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2022 Winter Institute Sessions

2022 Experiential Education in Action Workshops

Wednesday, January 19th, 2020 | 11:00 AM - 4:30 PM
Verde Valley School

All Experiential Education in Action workshops at Verde Valley School (VVS) will involve time in the rural Sedona desert, traveling on the rocky paths of VVS’ campus and in the surrounding National Forest. Participants should be prepared with a backpack they are comfortable carrying for several hours with the capacity to carry the following: 2 liters of water, additional layers of clothing, a bagged lunch (provided), snacks, personal items, a notebook, etc. Each workshop has been labeled by its level of physical difficulty. Please review the descriptions below. Some include prerequisite experience or knowledge. Ensure you review this material before selecting your preferences. Please let us know if you will need additional accommodations to be able to participate. 

Level of Physical Difficulty Descriptions

• Easy: These workshops involve some physical activity but they will be accessible, relaxed, and includes less than 2 miles of walking throughout the entirety of the workshop

• Moderate: These workshops will involve some physical activity but should be fairly accessible. They may include up to 4 miles of walking / hiking from the VVS campus on rock and dirt paths.  

• Challenging: These workshops include a sustained, rigorous physical element and are designed to provide a meaningful challenge.  

1. Deep History: Geology, Rappelling, and Artifacts [SOLD OUT]

Led by VVS Outdoor Educators and Science Teachers, this exciting adventure will include rappelling into the depths of a 100 ft+ deep sinkhole, a unique geologic feature a short walk from the Verde Valley campus. The unassuming hole in the ground opens to an underground cathedral. There participants will study the flowstone, erosion on a grand scale, and historic trash from decades past found on the sinkholes’ floor. The workshop will also highlight the way outdoor education can overlap and enhance discipline-specific content. Participants will use mechanical ascenders to climb out of the sinkhole, requiring substantial physical exertion. Be prepared for a challenging but unforgettable experience as you ascend the rope to climb out of the world beneath the earth’s surface.  

2. Design Thinking as a Tool for Interdisciplinary Learning [SOLD OUT]

This workshop is led by VVS faculty Kaylyn and David, who straddle three disciplines: Mathematics, the Natural Sciences, and History. This project provides participants with an experiential taste of the new VVS’ interdisciplinary flex Friday program and showcases a 6-week unit called Rocket Cars. This project is offered to VVS freshmen and sophomores and extends over a sequence of six Friday sessions of three hours each.  Rocket Cars gives VVS students a visceral experience of physics and mathematics, and allows them great latitude in how they meet the project’s central challenge. ISEEN workshop participants will have the opportunity to gain insight on how to build experiential, interdisciplinary programming that features design thinking, project based learning, group collaboration, and team teaching. In this workshop participants will complete one complete iteration of the Rocket Cars project, following the same design thinking process as Kaylyn and David’s students. Additional workshop time is spent reflecting on activities and new learning, and offers participants the chance to plan and strategize for bringing this or similar projects and programs back to their organizations. 

3. Cycles of Transformation: Mountain Biking as a Vehicle for Self Awareness [SOLD OUT]

Led by local Sedona guide, Simon Bosman, this workshop provides participants with past mountain biking experience the opportunity to build their skills and uncover mountain biking’s deep transferable lessons. As they travel through the Sedona single track, participants will investigate concepts of awareness, commitment, and self-reliance. Leaders of outdoor education are invited to investigate the way adventure can open up windows into the self and how lessons on the bike are perhaps more truly lessons on how to live.  

4. Hunger Banquet: Theater for Social Change [SOLD OUT]

By taking a deep dive into the plight of hunger, this group will experience an inspiring annual VVS program that joins social engagement, creative writing, theatrical performance, fundraising, and food. Participants will learn the process and purpose of hosting VVS’ unique version of an Oxfam Hunger Banquet and then execute a compressed version for the ISEEN community that evening. Get ready to step into your role and showcase the power of theater in raising social awareness and activating community engagement.  

5. Rock Art to Hydroflasks: Understanding the Material World [SOLD OUT]

Led by VVS Anthropology teacher, Leigh Carter, this workshop teaches participants to see with new eyes. Students will learn to apply concepts from symbolic anthropology, cultural materialism, and ethnology to re-evaluate everyday objects as well as some mysterious materials. This workshop includes traveling to rock art sites close to VVS where educators can put their new interpretive skills to use. Participants will gain a pocketful of theories and skills for seeing the human world more clearly and some easy tricks to keep lessons hyper-relevant to students in a classroom setting.

6. A Healing Earth

Inspired by a VVS afterschool program, this workshop focuses on the value of using nature to help students develop their sense of place in support of their well being. Participants will take a hike in VVS’ neighboring forest and learn to identify some of the more prevalent plants and trees. They’ll also learn about the medicinal qualities of the native plants and ways to safely harness plant medicine by way of making teas, tinctures and salves. Participants will make their own medicinal salve to take home. 

7. Spoken Word: Writing Our Shared Place

Led by acclaimed poet, social activist, and educator, Logan Phillips, this program will expose participants to the transformative power of spoken word workshops. Participants will live the journey of exploring prompts, investigating identities, collaboratively shaping stories, and ultimately delivering such work before a community. In doing so, participants will learn how spoken word is a powerful tool in facilitating empathy and belonging. This group will perform a final group poem for the ISEEN community during the Institute.  

