It is the goal of The Ashokan Center to be the model of excellence in experiential outdoor education. Our program deals with both factual subject matter and how the student can use that knowledge to help have a positive impact on society as a whole. Our activities and instructional staff tie together natural history and science, conservation of natural resources and the Social Studies in a setting which fosters team building, cooperation and mutual respect. This list is by no means conclusive of all that we do here but serves rather as a model to help the classroom teacher fit our program into their curriculum and to assist in achieving compliance with the NYS learning standards. Part of the beauty of outdoor education is its macro approach to education. Students in our program are exposed to an environment that surrounds them with learning opportunities and also gives them the structure necessary to realize those opportunities.

• Health, Physical Education, And Home Economics
• Mathematics, Science and Technology
• Career Development and Occupational Studies
• English Language Arts
• Languages Other Than English
• Social Studies

Health, Physical Education, And Home Economics

Standard 2 - A Safe and Healthy Environment: Students will acquire the knowledge and ability necessary to create and maintain a safe and healthy environment.

• Our residential program completely immerses the student in a rigorous outdoor setting where the benefits of an active lifestyle are modeled by our staff. The students have a highly active day, which includes hiking, canoeing, and participating in activities in a variety of settings. Students live in a group setting and are responsible for their own cleanliness, as well as helping to clean the bunkhouse at the end of their stay. Meals are eaten family style and students take turns serving, cleaning up and sanitizing tables.

Standard 3 - Resource Management: Students will understand and be able to manage their personal and community resources.

• Before meals students are taught about waste; where it comes from, where it goes, how they can reduce it and why it is important to do so. We try to give them ownership of the problem as well as ownership of the solution. Many of our activities discuss our dwindling natural resources and ways that the students can successfully conserve them.
• Enchanted Valley: Builds community resource management issues through the use of a mock town meeting. Students are exposed to a proposal from a land development firm, discuss the pros and cons of the proposal and vote for or against it. Discussed are the implications for their own town's government and planning board and ways that they can affect change in their community.
• Pre-Breakfast Activities: Many of the pre-breakfast activities are based on making useful items such as envelopes or paper from recycled paper. This teaches students things that they can do in their own homes to be both creative and environmentally conscious.
• Pioneer Craft Shops: Part of each craft class's lessons revolves around a discussion of the renewable and non-renewable natural resources that go into making their project (e.g. coal, steel, wood, tin).
• Pond Ecology / Reservoir Hike: Potable water; where it is, and why it is important to protect the supply.

back to top

Mathematics, Science and Technology

Standard 3 - Mathematics: Students will understand mathematics and become mathematically confident by communicating and reasoning mathematically, by applying mathematics in real-world settings, and by solving problems through the integrated study of number systems.

• Orienteering: Students use compasses and topographical maps to find and follow directions, and utilize mathematical concepts to figure elevation, distance and direction.
• Dining Hall: Students collect and weigh food waste after meals, then chart and report their findings to the rest of the group.

Standard 4 - Science: Students will understand and apply scientific concepts, principles, and theories pertaining to the physical setting and living environment and recognize the historical development of ideas in science.

Our natural history and science programs center around scientific concepts which have been or will be discussed in the classroom and show the students those concepts in nature and the world around them. The list includes but is not exclusive to:

• Pond Ecology: Food web/chain, adaptation, specimen collection and identification, habitat studies;
• Gorge Hike: Forest succession, erosion, glacial geology, gorge formation, forest ecology;
• Forest Ecology: Food web/chain, adaptation, specimen identification, habitat studies, forest succession, tree identification, photosynthesis and transportation of nutrients within the tree, forest management;
• Reservoir Hike: Watershed studies, watercycle, erosion;
• Maple Sugaring: Tree identification, photosynthesis and transportation of nutrients within the tree, forest management;
• Animal Tracks & Traces / Birds: Adaptation, animal behavior, and animal identification through identification of tracks, other traces and habitat;
• Cemetery Hike: Cycle of life: death, decomposition, soil, nutrients, life;
• Web of Life: Interconnectedness of living things with each other and the world around them;
• Producers, consumers, decomposers;
• Survival: Human physical needs;
• Orienteering: Magnetic forces, topography.

Standard 5 - Technology: Students will understand and apply concepts, principles, and theories pertaining to the physical setting and living environment and recognize the historical development of ideas in science.

• Outdoor education is learning by experience, which allows students to experiment with technical skills. While at Ashokan, students can learn about tinsmithing, blacksmithing, broom making, woodcutting, spinning wool, candle making and colonial cooking. Also stressed are changes that have taken place in technology over time from the primitive era, through the industrial revolution until the present day.

Standard 6 - Interconnectedness/Common Themes: Students will understand the relationships and common themes that connect mathematics, science, and technology and apply the themes to these and other areas of learning.

• Maple Sugaring: Changes in technology in maple syrup production from 17th century to the present including sap collection, syrup production and storage. Discussed also is the amount of sap needed to make 1 gallon of syrup, the percentages involved and the sugar contents of both.
• Our discussions about food waste focus on our food's interconnectedness with the world around us. This lends emphasis to the idea that when food is wasted, it is not just the food but also the energy that went into the production, packaging, shipment and preparation of that food that is wasted as well.
  

back to top

Career Development and Occupational Studies

Standard 1 - Career Development: Students will be knowledgeable about the world of work, explore career options, and relate personal skills, aptitudes and abilities to future career decisions.

