CSC Panamerican Adventure
OUR JOURNEY
School and Education
At a Tri-Association Conference in Bogota, Colombia that I attended several years ago the keynote speaker, Pat Basset, President of the National Association of Independent Schools, made a bold statement that has resonated with me ever since. “Schools are the best 19th century institutions in existence.”
Mr. Basset articulated what I have felt to an ever growing extent through nearly two decades as a teacher and school administrator. I recall one time giving a conference in a second grade classroom at a school I was visiting. The classroom looked much like my second grade classroom in 1973, indeed substitute the whiteboard for a black piece of slate and it could have easily been my mother’s classroom in 1950. The world has changed exponentially since 1972, yet to a large extent we still require children to conform to an institution that was developed around 19th century needs during an industrial revolution.
Having reached the pinnacle of my profession, Headmaster of an International School, with all the responsibilities, long hours and stress associated with it, combined with the prestige, professional challenge and satisfaction of steering the learning experience for hundreds of children every day, I decided to take a step back and look at where I was and where I was headed.
Through the years I have noticed a growing distance between youth and true life experience. Whether living vicariously through their computers and Facebook or escaping through drugs, students contact with the world is not as intense nor life-enhancing as this one short journey through life should be.
An Unfinished Journey
A journey by bicycle with my 12-year-old son along the Karakoram Highway of Western China in the summer of 2012 stirred up lingering ghosts from a journey unfinished. Nearly 25 years ago I set off on two wheels to travel the world. The initial stage was by motorcycle with a red Yamaha escaping Canada in the grip of a December freeze to eventually end up in Guatemala via Florida and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. After traveling the length and breadth of Mexico twice I headed to northern British Colombia, Canada to replenish my funds by tree planting and forest fire fighting.
The Yamaha was traded for a Cannondale mountain bike in Vancouver leading to a journey to the Islands of Fiji, crewing on a sailboat to New Zealand to circumnavigating the North and South Islands.
My friend Dave and I had initially planned on selling the bikes in New Zealand for a hefty profit but we had fallen in love with bicycling an even purer and challenging form of travel than a motorcycle. Next came Australia and then Indonesia. While cycling through this island nation I became very ill and decided to head back home to continue my university studies. However, I was not returning to further my pursuit of becoming a civil engineer.
One glorious morning as I watched the sun rise over the Australian outback and listened to the haunting call of an Australian magpie - Australia has the most amazing variety of birds -I realized that to return to Canada and enter the world of engineering would be to squander years of travel and life experience, as well as the finances used to support these. These travels were not limited to two wheels, but included sea kayaking the Inner Passage of Alaska, backpacking Europe, plenty of backcountry hiking, motorcycling across the USA solo at the age of 17 and climbing some of the world’s highest mountains. No, the engineering world would be one member short. I would return to Canada and become a teacher, a geography teacher to be precise.
An education degree in hand I found a new vehicle to carry me to distant lands - the classroom. Teaching has led me to Namibia, an infant nation at the time that had just thrown off the shackles of Apartheid rule by South Africa, the wilds of subarctic Canada, Mexico and finally China. Now, through the CSCPanamerica adventure I hope to use my teaching skills to tackle a problem that has devastated the lives of so many young people and their families, including within our own family - illicit drugs.
For 20 years as an educator I have worked to give power and options to young minds. The objective of my work has been to help kids be smart, but Smart Kids Don't Do Drugs!