Calling All Teachers...
By Camie Velin, Art of Mentoring student, high school teacher, Santa Ana, California
When my sister first asked me to join her for a week of camping in the Washington forest, I was thrilled with the idea. Coming from Orange County, California, spending the week anywhere that is not concrete and strip malls is something to write home about. And then she told me the reason: a six-day Wilderness Awareness (whatever that meant) Art of Mentoring Camp. Art of Mentoring? Um, no thanks. I am a fine mentor already, and if I’m going to spend a week in the forest, I certainly don’t want to do it in a classroom with a bunch of hippy homeschool moms and nature freaks. To make matters worse, I teach at a public high school, and the only “wilderness” around our school is a 20x30-foot spit of grass that is more dead than alive most of the year. What the heck was a wilderness program going to teach me about mentoring these city kids? Alas, I am not good at saying no to my big sister. Off I flew in the middle of my glorious summer vacation to waste six days of my precious life learning absolutely nothing that would help me in my teaching career… . Or, so I thought.
Upon arrival, I was pleasantly surprised by how genuinely kind and passionate both the leaders and my fellow campers were. But then, we did our first “ice breaker” activity sitting outside at a large picnic table: making paper hats. Really? I had told my sister this whole program was going to be geared towards mentoring little kids and, sure enough, our first activity was something I last did when I was five. Terrific. Reluctantly I joined a bunch of adult strangers to sit smooshed together, chit-chatting while we made funny little paper hats that we were then expected to don for dinner. Yet, I must say, if that doesn’t break the ice, I don’t know what will. And that was the beginning of what turned out to be one of the most significant and life-changing weeks of my life — and I am not exaggerating because I’m writing this for Wilderness Awareness School. Seriously.
Looking back, I’m not sure who ended up benefiting more from my time there: my students or me. I suppose we all did, equally, because one cannot be a worthy mentor without first walking to her own edge and understanding the fears and self-doubts found there. Our course week was created to do just that — for each one of us in our own way. By the end of the week, we had been pushed to that edge, and we had gained the understanding and experience necessary to safely and tenderly do the same with our charges — whether they be our own children or 170 public high school kids.
The Art of Mentoring taught us that to be the kind of mentor our world and our children need, we must be both willing and committed to start the process of growth and learning within ourselves. This process can begin in many different ways, but here its genesis was the natural world around us. Our days were filled with a juxtaposition of play and work: nature games and activities that re-birthed the child in each of us, and reminded us what it is to be in the spring of life; and workshops and lectures that gave us the mentoring tools we needed to foster that springtime growth within our own students.
Without divulging too much of what transpired during the week, I will mention a few of the tools (as cheesy as that sounds, they are, indeed, tools) that I took back to my classroom. First, I acquired a vast amount of information about what they refer to as the medicine wheel, which models how energy moves through natural systems, including groups of people. This concept continues to transform how I plan units, weeks, and even individual classes. Planning my 90-minute blocks using the medicine timeline has revolutionized the effect of what I teach and when, and how I teach it and what is truly learned. I encourage anyone who educates older students to learn about the wheel and share it with them. It is beautiful to watch them grasp its relevance to their lives and all living things — the wheel literally blows their minds. Talk about teaching them the importance of the natural world!
Storytelling is another tool I use now in all of my classes: 10th and 11th grade English and World Religions. That week taught me the invaluable lessons inherent in telling narratives. Storytelling was the earliest form of teaching for human beings. It’s a universal shared experience of all peoples, and serves our innate desire — no, need — to connect with those around us and to the natural world in which we live.
The last tool I want to mention, I have found to be the most powerful ritual that I learned, and I use it every single week in my classroom and every single day in my home. It is the Thanksgiving Circle. There is such a beautiful, unifying power in this circle of thanks. It drives each of those who participate to look outside of their own immediate circumstances and give thanks for all of the people and things that help create the world in which they live. It also causes them to listen, truly listen, to the others in the circle, and, because of this, brings their mind into oneness with others.
So in that spirit, I give thanks for my inability to say no to my big sister. I give thanks for the silly hat ice breaker. And I give thanks for the week-long Art of Mentoring program that taught me more about myself and my profession than I thought possible from a bunch of nature geeks.
