(no subject)
Wow so after 17 straight days of MOSS training, we're officially trained, and have the 3 day weekend off! So I thought I should post an update on life.
Things are going REALLY well. First of all, this place is absolutely gorgeous. The field campus (sidenote: I'm working for the McCall Outdoor Science School, in McCall, ID. The facility we use is actually the Univ. of Idaho Field Campus) is located on Payette Lake, about a 3 minute drive from town, or a 6-8 minute bike ride. It sometimes gets pretty warm during the day, but without fail it's COLD cold cold at night--the last few nights it's gotten down into the 30s. And since I live in a yurt, and both of us are too stubborn to turn the heat on since it's august--well, now september, but that's just today--we're both freezing by wake-up time. I've been wearing a hat to bed, which feels kinda silly, because I never used to...but hey so it goes.
The reason it gets so cold is because we're at ~5,000 ft elevation, right in the middle of the Payette National Forest. The weather here is kind of crazy--we'll have blue, sunny skies and then a thunder storm will roll in out of nowhere, and have passed completely in 20 or 30 minutes.
There are also killer pine cones here. I've struggled, in previous attempts, to describe these pine cones in a manner which will convey their true lethal quality. During our tour the first day (almost three weeks ago...crazy), while walking by the parking lot, our instructors suggested we not park our cars under the ponderosas, because the pine cones have shattered windshields in the past. At the time we laughed...but our laughter soon turned into a healthy fear as we witnessed their awesome power. A couple days ago, a smaller pine cone did this to a chair on the dining lodge deck:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5119/3051/1600/IMG_0228.jpg
Frightening.
Hopefully now you understand why I actually wore my bike helmet during a session of our Wilderness First Aid course last weekend, while we were sitting under one of those ponderosa pines. As the pine cones fell, other people savvied up, and held their foam sitting cushions over their heads--good thing too! Because not five minutes later, one of our instructors was struck by a cone, which plummeted down from above, smashing into his foam pad before careening off towards M.Cat's head, which was luckily also foam-protected. Poor M.Cat (mary catherine is her real name) rose to her feet to recover from her shock, only to be struck in the side 30 seconds later by another cone which had bounced off the ground. I'm telling ya'll, these things are dangerous. The squirrels have it in for us.
So now that I've rambled on about pine cones, just a brief note on what else we've been doing. I'll have to do this quickly because a few of us are leaving soon to ride into town. Today we had our first session of AmeriCorps orientation. We finished about 45 minutes ago, and are now freeeeeee until tuesday morning. We haven't had a day off since arriving august 14. They've been good about trying to give us our evenings off after dinner, and a few blocks of time in the afternoons some days, but boy are we glad to get this weekend to play. One of our fellow peeps is actually getting married tomorrow up in Moscow (Idaho) so several of us are heading up tomorrow for that, and then we're gonna try to play on the water (rafting or canoeing hopefully) on sunday and/or monday before it gets too cold for water.
Mainly our training has been learning/mastering critical content that we'll be teaching the kids who come up here for the week, mainly 5th and 6th graders. The bulk of it is a Terrestrial day, a hydrology day, and in inquiry day in which we facilitate a scientific inquiry in which our kids come up with a question, hypothesis, methods and then data collection and analysis. All of this is under the guise of Earth Systems Science (ESS) which focuses on the interactions between things--in biomes, ecosystems and habitats and involving individuals, populations and communites of living things. We talk about the spheres--biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and lithosphere, as well as the new "technosphere"--and how interactions between them affect the world around us. All the content is shaped to fit perfectly alongside the science curriculum they're learning in school (mandated by the state)--so the idea is that they get to experience the content firsthand and hands on here, and then when they talk about it at school they have this experience to reference.
Alright I think that's quite enough for this update. Our first kids come next wednesday! We'll be team teaching next week (just a 3 day week; the norm will be 5) and then after that we're on our own with groups of 8-10 kids. I'm about halfway done with my lesson plans, so I'll be finishing those up over the weekend, as well as Tuesday, which we have together to get all the final things ready for our first group...wish me/us luck!!
