On the Ropes

Spring conferences are over now, as is spring vacation, and it's time to get back to the blog.  So, I promised to write about how we intrepid Dodge teachers adapted our adult Up North Frozen River Adventure for Dodge kids.

The answer is, in short, ropes.  Ropes helped us adults through the harrier stretches of the frozen river canyons.  We anchored ropes and held on to them, as we took turns trying to snowshoe up and across ledges of snow hanging over stretches of open water.  The fear factor was greater than the actual risk, and the fear of falling on our backsides, tumbling into the frigid water and generally embarrassing ourselves in front of all the other adults was likely the biggest motivator to hang on to those ropes.  Ropes provided us with a measure of safety on the hike, and also with an opportunity to cooperate and to take bigger risks.  That risk-taking is the really interesting part, of course.

A couple of years ago, I went to Ecuador and while in the cloud forest, my husband and I did a canopy zip line tour.  Now, this was something I had never done before and while discussing such tours with Erik before we left the US, I truly balked at the notion.  "Not me!  No way!"  But, after a week of taking risks of all kinds-- landing in the old Quito airport (very short runway), buying (and eating), unfamiliar food on the street in a developing country, scary bus rides through alpine passes (not religious, but I got religion for three hours), haltingly trying out a few words of Spanish, clinging to the back of a feisty black horse (while he ran away, down a stone Inca road), joining a night hike (through pit viper country), sleeping near spiders as big as my hand (after learning they were venomous)-- after a week of operating outside my own comfort zone and watching a whole culture of people generally operate outside every American's comfort zone, I felt emboldened.

The only way I can account for my zip line bravery is the days of risk-taking that preceded it.  I am terrified of heights.  I cannot climb to the top of a six foot ladder without wanting to throw up.  The Fire Tower at Mille Lacs State Park?  I've tried to climb it every time we go and I can't get past the first story. And yet, there I was, in the Andes, many hundreds of feet above rivers and gorges, suspended on a line of questionable integrity, with sketchy helmet and a garden glove for a hand brake.  Our guides of course, wore no harnesses or safety equipment of any kind.  Why was my life worth any more than theirs?  When my husband pointed out that one of our lines, the one above the deepest gorge, was tethered to what looked like a sapling, I shrugged.  What the heck?  There was no way to turn back anyhow, no other way down.

No, we have not been challenging children to take foolhardy, life-threatening risks here at Dodge.  But we have been encouraging them to take calculated risks on ropes courses that we rig up on low hanging limbs and fallen trees.  The activity has appealed to many kids, and many kids have so enjoyed these ropes courses that they have returned to certain challenges again and again, building on skills and taking bigger risks based on their new knowledge.  The kids' new knowledge is about how their bodies work, how they leverage their own weight, how they find new hand holds and foot holds, how they balance or swing on the rope.  The children learn by watching peers try and succeed or fail, but mostly they acquire this new knowledge by trying again and again and again, and failing a lot.  Their risks become increasingly calculated and we see their hypothetical and decision-making skills grow.  Failures give way to small successes, which lead to bigger successes and we see the kids access a new sense of self-confidence in the process.  There is no mistaking the look of satisfaction on the faces and actually in the entire bodies of kids who accomplish something they set out to do.  Pride is a great thing to witness in a preschooler.

I am still proud of myself for taking those risks in Ecuador.  My experiences there gave me the confidence to contemplate travel to other places, and to think about taking my own kids on such excursions.  I am not a risk junkie, but certain kinds of risks, I find, in my own life, seem to have important and hard to quantify effects.  I am certainly not well-traveled, but travelling through the developing world for a couple of weeks gave my American brain a big workout, and a better sense of both my commonality and my privileged place in our big world.  I took less for granted when I returned to Minnesota, and I was humbled to realize that my tourist experience, my "adventure" and "risk-taking" was a mere drop in the bucket compared to the risk that other people must embrace just to stay alive on the planet every day.  All kids take risks when they come to school.  Dodge kids are no different in this.  Social risks are often the biggest.  But, for the most part, our children don't have to take unnecessary risks to stay alive each day.  Kids the world over do, of course, and it is our luxury to invite risk in order to learn.  And so we do.  And it is great fun.  And I do think it helps children take on a variety of other life risks, including social risks, with increasing confidence.

In the past few weeks, working the ropes, I watched one student come alive in a new way.  She began to talk to me, to address me by name, to sustain eye contact.  And all this while she challenged herself to climb one particular tree and to swing down from a high rope.  The first time she called me by name, she did so in a panic to get my attention.  "Marlais!  I can't do it!"  I was spotting her, standing only inches away with my hand on her back, but she wanted to know that I was there and that I was "on."  I laughed quietly and said, "I bet you can."  She increased her volume, "I can't!"  Tellingly, though, she still kept inching forward.  Part of her thought she could.  "Bet you can."  "I can't."  "Come on, you can."  We went back and forth like this until she reached the crotch of the tree, where she knew she needed to prepare to grab the rope with both hands and swing to the ground.  She took a deep breathe and looked me right in the eye, "You're gonna stand right there."  "I'm gonna stand right here."  And then she did it.  And when she did it, landing safely on the ground, she jumped up and down, saying, "I did it!  I did it!"  I smiled and watched.  Then she turned and looked me in the eye.  "Marlais, I did it.  Can I do it again?"

That kind of moment makes the dirty diapers, the temper tantrums, the biting and the tears all worth while.  In a moment like that, I see a kid grow an inch.  I see a kid looking up and all around, ready for the next adventure.

We are planning to purchase a slack line for the preschool and Melanie and I are laying plans for "A Challenge A Day" for our Going Deeper summer camp session.

If you want to see me on the ropes too,  check this out:   the zip line