summer earth studies

My first professional career was as a geologist in the petroleum industry.  I worked for a small oil company.  I learned best by doing, by being plunged into my new field, by solving problems where I developed a critical need to understand, so I learned and learned quickly. I have not forgotten that knowledge to this day, as that which I "learned" in school has faded from my memory.  Learning as a need to know to solve a problem rekindled my excitement for learning, my curiosity.  I learned to use my imagination to explore.  I did so with the help and collaboration of my peers.

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What I discovered others have said more succinctly.

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"Tell me, I forget.  Teach me, I remember.  Involve me, I understand."  - Chinese Proverb

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“The only source of knowledge is experience.”  - Albert Einstein

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When I went into teaching, I found that most of my students had lost their curiosities, their desires to learn.  When the "need to know" is ultimately just a test, the joy of learning is not reinforced.  I found myself contributing to that downward spiral and I hated it.  I realized I couldn't force my students to learn when their only motivation was an external one.  I decided to try to create a classroom environment that promoted the 4 "C" skills that progressive teachers speak to today and that I used years earlier: critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration.  These big skills are certainly more important today as the body of knowledge in our technological and electronic world is growing and so easy to access from our pockets.

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"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel." - Socrates

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I began using my own form of problem / project-based learning.  I created an environment that focused on intrinsic motivation to solve problems with a team.  The music to my ears from many of my former students was "your course was my hardest and my favorite."  The Department of Education brought teachers to my class to see it in action and asked us to hold summer teacher seminars.  At the same time, I decided to develop a real-world experiential summer course with goals as stated on the homepage.  With the help of outstanding and dedicated teachers who also had a love of our natural world, we started SES in 2004 and have now taken 250 students on this great adventure.  Read a few testimonials on SES from the homepage.  Retirement from classroom teaching certainly did not end my desire to continue SES, so we are now a 501c3 nonprofit corporation, continuing the program and making a lasting impact on our students.  We are not affiliated with any specific schools or school district and SES is considered nontraditional course credit.

 

The SES staff consists of experienced high school teachers who love the out-of-doors and are dedicated to making a difference in the lives of their students.  All of our teachers act as independent educational consultants.  Most of them have past experience with SES.  We all have CPR and first aid training. SES has extended liability insurance and medical coverage.  SES also has one or two former SES students, now in college, as mentors on the trip to help the students socially adjust and academically succeed. 

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SES students work in teams of 4 or 5 to solve real problems in geology, meteorology, astronomy, and ecology.  They maintain organized field notebooks.  The largest percentage of student grades is based on these two categories.  They are also given oral tests and a final field problem to measure their individual skills at solving problems. 

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SES has several corporate sponsors whose generosity helps us keep our tuition as low as possible. The cost of SES is well less than half of other summer camp experiences which do not give course credit or the academic experience.