The 2018 Innovation Fund, our annual crowdfunding competition, has officially launched! You can find all of the Innovation Fund participants here. Read on for the story of BOAT Bus, led by 2017 Fellow, Micah Leinbach, who is raising $6,000 for outdoor education.
Between the 8th and 11th grade, student engagement in traditional classrooms drops from 82% to 41%. Let that statistic sink in – by the time they are graduating, half of our students are no longer participating.
To face a dynamic economy, we need the kinds of people VFA recruits for, students who – in VFA’s own words – “have a strong, independent work ethic. Find ways to thrive in the face of pressure and ambiguity….[and] always are working towards a greater goal.” Our schools aren’t building that.
I work in Learning & Development at one of VFA’s partner companies. For me, the worst part of that statistic comes from what we know about human beings – we are born learners. Forget opposable thumbs. Insatiable curiosity and a brain built for information management are what make us human.
What kind of education can solve for this – and how do we get it to our kids?
I’m a 2017 Venture for America fellow working at one of America’s fast-growing education technology startups. Prior to VFA, I spent four years starting an “expeditionary learning” company, using the wilderness as a classroom for topics ranging from science to social justice. Our answer to the question above is “BOAT”. The Bus for Outdoor Access & Teaching, and is an outdoor program on wheels. With all the resources to run a camping expedition on a bus, we run educational adventures for kids. 
This is a well-researched, well-supported approach to education – but it’s also costly and expensive. We don’t think it has to be.
BOAT provides logistical and economic solution for educators.
Teacher’s trying to organize field trips are faced with tremendous logistical burdens. They have to find the time to plan the trip, acquire gear, figure out food and logistics, confirm their insurance works, and arrange transportation. We’ve talked to dozens of teachers, all of whom had the same basic perspective: “we love the trips, we hate planning them.” BOAT changes the game, taking care of the boring stuff – and doing it for a fraction of the price. Because teachers should be teaching, not figuring out how to calculate the appropriate rations of oatmeal or digging for extra funds (though we encourage students to do both – it’s a great math lesson).
In a world where education innovation conjures images of coding robots and smart boards, our idea may seem a bit more “Woodstock” than “SXSW” – but our experience (and a lot of research!) suggests that wilderness is a critical piece of the puzzle in any conversation about improving the educational experience for students. Returning to engagement in the classroom: outdoor experiences cause spikes in classroom engagement that last for up to 10 weeks at a time. And that’s just the start.
Humans evolved to learn in wilderness classrooms.
Kids should be learning to code – but they should also be learning to camp, and here is why:
- Emotional intelligence and collaborative skills are educational essentials. Expeditions are fundamentally a team sport. While school and work lend themselves to a check in-check out mentality, the constant contact and communication of an expedition fosters emotional maturity and understanding.
- The outcomes are real – and personal. Try to find a school project whose consequences rival that of getting lost in a swamp, or rewards that compare to a view from a summit. Consequences in school are often manufactured. In the wilderness, outcomes come from the intersection of the environment and your decision making.
- Outdoor skills are life skills. Budgeting food, water, energy, and other resources. Learning to cook. Understanding nutrition. Even the little things – hygiene, doing dishes, cleaning up camp. Investing in this learning now sets kids up for successful lives as adults in all the ways “regular school” doesn’t.
- Resilience. The generation about to enter the workforce has experiences staggering rates of anxiety, stress, and mental challenges. Ample research suggests that even here, the outdoors can help. Time outside helps students of all ages learn to manage stress and anxiety, while also conveying a critical message – you can survive when things are tough.
We should keep teaching kids to read and write, just like we should be teaching kids to code, build robots, and innovate. We should also be giving them the chance to flex the basic muscles of being human: living in community, taking care of one another, reacting and responding to challenge, and making and setting goals. The best way to do this is to help them experience these things in real time, with real consequences, and wilderness classrooms offer a deeply powerful way to make it happen. Besides, nothing wrong with a chance to revel in a little beauty! Check out our Indiegogo and support our efforts to make an easier, more convenient, and more affordable way to get outside.
The BOAT Bus Board includes Julia Huggins, Eric Protsman, Alex Lyttle, Sarah Clement, Katie Thiry, Sarra Wynn, and Micah Leinbach. All donations to the Bus for Outdoor Access & Teaching are considered charitable contributions and tax-deductible pending the approval of our 501(c)(3) application by the IRS, which we fully expect within the 2018 tax year. We will send you a receipt acknowledging your donation after receiving approval. The last timeline we were given would put that approval in early April.