This is not your typical classroom. It’s day three of a five-day expedition. There has been snow, subfreezing temperatures, and miles of hiking. Still, the students gather around the campfire with dirt smudged on their faces, feeling at home.
Expeditionary learning puts preaching to practice. Students learn in a classroom then once every six weeks or so, they go out into the backcountry. They test skills like fire making from scratch or wildflower identification guided by California State Park experts. Tahoe Expedition Academy in Kings Beach, which opened in September, is a kindergarten through eighth-grade school conceived by D.C. Larrabee and Taylor Simmers. Their experience as longtime teachers helped them realize the need for a more effective, organic kind of education. Larrabee and Simmers saw that the loss of rugged individualism was plaguing contemporary education. They both believe that embracing risk is how we get children to achieve personal summits, and that’s when they, or anybody, learn most effectively.
‘Parents are willing for their kids to take calculated risks because they are yearning for their kids to be immersed in what they are doing,’ said Larrabee.
Larrabee and Simmers both share a passion for adventure as well as the role of co-directors and teachers at TEA. TEA currently has 70 students and continues to grow. The school is an independently funded, nonprofit organization whose mission is to ‘utilize our unique natural setting as base camp to create an experiential academic environment where students journey toward personal summits as courageous and respectful world citizens.’
TEA is unique in that its learning takes place around Tahoe. In the classroom, students have guiding themes to their education. Earth, air, fire, and water are the classical elements that the curriculum revolves around.
‘It’s not some esoteric idea that’s intangible. It is completely tangible and relatable. They [students] drink water, heat their homes by fire, and breathe air everyday,’ said Simmers.
On expeditions, the kids strap on backpacks and head outward-bound with enough kit to last for up to a week in the backcountry. Because all their senses are attuned to the environment, the learning content becomes grounded to the real.
‘When you synergize constructive adversity, risk, and adventure with core academics, you get this intellectual environment where there is a lot of serendipity,’ Larrabee said. ‘This leads to what we call ‘accidental learning.’ The kids are learning stuff and they aren’t even trying.’
TEA is unique in that its learning is place based. Students learn about the macro and can apply that to the micro. For example, if the students are studying environmental science, TEA takes a large concept, like global resource conservation, and utilizes the Tahoe outdoors to provide a narrow focal point such as conifers and the logging industry. In this way, students develop the critical thinking skills to understand the greater world. This place-based learning model can be applied to reading, writing, and mathematics.
Parents have found TEA to be an effective school. Sue Evans was excited to hear her daughter Nicole, a seventh grader, come home one day and say, ‘Mom, I love school.’
One aspect especially unique to the TEA teaching curriculum is character building. This component helps students become more aware of their attitude, respect, and reciprocity toward others.
‘They also work with building themselves to be a better person. Which all of us need to be a better person, especially kids,’ said Evans.
~ To learn more about Tahoe Expedition Academy, visit tahoeexpeditionacademy.org. Comment on this story below.
