Mt. Hood Community College Course Takes Students ‘Into the Wild'

By Kelsi L. McKenzie, The Advocate Online
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The newest in the series of learning community classes (a team-taught course where two classes are integrated with a focus on non-lecture teaching) offered on campus is “Into the Wild,” a wilderness survival and principles of sociology combined curriculum course.

With a mutual love of the wilderness and having had interesting sociological conversations, instructors Cindy Harnly and Naomi Abrahams decided to co-teach this course. Harnly teaches health classes and Abrahams is a sociology instructor; the two are like-minded in their respect for the environment, Harnly said.

Abrahams said the class will look at understanding how to survive in the back country, how to navigate using a map and compass while also layering on issues of cultural survival for the people of the land. “The learning community aspect is going to lead us to be able to do a lot of group work,” Harnly said. “The idea is for it to really be a community of learning, with everybody contributing,” Abrahams added.

The teaching strategies for this course center on learning as a social act, Abrahams said. Integrating curriculum creates unique opportunities for experiential and collaborative learning as well as critical thinking, she said.

Students have a choice of which weekend they would like to take their field trip to central Oregon. The class will be staying at Smith Rock State Park and doing some sort of service learning on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation helping the people or the land. The class will be staying in The Grasslands of Smith Rock State Park. Harnly said that location was chosen because of the ability for students to look at elevation changes on a map, as well as its sheer beauty.

“It won’t be primitive camping,” Harnly said. “It’s a little bit of a step up from car camping.” According to Abrahams, they wanted an environment where students can actually do some of the things they were learning in the classroom, and hopefully have some downtime to hike and explore.

There is no additional cost for the weekend field trip, just the standard $50 course fee for all outdoor education classes.

“By tying together their wilderness experience with people of that land, they will interact with and develop a greater appreciation for the physical and social space they will be surrounded by,” Abrahams said. “They will learn about issues of concern in terms of cultural and economic survival of the people of the land.”

Along with the weekend trip, challenge course activities will add new layers of collaborative learning, Abrahams said. Also, according to Harnly, students will explore the movement of cultures as well as doing mapping activities on campus. “Through the challenges and debriefing sessions, students will integrate sociological analysis of group dynamics, norms, social control, and deviance into their leadership and group training activities,” said Abrahams.