Learners Receiving UAF Credit
Week in the Woods for Educators
ED F595P, Two Credits
June 29th - July 3rd, 2012
Instructor/Director: John Manthei, 907-455-4547
Contributing Instructors/Staff:
Richard Barnes
Jan Dawe
Toni Kaufman
Rebecca Levey
Philip Marshall
Charlie Mayo
Carolyn Parker
Marianne Stoltz
Bob Hunter
John Zasada
Prerequisites:
No prerequisites are required. However, Week in the Woods (WITW) is a rugged outdoor program. Participants will need to be resourceful, have a desire to work with their hands, be unafraid of getting dirty, and be familiar with basic camping conditions in Interior Alaska. Everyone will be expected to set up their own tents, supply their own water, and feed themselves for five days and four nights. Participants should be prepared to keep themselves warm and dry in rainy conditions, as well as stay comfortable with mosquitoes and flies.
Location:
The location for Week in the Woods is a tranquil spot in the heart of the Tanana Valley State Forest near Fairbanks, Alaska. The site is 8.6 miles down a dirt logging road with lots of turns and hills, but is accessible with a normal car. The actual work and camping area is located about 200 yards off the road on the uphill side. It is an upland, mature stand of mixed spruce, birch, and aspen with a moss and shrub forest floor. There is a fire pit area around which everyone sits, cooks, eats and talks. There will be 2 pit toilets nearby and several large work areas that are tarped over in case of rain.
Dates and Times:
Orientation will commence at 11:00am on Friday, June 29th and the program will end by 4:00pm on Tuesday, July 3rd. Participants are asked to arrive no later than 9:00am on Friday morning to set up camp. If at all possible, participants are encouraged to arrive on the afternoon or evening of Thursday, June 28th. This will allow you to get organized and settled in at your leisure.
Students receiving UAF credit are required to spend all five days and four nights onsite and participate fully in projects and discussions. In addition, they will be required to prepare a lesson plan based on their camp experience.
The 6th and final day for UAF learners will be the presentation of lesson plans at an agreed upon date and time.
Course Reading/Materials:
No reading materials are required. Students are encouraged to bring tools if they have them, i.e. gouges, adzes, hatchets, saws, sharpening supplies, pencils, and crooked, hook, or straight knives.
Course Description:
This course will provide educators or other professionals the opportunity to investigate a hands-on approach to learning that is enhanced by environmental, historical, and cultural information. Augmented by the instructors’ knowledge and expertise, students will work in the natural environment on projects using treasures from the forest. WITW offers a unique occasion to learn skills while working side by side with students from 7 to 97.
Note: For activities and a daily schedule click here.
Course Goals and Outcomes:
- Students will explore the creative process while living together in the best of all classrooms, the boreal forest environment.
- Students will be exposed to new ways of seeing, experiencing, and appreciating the woods so that they can develop methods of instruction that will effectively communicate the knowledge and skills of “woods” craft and natural history to children.
- Students will experience the connection between natural history and the creative process. Understanding this connection between science and art will enable students to incorporate art into their existing biology curriculum.
- Students will explore the unique characteristics and treasures of several different forest types and the influence that humans, animals, fire, wind, disease, and age have on these forest systems. Once students become familiar with these characteristics, they will begin to internalize and personalize Alaska geography in a way that makes it easy to share with their pupils.
- Students will begin to feel the connection between the resource they are using in their projects, and the source (its immediate environment). Feeling this connection will stimulate curiosity and creativity and it will expand their comfort level in the woods. This familiarity will inspire creative lesson plans and will help students find avenues to expose children to Alaska geography, natural history, and ecology.
The hope is that, in the end, students and their students will want to return to the woods again and again, not only to gather forest treasures but also for inspiration and solace.
How These Goals and Outcomes Will Be Achieved:
- Students will stay in the woods for five days and four nights allowing the energy of their urban lives to be replaced by a more peaceful energy of the forest. Through the process of creating objects from forest treasures, students will learn joinery, riving, hewing, carving, weaving, lashing, cord making, birch tar making, and more. Students will explore old and new techniques and hand tools from many cultures.
- Students will repeatedly go on guided excursions learning how and where to find specific treasures by understanding the unique characteristics of forest types and recognizable components within those types (plants, animals, colors, smells, sounds, textures, moods, moisture levels, etc.) They will harvest small quantities of bark, roots, branches, crooks, foliage, dry and green wood of all species, burls, galls, fungus, and more.
- Students will look for inspirational treasures and create objects around them. They will search the forest for particular treasures to fill specific needs of their developing projects.
- Students will study edibles and medicinals and their current and historical uses.
- Students will be expected to design a project using the introduced techniques and knowledge. Socratic instruction and mentorship will provide students with a framework to build knowledge.
- Students will be absorbing lessons of botany and natural history while collecting, creating, and living in the woods. Students will be taught to appreciate everything they utilize from the woods in its environmental context. Students will also take part in discussions about the historical context of using forest resources.
- Instructor demonstrations will be for the purpose of teaching technique or process and not necessarily for the creation of a specific product. Students will use what they have learned as a guide along their own path.
Instructional Methods:
Lab, discussion, demonstration, Socratic instruction.
Instructors will be available for students from 9am to 9pm each day.
Course Policies:
Students are required to spend all five days and four nights at camp and adhere to the schedule as closely as possible, especially with regard to start times for projects and walks.
Evaluation:
Evaluation will be based on attendance, journal entries, the completion of the lesson plan symposium on the 6th day, and participation in demonstrations, projects, discussions, and walks.
Preparation for and attendance at the 6th day meeting is essential. The meeting is a mock lesson in which the teachers execute a lesson plan that they have designed by acting as the student. Teachers are required to act as students by using their non-dominant hands to execute the lesson plan. This is considered a culminating project.
Staying in the woods 24/5 is also essential.
This course will be graded Pass/Fail. A pass grade will require that a student achieve 80 out of 100 possible points.
10 points -- Journal
15 points -- Attendance
25 points -- Participation
50 points -- Lesson plan meeting
Receiving less than 80 points will determine a failing grade.
Support Services:
Instructors will be available by appointment after WITW to assist students as well as follow-up collaboration in the classrooms.
Disabilities Services:
The Office of Disability Services implements the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and insures that UAF students have equal access to the campus and course materials. We will work with the Office of Disabilities Services (203 Whit., 474-7043) to provide reasonable accommodation to students with disabilities. Realize, however, that this is a “field” course and all students must be prepared to meet those challenges.