Things are going REALLY well. First of all, this place is absolutely gorgeous. The field campus (sidenote: I'm working for the McCall Outdoor Science School, in McCall, ID. The facility we use is actually the Univ. of Idaho Field Campus) is located on Payette Lake, about a 3 minute drive from town, or a 6-8 minute bike ride. It sometimes gets pretty warm during the day, but without fail it's COLD cold cold at night--the last few nights it's gotten down into the 30s. And since I live in a yurt, and both of us are too stubborn to turn the heat on since it's august--well, now september, but that's just today--we're both freezing by wake-up time. I've been wearing a hat to bed, which feels kinda silly, because I never used to...but hey so it goes.
The reason it gets so cold is because we're at ~5,000 ft elevation, right in the middle of the Payette National Forest. The weather here is kind of crazy--we'll have blue, sunny skies and then a thunder storm will roll in out of nowhere, and have passed completely in 20 or 30 minutes.
There are also killer pine cones here. I've struggled, in previous attempts, to describe these pine cones in a manner which will convey their true lethal quality. During our tour the first day (almost three weeks ago...crazy), while walking by the parking lot, our instructors suggested we not park our cars under the ponderosas, because the pine cones have shattered windshields in the past. At the time we laughed...but our laughter soon turned into a healthy fear as we witnessed their awesome power. A couple days ago, a smaller pine cone did this to a chair on the dining lodge deck:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5119/3051/1600/IMG_0228.jpg
Frightening.
Hopefully now you understand why I actually wore my bike helmet during a session of our Wilderness First Aid course last weekend, while we were sitting under one of those ponderosa pines. As the pine cones fell, other people savvied up, and held their foam sitting cushions over their heads--good thing too! Because not five minutes later, one of our instructors was struck by a cone, which plummeted down from above, smashing into his foam pad before careening off towards M.Cat's head, which was luckily also foam-protected. Poor M.Cat (mary catherine is her real name) rose to her feet to recover from her shock, only to be struck in the side 30 seconds later by another cone which had bounced off the ground. I'm telling ya'll, these things are dangerous. The squirrels have it in for us.
So now that I've rambled on about pine cones, just a brief note on what else we've been doing. I'll have to do this quickly because a few of us are leaving soon to ride into town. Today we had our first session of AmeriCorps orientation. We finished about 45 minutes ago, and are now freeeeeee until tuesday morning. We haven't had a day off since arriving august 14. They've been good about trying to give us our evenings off after dinner, and a few blocks of time in the afternoons some days, but boy are we glad to get this weekend to play. One of our fellow peeps is actually getting married tomorrow up in Moscow (Idaho) so several of us are heading up tomorrow for that, and then we're gonna try to play on the water (rafting or canoeing hopefully) on sunday and/or monday before it gets too cold for water.
Mainly our training has been learning/mastering critical content that we'll be teaching the kids who come up here for the week, mainly 5th and 6th graders. The bulk of it is a Terrestrial day, a hydrology day, and in inquiry day in which we facilitate a scientific inquiry in which our kids come up with a question, hypothesis, methods and then data collection and analysis. All of this is under the guise of Earth Systems Science (ESS) which focuses on the interactions between things--in biomes, ecosystems and habitats and involving individuals, populations and communites of living things. We talk about the spheres--biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and lithosphere, as well as the new "technosphere"--and how interactions between them affect the world around us. All the content is shaped to fit perfectly alongside the science curriculum they're learning in school (mandated by the state)--so the idea is that they get to experience the content firsthand and hands on here, and then when they talk about it at school they have this experience to reference.
Alright I think that's quite enough for this update. Our first kids come next wednesday! We'll be team teaching next week (just a 3 day week; the norm will be 5) and then after that we're on our own with groups of 8-10 kids. I'm about halfway done with my lesson plans, so I'll be finishing those up over the weekend, as well as Tuesday, which we have together to get all the final things ready for our first group...wish me/us luck!!