We have all seen movies of aliens invading the earth. In these movies, there is a very common theme that arises. In most all alien invasion movies, we see the communities of the world put down all differences and unite to fight.  The actual method of fighting varies from epic military battles (Independence Day) to playing music that makes the alien’s head explode (Mars Attacks). However, the overall story or theme is the same. The people of the world always unite to protect what we call home. It is great to see how Hollywood tells the story of what mankind would do, if faced with a danger so great, that it had a chance of threatening mankind on a global scale. Do you think, if there was a danger that threatened to wipe out human kind, would we as a globe unite and fight? I would like to think that if we saw an alien invasion coming upon us we would put down all differences and join forces. But alas with the world the way it is now, I feel that we would get lost in the overall goal and be destroyed. Either by the aliens themselves or by our own stupidity with using nuclear warheads. This is kind of a dismal way to look at things, i know, I really wish this was not they way I felt, but alas, it is.

So, why am I talking about alien invasions? The truth is and i am sorry, I am not going to sit here and talk to you about how we can defend ourselves from aliens. However I would like you to give a little thought to the idea of another global crisis. There are a few things that I would classify as a global crisis, one being an alien invasion, another could be an asteroid that threatens the planet, nuclear war and the third, is one we are more familiar with, global warming. Are you starting to see where this might be going?

As several programs on the Discovery Channel like to put it we are in gave danger. We are facing something that threatens the world on a global scale, global warming. We all watch movies, where are the leaders to step up and lead us through this disturbing issue, why are we not uniting as a globe to stop and do something? For that matter stop and do anything. Everywhere you turn, news, internet, youtube, we see people fighting and bickering over differences like gay marriage, land, religion, war, and taxes, this is my personal favorite. Subjects like these are important.  Yes, i know, I am not ( excuse my french) shitting on these subject because I feel like we should ignore them. I’m shitting on them because with the way the world is heading now, in 100 years, there are going to be vast spaces of land that will be basically fried and inhospitable for mankind. Yet we are at war, AT WAR over the one of the biggest contributors to global warming.

Unfortunately we are not in the movies and when someone stands up and tries to stand for the environment, they watch as the issue gets slowly pushed further and further back. Funding, resources and time are pulled away from the environmental issue every day by these petty issues. So environmentalist have to battle and fight for the rights of the earth, our home. Find me one person who would let you walk in their door and poor gasoline all over their living room rug, then throw a match on it. You won’t. They do not exist. People have this perception of what home is. Where we live, we protect and would rather strangers not to come in, dump trash everywhere or light our place of refuge, on fire. People ranging from the homeless and their boxes, to the rich and their 50,000 square foot monstrosities have this view. But some of these same people continue to push for more oil drilling, waste valuable resources and ignore the global warming issue. The problem is mankind as a whole does not view the earth complete, with all its beauty, as home. They might say well I know I live on earth. But what I am talking about is, people do leave their house,  fly to a place on the planet they have never been and say “man it feels good to be home”. What I am saying is our view of home is very one minded. We can only see the world through one set of eyes. Because of this, we put this false attitude toward events on this planet that do not seem to directly effect us. I mean it’s really hard to control this view, we only have one mind. The only way to affect this view is to really understand that mankind is one of many great species that inhabits earth, our home.

In the great time line of earth, going all the way back to the beginning of time for our planet, about 4.5 billion years ago and looking at the progression of our planet, it has been in a consistent state of balance while evolving. Excluding the asteroid that possibly  killed the dinosaurs, the earth seems to maintain itself in a stable and constant state of evolution. It was not till the very recent occurrence of the industrial revolution, that things started to go out of whack. Since that time, the state of our planet has done nothing but a downward spiral toward destruction. With all the pollution, burning of fossil fuels and wasting of resources, humans are going to destroy the earth and put it into submission. A very similar submission occurred about 65 million years ago. Dinosaurs were rulers of this earth. Then came along a nice big asteroid (possibly) and changed the evolution of the earth. Now here we are, standing on the beginning stages of a dramatic climate change, bickering.

