Community Adventure Program

Overview: The Cottonwood Institute’s core program is called the Community Adventure Program (CAP). The CAP is a unique academic experience offered to active, socially conscience, environmentally aware high school students and is available for high school and college credit. CAP is a coed, semester-long program designed for adventurous students who want to practice outdoor skills, discuss and debate local outdoor and environmental issues, develop deeper friendships with their classmates, and who want to make a positive impact in their communities. The Community Adventure Program teaches students essential camping and wilderness survival skills necessary to comfortably and competently explore the outdoors, while providing them with the tools and resources to tackle important environmental issues affecting their communities in order to help change the world. The Community Adventure Program has received Rave Reviews from students, parents, teachers, administrators, and members of the Boulder community.

Through active participation in the Community Adventure Program, students spend their time developing essential camping and wilderness survival skills, going on hikes, preparing for three overnight camping trips per semester, identifying local environmental issues, choosing an environmental issue that they are passionate about as a class, collaborating with local community organizations, and designing and implementing a student-directed Action Project as they explore sustainable win-win solutions to address their environmental issue. CAP introduces students to the concept of environmental sustainability and teaches them specific ways to reduce their environmental footprint both in the backcountry and throughout their daily lives.

The Cottonwood Institute is committed to collaborating with public, private, charter, independent schools, and community organizations to make this unique program available to other high school students in the Colorado Front Range. Please visit the New Vista High School Class Website or the P.S.1 Charter School Class Website to get a sense about what we do on a day-to-day basis.

If you would like to find out how to bring the Community Adventure Program to your school or organization, please call us at 303.447.1076, or Email Us and we will be happy to assist you.

Award Winning Program: The Community Adventure Program won the 2006 Environmental Education Award for Excellence in the Citizen and Community Category from the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education (CAEE)!

Goals: The Community Adventure Program has four primary goals. Through outdoor education, environmental education, and service learning, CAP seeks to inspire high school students:

1. How to change the world through civic engagement and community involvement.
2. To develop essential camping and wilderness survival skills.
3. To increase an awareness of environmental stewardship, sustainability, and how to reduce their environmental footprint.
4. To develop life skills including project management, logistical coordination, leadership, teamwork, and communication skills.

Wilderness Skill Development: Students spend approximately
half of their time learning essential outdoor skills to acquire the
basics necessary to comfortably and competently explore the outdoors.
The Boulder community is full of world-class outdoors enthusiasts and
educators. The CAP provides students with an opportunity to tap into
this rich educational resource and to meet new people who have an
amazing amount of knowledge, talent, and experience. Below is a sample
of some of the summer and winter skills that students become competent
in through their participation with the CAP:

• Nature awareness, including: Wide angle vision, animal stalking techniques, nature sketching, journaling, camouflage techniques, nature awareness activities, local cultural history, local natural history, plant identification, edible and medicinal plants, etc.
• Essential camping skills, including: Minimum impact camping, campsite location, modern tents, food and ration planning, outdoor cooking, food hanging, ecologically responsible fires, map, compass, route selection, and backcountry navigation, etc.
• Essential 3-season wilderness survival skills, including: Survival scenarios, survival priorities, survival kits, natural shelters, 1-match fires, petroleum cotton ball fires, friction fires, natural cordage, traps and snares.
• 
  Winter camping skills, including: Thermodynamics and heat loss, winter gear and equipment, snowshoeing, quinzhees, emergency snow shelters, avalanche awareness, basic mountaineering and snow travel techniques, etc.
• Outdoor leadership and teambuilding skills
• Eco-literacy
  

Environmental Service Learning: While students are developing and practicing outdoor skills, they become intimately involved with their community by researching local outdoor and environmental issues that directly relate to the skills they are learning. Students participate in Socratic Seminars to discuss these issues, conduct research and contact community experts, and then work together as a class to address the problems they have identified. They then complete an Action Project to help make a positive impact in their community by implementing the following 10-step process:

• Step 1: Explore the community
• Step 2: Identify the issues
• Step 3: Select an issue
• Step 4: Understand issue
• Step 5: Collaborate with the community
• Step 6: Create a sustainable solution
• Step 7: Plan the Action Project
• Step 8: Implement the plan
• Step 9: Complete post Action Project logistics
• Step 10: Evaluate, reflect, and share the experience

What Makes the Community Adventure Program Unique?

