Blending of Time And Space
One of the most profound aspects of camp for me was the sense that camp-time linked to camp-time, one summer to the next, and the outside world didn’t really intrude in the sequence (parallel universes). On the rational side there was the fact that I didn’t interact with campers outside of summer—I’m sure campers in the SF Jewish community saw each other in other settings. For me campers were just at camp.
I also worked at spring work camp, went to reunions in SF and as a staff member so I spent a great deal of time at camp, often with former campers—I would avail myself of Irv’s invite to work for half a day and then get to stay at camp. I particularly enjoyed spending my long winter breaks at camp. But the emotional experience of the “camp connectivity” was very visceral and completely real. Camp each summer connected to camps and people from the past. And coming home at the end of the summer was intensely heart wrenching! Easily the most intense, confusing and unfathomable emotional experience of my childhood.
Part of it was the sense that camp made meaning, like the ultimate good book you want to reread immediately upon finishing. Like the sense that there was something more “real” more tangible in the fantasy of camp. I wasn’t that I didn’t understand that camp was a for-profit endeavor, a business and a career. That Irv and Edna, and their children, had lives outside of ERN. I got to the end of the “book” and felt a real and profound loss. Then I’d pass the time till the next summer...and there was no one I could explain this to outside of ERN folks.
I have accepted the emotional thread that blended each person, the culture, the rules, and the experience one into another, year after year, and I’ve always pondered what made it so. As I’ve said before, I’m sure other campers at other camps have the similar feelings, and that some campers at ERN didn’t have this intense visceral connection to camp.
I know part of it was that camp made sense whereas the real world didn’t, profoundly, catastrophically didn’t. It was the sixties and the turmoil felt by many adults hit me even harder as I was clueless and anchorless to understand and resist the changes. Maybe I didn’t fully understand the social significance as much as adults but I also had fewer resources to understand and appreciate, to make sense of what was happening. And many of these social changes resulted in that dismantling of the support system children need to be okay, to be sure of their own worlds, to grow and mature. I sure felt this and in many ways it both stunted by emotional growth and made me grow up too fast.
From the more diffuse family structure, divorce, disconnections, to the destruction of cultural icons, to drugs and sex, things were changing, amorphous, ragged. For many adults it was fun and games, a social free for all from which some recovered, few were changed and some recoiled. For older adults it was undermining the expectations and structure upon which they rested their sense of place and purpose. The generation gap, the hippies vs the hardhats. For me, suddenly music mattered too much, art that ripped into the viscera, dead people on the evening news, sexual exploitation, and the so-called sexual revolution. Race and gender changed, for the good, forever. The rebound has since re-hardened too many of the lessons back into the molds of sexism and racism, of the disconnected individualism and conservatism. This is a sad reflection of the extreme fear many felt.
As a child in the midst of all this I experienced it at once as normal and at the same time as traumatic. It was great to be cut lose, to have schools that couldn’t figure out what to do with our thoughts, our youth, our hair and our music. To have adults that were at the same time railing against the authority they were supposed to represent. Parents who had grown up in the depression, well named, and were trying to discover what this all meant for them, rather than seeing themselves as part of a greater whole. Their intense introspection also became intense egotism. And as a child there was little left to lean on to find a coherent and healing safe support. What could be curative after I practiced drills to get under my desk in the event of a nuclear explosion!
I know I paint a bleak picture but I can’t stress enough what my experience of these times was like and then to spend summers in the curious surroundings of camp. And certainly camp was not immune to all these same forces but metaphorically the setting and the world created a blend of fantasy and freedom, it weathered the social forces somewhat better. Staff seemed to find a home for their own healing spirits and campers found a place where you could develop, grow, and that made sense. The perfect utopian fantasy but one that fosters a genuine sense that made sense, linked together in a chain of experience separate from the outside world.
One thread that links this together in my mind was my love of Tolkien’s Trilogy. I read and re-read these books throughout my young life and, while not as obsessed as some; I found a solace in a world both whole and torn apart. I found meaning in both in the horrible strife of the ultimate battle for good and evil and the moral where the most simple life and pleasures won out. That good and evil live in all of us. That it’s the choices we make that matter.