8. Walking the Triangle: Connecting Science to Healthy Decision Making & Sustainability

Workshop attendees will get a first-hand look at how phenomena we have experienced can lead to meaningful science discovery, predictable events, and therefore better life decision-making. Attendees will engage in scientific investigation, just as students do, to see how "Walking the Triangle" between phenomena, visual presentation of data, and mathematics adds meaning to physics and engineering concepts. The workshop will also emphasize claims, evidence, reasoning as a method for argumentation for the decisions we make. Ultimately, participants will see how modeling scientific decision making can impact an entire community through school-centered engineering projects.

9. Modern Transcendentalism: A Mini Solo + the VVS Thoreau Hut [SOLD OUT]

Nearly 50 years ago, a group of VVS students built a replica of Thoreau’s Cabin at Walden Pond in the desert surrounding the Verde Valley School campus. Since then, the school has continued to teach the power of Transcendentalism both in the classroom and on Expeditions that include 48-hour student solos. This workshop, led by Lauren Kelley, held largely in the Thoreau Hut, will explore the modern day relevance of these thinkers and expose participants to the unique power of solitude, especially in this modern, ever-connected, virtual era.  

10. Conscious Communication with Horses [SOLD OUT]

Led by Equestrian, Educator, and Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Natalie Rockwell, this workshop will intimately expose participants into the healing power of interspecies connection. Participants will learn theory, hear powerful student accounts, witness demonstrations, and themselves get inside the ring with a horse in order to understand the way Equine Programs can be delivered to facilitate student well-being. While this workshop may include moments of time in the saddle, this is not primarily a horseback riding experience and instead a chance to learn the valuable lessons horses can teach us about personal well-being.

11. Optimal Challenge + Mindfulness Education in Outdoor Education [SOLD OUT]

Led by Lor Sabourin and Outdoor Educator and partners from Prescott College, this workshop will explore the ways outdoor education can be used as a tool to teach students mindfulness and appropriate risk-taking. Participants will be rock climbing on a cliff behind VVS campus (or in an indoor facility if weather prevents this) so participants should be willing to challenge themselves in this environment. Past experience belaying in an outdoor or indoor environment is required.  

12. Desert Homesteading: Growing for Beauty, Food, and Medicine

This experience, led by farm manager Mike Spielman, will take participants on a journey guided by a series of herbs, vegetables, fruits, and medicinal plants grown on the Verde Valley School Farm and foraged from the hills and washes around campus. The group will follow both the seasonal progression of the field as a “seed to seed food forest ecosystem” as well as the expanded timeline of agriculture and foraging in the southwest. These plants have been grown and used in the southwest for as long as people have lived there. The workshop will examine the role the farm plays as stewards of this wisdom and the resource it provides the school.  

13. Tracking and Harnessing the Waste Stream of an Independent School

Led by Coordinator of Sustainability, John Chorlton, this hands-on day will include a joyful jaunt through the trials and tribulations of managing multiple waste streams on a small school campus. The group will trace waste sourcing, pickup points, the sorting of recycling, and then investigate the (surprisingly simple) process VVS uses to compost food waste, yard waste and manure to make a rich and healthy soil additive right on campus. The group will ultimately follow the path of the food waste all the way to the farm where participants will fully realize VVS’ "seed to seed" process with activities on the farm. This workshop may include a trip to Sedona Recycles, an important local partner with whom VVS partners with for waste that is not farm bound. 

14. Voices from ISEEN: Building Community through Creative Nonfiction Writing

Led by writer and educator, Azlan Smith, this project will showcase an annual VVS program that collates personal narratives from the student body into a script ultimately performed by students. The Voices project affirms our stories by telling them back to us, strengthening our understanding of one another and the sense of belonging within a community. At ISEEN Winter Institute 2022, a group of educators will learn this process and execute it with material from Winter Institute participants, ultimately delivering the story of the ISEEN community during the Bringing it Home workshop on Friday morning.  

15. Re-imaging Our Land: Cultural Heritage in Action [SOLD OUT]

Led by educator and Navajo Archeologist, Jason Nez, this workshop will enjoy the depth of natural resources in VVS’ backyard and explore the importance of sufficiently educating modern students on the heritage and history of the land. Jason believes in the power of investigating living artifacts as they can shape a new state of mind by facilitating our openness to history and our relationship to where we live.

Professional Affinity Group Breakout Sessions - Thurs, Jan 20th

On the third day of the Institute, we will spend the day at Verde Valley School learning from their administrators and educators about experiential education at their school. During a portion of the day, we will break out into topic-specific sessions. 

Below, you’ll find the list of professional affinity breakout groups. You’ll have an opportunity to select your professional affinity group when you register for the institute. These professional affinity breakout groups offer the opportunity for problem-solving and connecting with colleagues who have a similar work focus.

• Community Engagement/Service-Learning
• Directors of Experiential Learning
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Practitioners 
• Global Education: Global Competencies and Travel 
• Outdoor & Adventure Education 
• School Administrator Leadership Panel 
• Student Leadership and Social Emotional Learning
• Sustainability & Environmental Justice
• Teachers: Ex Ed in the Classroom

Model Programs and Practices “Show & Tell” Session - Thurs, Jan 20th

Also on day three at Verde Valley School, we’ll hold the popular and very energetic Model Programs & Practices “Show & Tell” Session. We will have a slate of around 20 great programs that are showcasing their amazing work this year. Attendees will have the opportunity to visit with up to four of these great schools and organizations over the course of the four 20-minute rounds.  The session list will be added in December 2021.

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