1. Contact Hours. While we don't reach thousands of students per year, we try to emphasize quality over quantity. Community Adventure Program students meet between 6-8 hours per week for class and students attend 2-3 overnight trips per quarter/semester. Since January 1, 2007, 5 Community Adventure Program classes have logged 6,032 contact hours.

2. Educational Tools. The Community Adventure Program utilizes technology to enhance their connection with the natural world and to maximize the transfer of learning. Let's face it, technology is everywhere. Instead of fighting technology, we have found a way to creatively embrace it. Each class contributes to a class website where students document their class experience, post pictures of field trips and camping trips, post responses to weekly journal questions, and reflect on the class and their environmental action project. We also use a voice recorder on an iPod to record some of our "Change the World Fireside Discussions" and have digital video of students practicing survival skills that we will upload to YouTube and we plan to post the audio and video on our website later this year. To visit one of our class websites, go to: http://www.cottonwoodinstitute.org/nvhs

3. CAP Club. Many Foundations want to know how we stay involved with students after they complete the class. This year we have implemented a student-directed club to keep graduates of the Community Adventure Program engaged and to help recruit new students to take the class. CAP Club participants meet once a week to go on hikes, practice skills, attend community events, and volunteer to tackle environmental issues facing our community.

Program History: In the summer of 2003, Ford Church approached New Vista High School about implementing the Community Adventure Program. Rona Wilensky, Principal of New Vista, gave Ford the opportunity to teach this unique program and was extremely happy with the results. Ford was able to generate a genuine rapport with students and the Community Adventure Program was an instant hit with students, parents, administrators, and community members.

Students in the pilot program decided that they were most passionate about exploring the aesthetic and environmental impacts of dog feces in Boulder County Open Space and Mountain Parks. They were furious with careless dog owners who let their dogs go wherever they wanted and were even more disgusted with pet owners who would take the time to bag their dog’s feces and then leave it by the side of the trail. Students decided to conduct research to determine exactly why dog feces were harmful to the environment and proposed a sustainable solution that advocated pet owners to compost their pet’s waste.

By the end of the class, students wrote an article called "The Scoop On Dog Poop" to educate their community about the aesthetic and environmental impacts of dog feces. This article was published in the Daily Camera, the Boulder Weekly, the Sierra Club Newsletter Peak and Prairie, and read on the air on KGNU 88.5fm. The Community Action Project gave students a sense of accomplishment and showed Boulder County that New Vista High School students cared what was going on in their community.

Evaluation Data: This data includes results from pre and post-test evaluations of spring 2005 CAP participants:

• According to pre-test surveys, only 30% of students strongly agreed or agreed to the statement that they felt connected to their community. After completing the CAP, 89% of students strongly agreed or agreed to the statement that they felt connected to their community, an increase of 196.7%.
• According to pre-test surveys, 30% of students strongly agreed to the statement that they felt they could be an agent for positive change in their community. After completing the CAP, 50% of students strongly agreed to the statement that they felt connected to their community, an increase of 66.7%.
• According to post-test surveys, 100% strongly agreed or agreed to the statement that overall, they felt more competent and comfortable with their camping skills compared to when they started the CAP.
• According to post-test surveys, 100% strongly agreed or agreed to the statement that overall, they felt they had a deeper awareness and appreciation for the natural world compared to when they started the CAP.
• According to post-test surveys, 100% of students strongly agreed or agreed to the statement that overall, they felt like their decision-making skills have improved compared to when they started the CAP.
• According to post-test surveys, 100% of students who completed the past three quarters of CAP would recommend the Community Adventure Program to other high school students.

Colorado State Standards: The Community Adventure Program is interdisciplinary in nature and addresses Colorado State Standards in Civics, Reading and Writing, Physical Education, Geography, and Science. Our courses provide high school students with the perfect opportunity to earn high school or college credit while easing the transition from high school to college.

For more information, please feel free to contact Ford Church, Executive Director at the Cottonwood Institute directly at 303.447.1076. Please visit the Community Adventure Program Class Website for more information about this amazing program. Please Click Here to download a copy of our Community Adventure Program Semester Information Packet and forward it to Principals, Headmasters, and Executive Directors of your favorite community organizations. To download a PowerPoint slide show about the Community Adventure Program, Click Here