Have fun! and thanks always. Ryan
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Educational Communities
Educational Influences around Learning Communities
Much of my work involves learning in the setting of social relationships, of the social nature of teaching and learning, and the related view that we create, foster, a “community” that supports both practitioners and participants. I have a number of experiences that support this philosophy of education both from my own childhood as well as working with a variety of programs, working in classrooms, working to create environments that promote all levels of participants to become engaged. For me it’s about finding meaning, supporting a sense of purpose and participation, a sense of place, creating all those things so that each participant understands their many roles and takes their own responsibility to co-create a supportive community seriously.
Their are lots of versions of this but my current favorite, as we look at our program and what makes it work, is “Communities of Practice” (C of P), defined and then modified from Etienne Wenger. http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm
I have borrowed these ideas as I have tried to reflect on my own experiences, particularly as I try to make sense of ERN as both a camper and a staff member. Foundational to C of P is the sense of a place, both physical places such as camp but also one’s own sense of place within this domain. Camp created in its own history, stories and experiences a sense of both physicality as well as fostering a sense for campers that they belonged. “And you belong to El Rancho Navarro and El Rancho Navarro belongs to you” the song goes. And so an intentional community was created. But belonging is in reality just the first step.
The next crucial element is that you both belong and create the C of P. There is a sense of understanding of the purpose, the point of it all, and common mission. And this is true for adults, staff, directors, as well as children at ERN. Each has a purposeful sense of participation. Structures, rules, expectations, a developmental sequence for participation. And from this then comes leadership. You know the places, the purpose and mission, and then you each, regardless of level, step up as leaders.
The combination of place, purpose, an understanding of one’s roles, the opportunity to matter, to create, to be held accountable, responsible, to be integral rather than just ancillary, then all moves towards creating something for which perhaps no one person has the complete vision but each can understand. Reflective practice, part of something greater than one’s self, spirituality...
So how do we programmatically define this? If it is our goals to create this sense, of purpose, mission, direction, reflection, how do we create and instill this in others? This is the real conundrum for me. Part of the answer comes from a basic understanding of right and wrong as defined by the place.
The idea as I’ve tried to apply it is to clearly and strongly convey a direction and a process for reflection. To work to develop a participatory process by which the team defines and refines their understanding their role and their options. Because the key is options. Rather than define each element, we define what each must deliver. Rather than restricting the how we refine the why. And then we let each person find their own methods, reflect on their own experience and bring this to the experience. And we reinvest time and energy in this process. In this way the efforts bloom beyond the experience of the person in charge. Camp was greater than Irv and Edna’s experience because they didn’t instruct in such a way to restrict. Sure there was a clarity of direction and clearly defined boundaries, but within the realm of each person, they had a great freedom to both fail and succeed.
But the key element for me was that it free from definition. It in fact it was highly defined, both in terms of history and experience. And that many people defined this: Judy, Cole, Cheryl, Hal, Ray, Randy, Marshall, Ruth, and Carol, and many more...each contributed to an ever greater whole. And the newcomers, Michelle, myself, Paula, Bernie, and many more added their version.
Thanks again, Ryan
Much of my work involves learning in the setting of social relationships, of the social nature of teaching and learning, and the related view that we create, foster, a “community” that supports both practitioners and participants. I have a number of experiences that support this philosophy of education both from my own childhood as well as working with a variety of programs, working in classrooms, working to create environments that promote all levels of participants to become engaged. For me it’s about finding meaning, supporting a sense of purpose and participation, a sense of place, creating all those things so that each participant understands their many roles and takes their own responsibility to co-create a supportive community seriously.
Their are lots of versions of this but my current favorite, as we look at our program and what makes it work, is “Communities of Practice” (C of P), defined and then modified from Etienne Wenger. http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm
I have borrowed these ideas as I have tried to reflect on my own experiences, particularly as I try to make sense of ERN as both a camper and a staff member. Foundational to C of P is the sense of a place, both physical places such as camp but also one’s own sense of place within this domain. Camp created in its own history, stories and experiences a sense of both physicality as well as fostering a sense for campers that they belonged. “And you belong to El Rancho Navarro and El Rancho Navarro belongs to you” the song goes. And so an intentional community was created. But belonging is in reality just the first step.
