of Japanese descent.

Hiroko Makiyama, a psychology major, had signed on for the week as an overnight counselor and interpreter. Her job was to make the instructions easier to understand for the Japanese children.

“Some instructions for certain actions don’t need to be translated directly, particularly for certain games,” she said. “Also, the Japanese kids quickly caught on.”

Makiyama and other counselors decorated a meeting room at the center with posters that conveyed information in Japanese and English. One poster proclaimed a verse of thanksgiving that seemed to permeate the entire week:
    Oh … the Earth is good to me,
    And so I thank the Earth
    For giving me the things that I need,
    The Sun and the rain and the apple seed
    The Earth is good to me!

Shaver’s Creek program director Mark McLaughlin, who showed the children how to reach the top of the cliff, remarked on how much fun everyone had.

“This is a very special and unique opportunity that might never come again this way for any of us,” he said. “Although the bilingual education was a challenge, we discovered that kids are kids — and this is reassuring at best.”

The Musashi Fucho team went on to play in the Little League World Series, advancing to the semifinals, where they lost to the Maracaibo, Venezuela, team 5-4.

An outreach program of Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center




As part of an International Explorers Camp, Japanese Little League team members participate in an insect ecology walk, searching for insects in a meadow located at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center.
Before the start of the Little League World Series, the State College Little League team hosted a barbecue picnic for members of the Japanese Little League team during an International Explorers Camp, held at Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. The Japanese team made it to the World Series semifinals, losing to the team from Venezuela.

  

U.Ed.OCE 01-8002/mkm/GSM