Participating Reserve: Sagehen Creek Field Station
Funded by: Private donations

Additional Information: http://sagehen.ucnrs.org/arc/index.htm Transect 23: 2 (Autumn 2005): “Summer at Sagehen Reserve transforms teens through program of Adventure • Risk • Challenge” (pages 7-13). A PDF of this article can be accessed at: http://nrs.ucop.edu/Transect-Sagehen.htm.

Based at the Sagehen Creek Field Station, this intensive six-week summer program combines outdoor adventure and leadership activities with English and science instruction. Serving at-risk tenth- and eleventh-grade English Language Learners (ELL) whose first language is Spanish, ARC has dramatically improved its graduates’ performance on the English portion of the California High School Exit Exam.

The program aligns closely with California State Standards, and all key ARC instructors are credentialed teachers. Program director Katie Fesus holds an M.A. in Education from Stanford University and a California teaching credential from Mills College in Oakland.

Most ARC students are drawn from the local Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District, where 25 percent of the district's students are designated as ELL. Ninety percent of these ELL students are achieving below grade level, and 60 percent drop out before graduation.

Environmental education has to come out of the universities and academic institutions, down to a grassroots level establishing a direct contact with its target groups.

Environmental Education:
Global Trends and Local Reality

Ulf Carlsson and Strike Mkandla. United Nations Environment Programme Online Colloquium, October 19-30, 1998

Each year Fesus works with school faculty and staff to identify eight to ten ELL students who have both leadership and academic potential, but who are struggling with English. She then meets with the students and their families to determine their interest in participating in the program.The ARC curriculum consists of a series of outdoor expeditions interspersed with academic time spent at Sagehen. Each program component has been designed to gradually build the students’ confidence and self-sufficiency until, by the end of the six weeks, they are comfortable with spending twenty-four hours on their own in the wilderness, teaching younger students basic science concepts, and reading their poetry in public.

The program’s tone is set on the first day when the students head into the Desolation Wilderness for an eight-day backpacking trip. Because most of the participants have no camping experience, ARC instructors carefully guide this trip, ensuring student safety while teaching backcountry survival skills. During this trip, participants begin to establish their group culture as they take responsibility for essential day-to-day chores.

Following the backpacking trip, the group comes to Sagehen to focus on language arts, science, and leadership/physical fitness. The language arts curriculum includes reading groups, vocabulary and grammar exercises, writing projects, peer sharing, and public speaking. By the end of the program, each student drafts, edits, and publishes three major writing assignments.

The science curriculum is organized around the local school district’s “Teaching Tahoe” standards, introducing the students to the natural world and environmental concepts. Students research a natural history topic and create a bilingual interpretive trail on their topic. They then lead tours for young students from the local Boys and Girls Club.

The leadership and physical fitness curriculum challenges each student to take on groupwide leadership and support roles as they prepare meals, clean their campsite, facilitate daily group meetings, and maintain a camp log. This curriculum also teaches wilderness medicine, healthy nutrition, and building physical strength through running and other exercise.

Time at Sagehen is interspersed with new expeditions: sea kayaking on Lake Tahoe, river rafting, rock climbing, ROPES courses, an environmental service day, and additional backpacking trips. Each successive adventure demands a higher level of self-sufficiency from the students until, by the final trip, they are completely in charge of planning and carrying out a wilderness trip that includes a twenty-four-hour solo and an off-trail peak ascent.

In the first year of the program (2004), all of the students improved dramatically on post-program English examinations. Four of five students eligible to take the High School Exit Exam passed on their first try. Equally important has been the dramatic improvement in the students’ self confidence and willingness to explore new opportunities. As 2005 participant Israel Carillo wrote:

"Climbing these mountains is teaching me; That every difficult obstacle can be overcome if I believe in myself."