The next crucial element is that you both belong and create the C of P. There is a sense of understanding of the purpose, the point of it all, and common mission. And this is true for adults, staff, directors, as well as children at ERN. Each has a purposeful sense of participation. Structures, rules, expectations, a developmental sequence for participation. And from this then comes leadership. You know the places, the purpose and mission, and then you each, regardless of level, step up as leaders.
The combination of place, purpose, an understanding of one’s roles, the opportunity to matter, to create, to be held accountable, responsible, to be integral rather than just ancillary, then all moves towards creating something for which perhaps no one person has the complete vision but each can understand. Reflective practice, part of something greater than one’s self, spirituality...
So how do we programmatically define this? If it is our goals to create this sense, of purpose, mission, direction, reflection, how do we create and instill this in others? This is the real conundrum for me. Part of the answer comes from a basic understanding of right and wrong as defined by the place.
The idea as I’ve tried to apply it is to clearly and strongly convey a direction and a process for reflection. To work to develop a participatory process by which the team defines and refines their understanding their role and their options. Because the key is options. Rather than define each element, we define what each must deliver. Rather than restricting the how we refine the why. And then we let each person find their own methods, reflect on their own experience and bring this to the experience. And we reinvest time and energy in this process. In this way the efforts bloom beyond the experience of the person in charge. Camp was greater than Irv and Edna’s experience because they didn’t instruct in such a way to restrict. Sure there was a clarity of direction and clearly defined boundaries, but within the realm of each person, they had a great freedom to both fail and succeed.
But the key element for me was that it free from definition. It in fact it was highly defined, both in terms of history and experience. And that many people defined this: Judy, Cole, Cheryl, Hal, Ray, Randy, Marshall, Ruth, and Carol, and many more...each contributed to an ever greater whole. And the newcomers, Michelle, myself, Paula, Bernie, and many more added their version.
Thanks again, Ryan
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Developmental Psychology
Camp Sociology
I guess if you put a couple that are Jewish, trained as Social Workers, in charge of creating their own personal camp vision, you get something on the liberal perspective. But I’m sure that that liberal label really describes anything about camp. I’m also sure that many of the families were affluent liberals, doctors, and professionals. And the camp staff clearly colored the experiences as well. But the social structure of camp, the developmental ideal for children, of playing and exploring, and engaging in items of their own choices, was central to camp’s social system.
The first twenty-four hours at camp were exactly the same year in and year out. After my many sessions I could predict within a few feet where I’d be and what’d I be doing. This formed the base, the welcoming, Irv’s Toilet Paper speech (a really great metaphor), visiting the nurse’s station to get your weight and temperature taken—waiting on the log in your swim suits, the riding and swimming tests, spending time with your cabin group. Bonding to camp, to the first circle, cabin mates and counselors. This structure was extreme, and hardly liberal in the free for all of some versions of liberalism. No choices, highly programmed schedule, invariant, consistent and supportive.
This was then followed by Cabin Choice where the whole group would program its day. Swimming and riding were prescheduled, if the group wanted, but it was a semi democratic process within the group—counselors had a lot of influence I’m sure. The idea was to bond your to camp, to the group, to have a place, a home away from home. For many campers homesickness kicked in about this time (no phone calls for the first three days.). I remember that we even did an overnight for the older boys. Campers got a sense of what camp was about—off course after something like 20 sessions at camp this part wasn’t as important. I wasn’t bored, that was interesting.
Then came free choice. For the next couple of weeks each campers scheduled their own world—there were riding and swimming groups but other than that you could choose what you wanted to do, or at least you could have a first, second or third choice. Maybe this was common but part of the developmental process at ERN was free choice. At each step you built up a competency, and you could begin widening the world as well. You could schedule with other cabin mates or not, your choice.
