Cooperative Adventures is a series of programs that I've developed and refined over the last nine years since my resignation as the Education Director of the National Maritime Museum, San Francisco (now the National Park Service’s San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park) in December of 1988. They are designed to enhance group and individual self- esteem through the development of trust, risk-taking, and cooperation within any small or large group and are based upon my previous work as a classroom teacher, environmental education specialist, and district curriculum specialist as well as my position of ship's captain aboard the 1895 schooner C.A. Thayer. They are well-rooted in existing research and practical application in the fields of cooperative education, adventure programming, challenge ropes courses, and affective education.
While working as Vice President of Operations at a Silicon Valley research and design firm, I realized that I missed much of what I'd left at the Maritime Museum. As I reflected on this, I began to understand that what I missed was not the Environmental Living Program and the C.A. THAYER as much as a dynamic environment where people are brought together to problem- solve, test their limits, trust each other, and cooperate. I started searching for such an arena.
I began to talk with children, teachers, administrators, and parents who were familiar with my work about the kinds of things that they perceived were needed in schools and how my skills might best be used.
During this period, I observed and subsequently participated in a ropes course and, at the same time, discovered some exciting material from an organization in Massachusetts called Project Adventure, Inc.
As I reviewed the materials and observed and participated in a number of ropes courses, I realized that a lot of the important things that I had learned in the Thayer program not only had application in this setting but, once applied, would greatly enhance it.
As I began to talk with teachers, principals, district administrators, and other consultants as to their needs for my services, I began to see a number of possibilities. Diana Page, then Associate Principal for Curriculum and a 7-8th grade teacher (now Superintendent) at Soulsbyville School in Soulsbyville (CA), who had participated with her class in the Environmental Living Program at Hyde Street Pier, suggested I try the idea of a "ropes/challenge course that could be taken on the road." Later that same day, I met with Sonora High School P.E. teacher Barbara Smith who teaches P.E. through adventure games, challenge activities, and ropes courses and the notion began to take form.
I realized that leaving the Environmental Living Program had not ended (nor had it diminished) my commitment to providing the unique transformational experiences for children, parents, and teachers that were such a vital and important part of the overnight program. Rather, the essence of what I had learned aboard the Thayer could be extended and combined with these new materials and programs and would emerge as a new and unique series of program opportunities that would be accessible to many more people in a variety of different settings.
What started to come together as I began to try some of these activities with teachers, students, and friends was a unique synthesis of the best aspects of the Environmental Living Program and the new things I was learning about "adventure education."
One of the most exciting aspects of the Thayer program was its highly effective teacher training component combined with the development of an ongoing supportive teacher network. I felt this had to be incorporated into the new program in the form of pre-workshops for teachers, parents, and administrators and ongoing opportunities for networking and evaluation to insure continued program development.
I began to brainstorm these ideas with teachers and principals that I knew might be interested (and knew me well enough to take the risk of trying something new). Armed with these ideas, I began to run a series of pilot programs to evaluate the program's effectiveness and work out the bugs.
The goal of Cooperative Adventures became the ongoing development of both group and individual T-R-C (trust, risk-taking, and cooperation).
Based upon the success of the pilot phase, the program went into full operation offering classroom programs, off-site residential programs, and teacher workshops. Similar programs are also offered to corporate groups as team and morale builders.
Through constant response to the needs of my clients, Cooperative Adventures has become (and continues to be) a unique synthesis of adaptations of Project Adventure activities, low element ropes course-type challenges, trust-building activities, and group initiative challenges.
As with the Environmental Living Program, the rare opportunity for the teacher to stand back, observe his/her children, and learn new techniques in a novel "demonstration teaching" environment is also preserved and, in fact, extended and enhanced beyond the previous boundaries imposed by the Thayer experience.
In fact, our experience strongly suggests that the development of trust, risk-taking, and cooperation happens more quickly and with better carry-over than through the Thayer "crew metaphor".
Needless to say, I continue to be excited about the opportunities that this unique program presents to create new arenas where mutual trust and respect are developed and nurtured, where self-imposed limits are stretched, and where real growth occurs, is sustained, and is successfully transferred.
. Environmental Living Programs are opportunities, offered through state and national parks, in which participants (generally 4-6th grade youngsters) live for 24 hours in a historical setting as the people of that time and place. . The C.A. Thayer is a three-masted wooden sailing vessel built in 1895 to carry lumber along the west coast of the United States. It is part of the National Park Service's fleet of historic ships at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. In the Environmental Living Program aboard the C.A. Thayer, the students role-play the Thayer's crew in the year 1930. . A Challenge Ropes Course is a series of individual and group physical challenges that require a combination of teamwork skills and individual commitment. Constructed of rope, cables, and wood, courses are constructed outdoors in trees (or using telephone poles) and indoors in gymnasiums. (Webster, Steven E. Ropes Course Safety Manual. Project Adventure, Inc., Hamilton, MA, 1989.)