20 Years in Trenches, What Keeps Me Going
7000 High School students drop out each day, one dropout every 26 second. Averaged nation wide that is 30% of all students, and in some large urban centers this rate is over 50%.[1]
In 1991, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison with a degree in Political Science. As most graduates with a degree in Political Science realize a B.S. in PoliSci is really just a BS degree. Having discovered the outdoors and using some money I had saved, I headed off to the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Washington State to take an Outdoor Educator’s Course. NOLS was a turning point for me; I found my passion. I had worked my way through college working in summer camps as a Waterfront Director, but never considered it a career until then.
The other key event that happened in 1991 was the reading of Peggy McIntosh’s article: White Priviledge: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin in the 70’s and 80’s; my family, my neighbors, my community was white. The only people of color I knew played for the Green Bay Packers. As a child, I don’t remember racist talk, because minorities didn’t exist in my sheltered world. At my last semester at Madison, my Uncle gave me the McIntosh article to read when we had a discussion on the Bakke Decision and affirmative action.
Merging, these two events helped shape who I became as an educator, much like the casting of small pebbles in
