To Know a Place for the First Time:
The Importance of Semester Education
(This article was recently submitted for publication in a southeastern education magazine)
I just returned from our forge, where our resident blacksmith and Natural Science teacher was demonstrating how to literally strike while the iron’s hot. I still have to grade the students’ essays on Cold Mountain before tomorrow morning when we leave for a five-day trek through Joyce Kilmer National Forest. My housemate Brook is banging around in the garage, doing some final modifications to the parabolic solar oven that they made in Algebra II. And it’s times like these that I have to pause and realize how lucky I am to work at a semester school like The Outdoor Academy.
Every semester, about thirty high school sophomores arrive here in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina from all over the country—as close as Asheville, as far away as Alaska. During their four months here, they paddle rivers, climb mountains, and explore caves; they chop firewood, maintain trails, and clear brush; and they take rigorous courses in natural science, mathematics, nature writing, foreign language, and world history. They live communally, and they learn experientially. I’m doubly lucky: Lucky because I have the privilege of teaching here and lucky because eleven years ago I had the privilege of attending as a student.
We had our ten-year reunion last spring. Some of us hadn’t seen one another in some time. Others were still in regular contact, but we all gave the Reader’s Digest version of our lives. Nick Beaudrot was doing market research near Portland, Oregon; Daniel Price owned and operated an organic farm outside of Portland, Maine. Susanne Kistin was finishing her midwifery training; Brooks Daverman had just been accepted to Duke University to get his graduate degree in public policy.
As each of my friends spoke I was struck by two things: 1) the light in their eyes as they spoke passionately of their work and 2) how impressive and important their work really was. We were all twenty-five or twenty-six, and not one of us had even a hint of post-college malaise. When we were students here we read an interview with Gary Snyder in which he talked about “the real work.” Back then we pondered over what he meant, but now we were doing it.
I’ve been asked why semester education is important, and to me, it’s evident in my classmates’ vocations. It’s all about connection. The Outdoor Academy is one of nine semester schools based in the United States; the others are located in places such as Napa Valley, The Bahamas, and New York City. Because these schools are small—usually no more than forty-five students at a time—we’re able to cultivate a genuine sense of belonging. Semester schools provide students with a small communal environment to reconnect with their studies, their peers, their world, and themselves. In these schools, students are held accountable not only for their academic work, but for keeping the community together. Students then carry that deep-rooted sense of connection with them for the rest of their lives.
Alumni from these schools are characterized by their level of engagement, their sense of responsibility, and their self-direction. They return to their sending schools and communities knowing where they want to go and how to get there. They return as leaders and as active supporters.
This is my seventh semester at The Outdoor Academy. A decade ago, I had the privilege of my first semester as a student. In the last three years, I’ve watched six semesters enjoy the same privilege that I had. I watch them grow as I did. I watch them grow roots.
“And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