I mean I know why we do it. We are a very special creature because we have knowledge of self. We are driven by what we call our “minds”, compared to animals who would be driven by survival instinct. Our complex brains have allowed us gain a greater ability to think than all other species. With this great knowledge and the technology that it built, we were able to alter the earth’s climate at a very rapid rate. Think about what species will be living 65 million years from now, will it be looking at history and wondering how humans died off? I would like to hope not. We have to take this blessed knowledge we have and use it for the continuing good of earth.

How would Hollywood do it? They have dealt with and fixed global issues. By uniting and working together.  There is a global crisis that is threatening the world – global warming! Our president in this movie is Martin Sheen (played a great president in the TV show West Wing). What would he do? How would Hollywood solve this issue of global warming?

Drastic action is needed……………….

One thing I have learned over the past few semesters is that there are many ways for people to learn. We have gone over many theories and ideas about the so called best way to teach. From all of the lessons and readings we have read  about this subject, I have formulated my very own teaching philosophy.

Learning is a great thing, it stimulates the brain and when you give the brain information, all it wants is more. Unfortunately learning only happens when the person is engaged in the subject matter. Learning happens even more rapidly when one feeds their own brain with the information as oppose to having someone feed it to you. So what if you could trick people into teaching themselves. Maybe trick is a harsh word, guide, lead, steer are better choices.

 Guiding people to teaching their ownselves. This is what my teaching philosophy is all about. This dawned on me on my solo experience. I recalled all the times when I have really remembered information. I was trying to remember some names of plants around my sleeping bag. I soon realized that I was able to remember much more then I thought. It felt like information was flowing out of my head.  I had never really felt an experience like that before. It made me ask myself, why was I remembering this information so well.

I realized that it was all the information that I was ready and willing to engage my brain in learning. The key word there being learning. When I taught myself about plants I felt like I learned the information instead of memorizing it. It is an easy concept to grasp, it’s just hard to apply. I thought to myself “ how could you help people teach themselves?” Thinking about this idea I realized that it was a very easy thing to apply this guided self teaching. I find that it is all about asking questions. If a student that you are leading comes up to you with a question and you start asking them questions, the student soon realizes that they can figure it out on their own. I have seen people do this before. My outward bound instructors applied tactics in the course that I was a part of. I did not realize at the time but that course with outward bound really got this self teaching idea churning in my brain.

I have seen it in myself and in lots of my friends that are in the Adventure Education program. When we start to teach ourselves about the wilderness, we all enjoy it and we all want more of it. I have seen the long term change of being subject to this kind of self teaching philosophy and I have seen the success it has. It is this philosophy I choose to base most of my teachings in my future career.

 

So this past week, i turned the fine age of 21. Now being a college student, one might expect for me to go out and get as ,some like to say, loaded, wasted, or even drunk. I say “HA” to society and kicked those social expectation through the door. No, what i wanted to do, when my 21st day of birth came, was go snowboarding and at the end of my day go in the lodge and grab a beer for myself. And by golly, THATS WHAT I DID! I snowboarded and went in, and grabbed a beer for myself.

The first people i had my end of snowboard day drink with, were these two girls, one of which had been at the bar for a little while already. They both talked to me joyfully and even more so when they discovered it was my 21st. It was great fun, they were alumni of plymouth state, and were telling me of their days at the school. When i was done with my drink, i thanked everyone for the birthday wishes and went on my way.

Because i was up early to plymouth from home to be working at Loon, (where i was snowboarding) i had made no real plans for my birthday. But promptly at 430, my friend Sierra called me asking me what my plans were and to have a happy birthday. We decided to go out to the Mad River Tavern. This is really awesome place to get a burger or a beer after a long day on the snow. I had been there before on several occasions, they have mighty good food. But i had never been able to get the beer. HAHA, no longer, i got that beer and food and even got to watch a little bit of the football game.

After a few drinks sierra and i went back to her place and had a bottle of wine. My friend lindsay, who is also in my immersion class, joined us for that part. Even more so to my liking, it was snowing! So after the wine was depleted, we geared up, and headed out into the snow. We all went for a playful walk in the snow, sliding most of the way. The night was concluded at my apartment, with Sierra, dave and i chilling on the floor, talking about……hmm…. talking about………yea i guess i do not really remember.  From there sierra and I crashed. We parted ways and I fell into my kingdom of covers.

Great day nothing more, nothing less