Then there was the Robsian, “Free/Free” choice. So after 10 days you didn’t have to schedule at all—except if you wanted to take swimming and riding, still grouped. As long as there was room, almost always was, you could wonder between archery, arts and crafts, lawn games or simple relax in your own way. By the end of the summer I think I spent much of the afternoon sleeping.
And it was through this developmental process that you gained control and competence. Irv used to talk about development stages.
Unconscious Incompetence
Conscious Incompetence
Conscious Competence
Unconscious Competence
Another element was the constancy and structure—that we create something solid, intelligent, supportive, and that this provides for children a sense of safety, of security. Children see these development boundaries as supportive, as a sign of our adult presence and caring, that they matter enough to set limits. To stay with them when they visit the edges, as they look for attentions and definition.
So much of camp was about preparing young people to become adults. Accepting their stages and then creating a sequence that supported their development. And this was the underlying liberal perspective—you weren’t training children, they were growing, and they were learning. I remember one of the arguments with Irv was about teaching—a staff member wanted to teach about nature, and wanted more materials to support this. Irv reinforced that the learning was about the experience, not about the knowledge. Take the children on a creek walk.
And somehow this really was enough.
I guess if you put a couple that are Jewish, trained as Social Workers, in charge of creating their own personal camp vision, you get something on the liberal perspective. But I’m sure that that liberal label really describes anything about camp. I’m also sure that many of the families were affluent liberals, doctors, and professionals. And the camp staff clearly colored the experiences as well. But the social structure of camp, the developmental ideal for children, of playing and exploring, and engaging in items of their own choices, was central to camp’s social system.
The first twenty-four hours at camp were exactly the same year in and year out. After my many sessions I could predict within a few feet where I’d be and what’d I be doing. This formed the base, the welcoming, Irv’s Toilet Paper speech (a really great metaphor), visiting the nurse’s station to get your weight and temperature taken—waiting on the log in your swim suits, the riding and swimming tests, spending time with your cabin group. Bonding to camp, to the first circle, cabin mates and counselors. This structure was extreme, and hardly liberal in the free for all of some versions of liberalism. No choices, highly programmed schedule, invariant, consistent and supportive.
This was then followed by Cabin Choice where the whole group would program its day. Swimming and riding were prescheduled, if the group wanted, but it was a semi democratic process within the group—counselors had a lot of influence I’m sure. The idea was to bond your to camp, to the group, to have a place, a home away from home. For many campers homesickness kicked in about this time (no phone calls for the first three days.). I remember that we even did an overnight for the older boys. Campers got a sense of what camp was about—off course after something like 20 sessions at camp this part wasn’t as important. I wasn’t bored, that was interesting.
Then came free choice. For the next couple of weeks each campers scheduled their own world—there were riding and swimming groups but other than that you could choose what you wanted to do, or at least you could have a first, second or third choice. Maybe this was common but part of the developmental process at ERN was free choice. At each step you built up a competency, and you could begin widening the world as well. You could schedule with other cabin mates or not, your choice.
Then there was the Robsian, “Free/Free” choice. So after 10 days you didn’t have to schedule at all—except if you wanted to take swimming and riding, still grouped. As long as there was room, almost always was, you could wonder between archery, arts and crafts, lawn games or simple relax in your own way. By the end of the summer I think I spent much of the afternoon sleeping.
And it was through this developmental process that you gained control and competence. Irv used to talk about development stages.
Unconscious Incompetence
Conscious Incompetence
Conscious Competence
Unconscious Competence
Another element was the constancy and structure—that we create something solid, intelligent, supportive, and that this provides for children a sense of safety, of security. Children see these development boundaries as supportive, as a sign of our adult presence and caring, that they matter enough to set limits. To stay with them when they visit the edges, as they look for attentions and definition.
So much of camp was about preparing young people to become adults. Accepting their stages and then creating a sequence that supported their development. And this was the underlying liberal perspective—you weren’t training children, they were growing, and they were learning. I remember one of the arguments with Irv was about teaching—a staff member wanted to teach about nature, and wanted more materials to support this. Irv reinforced that the learning was about the experience, not about the knowledge. Take the children on a creek walk.
And somehow this really was enough.
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