• Our pioneer craft shops teach about apprenticeships (internships) and experiential development. Also discussed are different styles of teaching (classroom vs. on the job training).

Standard 3a-Universal Foundation Skills: Students will demonstrate mastery of the foundation skills and competencies essential for success in the workplace.

• Challenge & Discovery and Intermediate Ropes: Group dynamics and team building for the workplace, school and sports. Helps participants realize personal goals and potential, develop leadership and communication skills as well as how to create and execute plans for immediate action.
  

back to top

English Language Arts

Standard 1 - Language for Information and Understanding: Students will listen, speak, read, and write for information and understanding. As listeners and readers, students will collect data, facts, and ideas; discover relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generated from oral, written and electronically produced texts. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language to acquire, interpret, apply, and transmit information.

• Enchanted Valley: Students develop critical analysis skills by listening to a presentation, questioning the presenters, formulating pros and cons and then voting on the proposal.
• Challenge & Discovery: Group Dynamics, cooperation, communication, and teamwork
• Waste & Weather reports help students develop communication skills by giving them a chance to announce information in front of the group.

Standard 3 - Language for Critical Analysis and Evaluation: Students will listen, speak, read, and write for critical analysis and evaluation. As listeners and readers, students will analyze experiences, ideas, information and issues presented by others using a variety of established criteria. As speakers and writers, they will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language to present, from a variety of perspectives, their opinions and judgments on experiences, ideas, information and issues.

• Enchanted Valley: Students listen, evaluate, ask questions, and work together as a group to analyze information presented and to develop a response. This activity stresses critical thinking and analysis.
• Challenge & Discovery: Students work together to analyze and solve problems. The focus of this activity is communication and teamwork.

Standard 4 - Language for Social Interaction: Students will listen, speak, read, and write for social interaction. Students will use oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English language for effective social communication with a wide variety of people. As readers and listeners, they will use the social communications of others to enrich their understanding of people and their views.

• Participants are exposed to social interaction here unlike that at school. They are around the same group of people 24 hours a day for the duration of their stay. They are required to interact with others with respect even at times when they would normally be at home with only their family or alone. There is adult supervision at the dining table, where food is served "family style". The food that is served must be self-rationed by everyone until seconds are available. This stresses the use of sharing and basic table manners.

back to top

Languages Other Than English

Standard 2 - Cultural Understanding: Students will develop cross-cultural skills and understandings.

• In our living history programs, students are exposed to ways in which people from other time eras lived helping to develop cross-cultural understanding.
  

back to top

Social Studies

Standard 1 - History of the United States and New York: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments, and turning points in the history of the United States and New York.

• In our living history and pioneer craft activities, students are immersed in the early history of the United States and New York State. They are exposed to a variety of buildings, tools, costumes and events of typical early American life. Through our use of role playing, participants are able to experience these pieces of history in a live setting.

Standard 2 - World History: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of major ideas, eras, themes, developments and turning points in world history and examine the broad sweep of history from a variety of perspectives.

• Indian Village: Students will understand how the Native Americans got to this continent and how they were effected by European contact.
• Trapper's Cabin: The history of the fur trade in the U.S. is focused on as one of the major reasons for the settlement and expansion of North America by Europeans.

Standard 3 - Geography: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the geography of the interdependent world in which we live-local, national, and global-including the distribution of people, places, and environments over the Earth's surface.

• Programs that touch on geography are Indian Village, Trapper's Cabin, Gorge Hike, Orienteering, Pond Ecology, Reservoir Hike and Forest Ecology. Possible topics include distribution of people on the Earth's surface and how it has been affected by land features, glacial movements and changing environments, topography, and distribution of water.

Standard 4 - Economics: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate the understanding of how the United States and other societies develop economic systems and associated institutions allocate scarce resources, how major decision-making units function in the united states and other national economies, and how an economy solves the scarcity problem through market and non-market mechanisms.

• Trapper's Cabin: Supply & Demand of resources (trading of beaver pelts).
• Enchanted Valley: Shows students how they can be responsible for decisions related to economic developments in their community.
• Maple Sugaring: Discusses difference in the Maple Sugaring industry from the contact period, the pioneer era and today, the price of real Maple Syrup compared to artificial, and the effects of acid rain on production.

Standard 5 - Civics, Citizenship, and Government: Students will use a variety of intellectual skills to demonstrate their understanding of the necessity for establishing governments; the governmental system of the United States and other nations; the United States Constitution; the basic civic values of American Constitutional democracy; and the roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, including avenues of participation.

• School House: Shows students how they can make a difference in their school, their community and the world around them.
• Indian Village: Possible topics are; Treaties entered into with the natives by the U.S. government, what happened to those treaties and the abuses of native people's rights.
• Pond Ecology: Looks at water quality issues and what the student can do to prevent pollution.
• Enchanted Valley: Shows students how they can be responsible for decisions related to all developments in their community.

back to top