[ instigate change ]

LOOK at the camels first and then read the message below... This is a picture ta ken from directly above these camels in the desert at sunset. It is considered to be one of the best pictures of the year. When you look closely, you can see that the camels are the little white lines in the picture. The black images you see are just the shadows! This topic came to up during my team building session last week while I was doing the Helium Stick. And I didn't think of it while I was debriefing the activity. It's coming up as I've thought about those sessions more and more. Here was the one situation that popped up during my session. The group members were all in grade 11 and 12 and were split pretty evenly between girls and guys. The activity was very loud and volatile. For the most part the guys were shouting at their female counterparts to stop messing up, just to put the stick down, and that they should just listen. At one point - one of the males (...

I'm writing this in the wake of a tragedy. There was a student last week that committed suicide at the community's high school. When you live in a town as small as the one that I live near - tragedies like this can overwhelm the town. It's horrible and sad and everything that shouldn't happen to a 16 year old. He was a provincial track star on the road to compete at Nationals next week. He hit a speed bump which threatened his next year in his sport and it was enough to push him over the edge - to feel like there was nothing else that he could live for. Only he will know what was in his head and heart or what brought him to that place. All I know is that a tragedy like this starts a fire in me. Our kids - the youth that are in each one of our lives need to know that they are loved, valued, and cherished by us. They need to hear it. Parents, teachers, leaders, directors, friends, family - all of us - we need to step up to the plate and never assume that they just know...

How do you start one of these blogs? I was so excited to paint the walls of this new/old blog and have a place to share ideas and philosophies with folks - maybe meet new people who are on the same journey as me. But I was suddenly struck last night with the overwhelming feeling that I'm a nobody in this world full of facilitators, shakers, and movers. Who am I to be writing about these things... I was reminded of a point about 9 or so months ago when I encountered my old gym teacher at a teacher's convention where I had an exhibit. I was going to be teaching some workshops on how to integrate team building exercises and cooperative games into school curriculum. We talked briefly about this and she looked up sharply and asked when I had gone out and gotten my Ed. degree. I said that I hadn't but that I had been instructing outdoor education and experiential education at a camp for almost a decade. She laughed, responding - "Who do you think you are...teaching teacher...

This blog actually started years ago. It predates [ the clean slate ]. I don't actually remember the reasons why I started [ the clean slate ] rather than just continuing on here. Maybe it was about a fresh start. I had started the Bear's Den and inconsistently posted about really nothing. I hated looking back through the posts and feeling disappointed with how I presented stuff...meaningless stuff. All I could think of was the writer from Ecclesiastes saying "Meaningless, meaningless. Everything is meaningless". I wanted to write profound things - but I never really came to that place. So I just ditched it and started something new. There's nothing really wrong with 'new starts' - sometimes they're needed. But the inability to figure out how to delete a blog left me staring at this dormant blog every time I logged in to update [ the clean slate ]. And then the Association for Experiential Education conference happened two or so weeks ago. I started ...