My Ah-Ha Moment: Building Durable Skills through Outdoor Learning

Heather: Thanks for talking with us, Rob! What brought you to Waukesha East?

Rob: I absolutely hated my own K-12 experience. I got into law enforcement first and then decided to make a career change. I thought teaching would be good because so many kids are not reached and just need a different path. 

For 14 years, I taught AP Government and Economics, but I always felt a connection to kids that struggled. I decided to make a bold change to the alt ed world, and I taught at places where students were incarcerated, like in detention facilities. Later, I found myself back in traditional education, in an elementary school, and I was not satisfied.

Two years ago, I applied for this [social studies] position at Waukesha East, an alternative school. Sue, the principal, said, “We do these MLT’s, or Mastery Learning Targets. You’re teaching all the subjects and an afternoon class where you can set up whatever Workshop you want.” I liked that idea.

What are Workshops and what do you do in your Workshop?

The last portion of the day is two hours long and it’s called Workshops. What’s really cool is our teachers have designed the Workshops based on their own areas of interest, like culinary arts and history through the movies. In my Workshop, the first nine weeks are called The Great Outdoors and consist mainly of fishing and fishing related-tasks. 

I want to make this clear: It’s not just, Hey, we’re picking up poles! We’re going fishing! Students are learning Mastery Learning Targets related to fishing, so we have science; we have ELA; we have Durable Skills, just to name a few.

You recently told me you had an “a-ha moment” in your Workshop. What happened?

My a-ha moment surrounds what are called Durable Skills, which are, in a different terminology, are soft skills, your people skills. In our school, we have several of them, like collaborating, staying on task, and following group norms.

Last year, Durable Skills were, to me, an afterthought, like Yeah, you guys did your work today. Cool. Here you go. You got this. I knew they were important, but I didn’t really see them in a certain light until this year.

One day during Great Outdoors recently, I dumped all the tackle on one of my tables in the room. I told the students, “You guys have to decide how you’re going to organize the tackle boxes so that I can literally pick up any two of the four when we go fishing.” Then I pointed to compartments, saying, “This section is for artificial lures, this section is for live bait. You guys have to work together as a team to figure this out.”

I thought: This is awesome. And this is going to be a mess. And there are like seven different indicators of Durable Skills right there. We’re going to see where everyone lies on the Durable Skills continua.

As I predicted, one student struggled; one kid was doing everything; another kid was off to the side with his head down; another kid was flipping water bottles, all of these different dynamics. They were not working together.

The next day, before we went out to fish, I said, “Okay, I want to let you guys know what yesterday was about: your ability to work with others, to follow our norms. I want you to check your scores right now in Beacon related to this activity. Do not see this as Oh, I’m only a 1, or I’m only a 2. Look at this way: these are your baseline scores. Can you do better?”

Then, before we headed to the river, I pulled out two of the tackle boxes at random. We were ready to test the outcome of the group work the day before.

At the river, the kids were catching fish on live bait. They were having fun. Eventually, one of my students said, “Hey, can I use artificial lures?”

I said, “Absolutely. Go for it!”

The student opened the tackle boxes.

There were no artificial lures.

The student said, “There’s a fish right there that really would like to take a spinner bait right now. Can I go back?”

I said, “No, we can’t really go back. We’re here. What do you think we should do?”

The student said, “When we go back, we need to fix this.”

Next day, fixing the tackle boxes is exactly what they did. I told my students, “Let this be a lesson. You want to be prepared. There’s an awful feeling when you don’t have the equipment that you want. That doesn’t mean that you guys are going to be perfect. And you don’t have to like everyone. You just gotta get along. You’re going all be working with people the rest of your life.”

Now that you have rated your Great Outdoors students for the first time on these MLT’s, what’s next?

Next week, we are going to have an outside group come in and they’re going to be doing some water testing with us. My students will work in two individual groups, targeting three Durable Skills, so it’s more about them relying on each other and less on me.

What support have you needed from school leadership or others to make this fishing project happen? 

Sue [the principal at Waukesha East] has been been awesome. She gives me so much support. And she wants to make sure that the experiences are meaningful, they’re not fluff, that there’s a curriculum and there’s learning tied to it. Sue trusts her teachers to do all of those things. And I promise you, I’ve never been at a school where I literally appreciate all the adults I work with.

What’s your advice for someone who may want to try Durable Skills in the way you’re using them, perhaps maybe not with fishing, but with another activity?

I would start at the absolute beginning of the year when you’re team building and stressing the importance of what a good team looks like. Durable Skills will carry through all your academics. You build the Durable Skills and everything else will carry itself.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

I want to stress this: there is no kid out there whose goal is to fail. Every kid wants to be successful. I have kids in my class with challenging circumstances, but they’re doing really well in my class. That is not a mistake. You need to be there for them first. My goal when I was in school was to be as unnoticed as possible and I don’t want my students to ever feel like that.

• DS.1.1 Manage tasks and deadlines
• DS.1.2 Set goals
• DS.1.3 Be organized and prepared
• DS.1.4 Stay focused and on task
• DS.1.5 Improve my work

• DS.2.1 Build Relationships
• DS.2.2 Seek support and resources
• DS.2.3 Create and maintain a positive digital/online footprint

• DS.3.1 Interact and participate effectively with others
• DS.3.2 Complete my part of the work
• DS.3.3 Manage and resolve conflicts
• DS.3.4 Reflect on our product and process

• DS.4.1 Learn and follow requirements
• DS.4.2 Communicate effectively
• DS.4.3 Demonstrate flexibility and adaptability