Outdoor Adventures (Ch.13)

Abstract
This chapter is promoting the use of outdoor activities and interaction in relation to the learning community. The benefits of this are personal autonomy as well as physical, emotional, and intellectual self improvement. The chapter also suggests that experience these types of activities can help students see adults as more than just authority figures, but it can help them close the gap and allow for students to view the teachers as more human and approachable, as "fellow travelers in life's journey." The chapter provides some examples of useful activities that teachers can use as a guide for any outdoor excursions they might pursue with their students. Each of the ideas is tied to a basic content area, showing the use of this type of activity in almost all subjects. All of the activities have possibility of academic benefit for the students. The author was truly inspired by the experiences that he has had with his students in these situations.

Reflection
I think this was such a cool chapter. Although at first I questioned the practicality of all of these crazy adventures, I am not one to dwell on that, and ended up really loving all of these ideas. It sounds like a camp experience where students can get the most fair and important balance of activity, social interaction, and learning on all levels, including the academic. The many ideas that the chapter displays relate directly to content areas and presented some cool projects and suggestions that could work with or without the extreme activity condition. Outdoor writing would be in every one of my lesson plans if I could make it work that one. I have always loved the concept and the many connections it brings to the students. This chapter gave some awesome ideas on that particular activity and made me really excited to embark on these kinds of adventures, while incorporating something relatively basic, but substantially exciting and beneficial.