Love Yourself: Self care and preventing injuries for Outdoor Educators

I intend this be the first in a series of posts on injuries, prevention of and management/treatment of. This  will be mostly geared toward outdoor educators or guides, but will have information and thoughts that apply to everyone, whether you use your body on the job or not. This should not be taken as professional medical advice, I am not formally trained or certified in anything medical, except CPR and WFR. This is simply an interest and passion of mine.

For me this is the intersection of multiple experiences over many years, both mine own and that of others. First I want to give you an idea of why this topic is so important and then later in other posts some ideas for how to deal with issues.

If I had only known (and believed!) early! I consider myself to be an active individual and have been so most of my life. In elementary school I loved recess, kickball, basketball games and in PE class I actually liked the Presidential Fitness test! I know - I was what some may call a tomboy. In fourth grade I decided on my own that I wanted to play on basketball team and I asked my mom to go to school and sign me up for the girls county league. That first team I played on was the Pink Flamingos, yes our jerseys were pink! That started a several year long love of the game of basketball and I played on county teams and school teams consistently through my 12th grade year in high school. In those days I don't ever remember getting injured too bad - I had some minor shin splints and many ankle sprains but hey I was young and I always bounced back quickly. Over the years I also competed on a flat-water sprint kayaking team, and dabbled with karate and track. I also discovered outdoor sports from going to summer camp - backpacking, rock climbing, and canoeing. Further exposure to the outdoors in college years and beyond also got me into mountain biking, trail running and mountaineering.

Now in my early thirties I definitely do not "bounce back" so easy. I have more aches and pains, especially in joint areas. If I had only known that a few simple, yet daily routines and techniques could have prevented some of or all of these aches and pains I would have signed up 10 years ago. But the problem was, I never really thought they would happen to me! But unfortunately our bodies are not made to last forever and they eventually wear out. The good news however is that we can slow down that process and in some cases prevent it - like the guy who got his Volvo P1800 to run for 500,000 and beyond! With some disciplined maintenance to our bodies we can get farther than we think!

These sports were of course hobbies until I started to work and receive a paycheck for "guiding" people in the outdoors. What I have realized in only about 14 years or so of working outdoors is that we outdoor educators and guides are a lot harder on our bodies and demand more out of them than the average person and that can lead to our bodies becoming more abused at a earlier age. Makes sense right? Well for some reason this took me years to realize on a conscious level. I am a huge advocate today of bringing this information to outdoor educators and guides. WE HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF OURSELVES FIERCELY. If we don't, we may work ourselves out of a job and out of what we love to do, which is being active outside. Sadly I have had some friends who have had to give up outdoor education or significantly scale back due to a unresolved injury at a very early age. I have many friends and colleagues who deal with physically pain on a daily basis and many of them have "younger" joints than I do.

Recently Glenn has been seeing a PT for tendinitis in both his elbows and knees (due to chronic issues from working outdoors for many years) and his PT put things into perspective and basically said 'you are a professional athlete, not in the sense that you compete but in that you make your living with your body'. However, he pointed out further, 'the major difference in the profession athlete and you when it comes to injuries is that they have an entourage of sports medicine doctors, trainers, and equipment at their disposal to both prevent and treat issues that come up and you don't'. This has made me think recently about myself and the people I work with and our culture of self care. Typically we put our bodies under tremendous physical, mental and emotional stress which makes us vulnerable to injury and illness, we work mostly on contracts and therefore are not eligible for healthcare insurance programs and have trouble affording them. When injury or worst, chronic pain strikes we are largely uneducated about what to do or how to afford healthcare.

Early in my career as an outdoor educator I did not develop the discipline to stretch everyday and I am sure that it has led in one way, to my now extremely tight neck/shoulder/upper back issue that I am just now working out. I am not only talking about stretching for self care, that is merely an example of something that we can do proactively to prevent chronic pain and injury. Fatigue, sleep problems, stress (mental, emotional) can overload our bodies and manifest in physical symptoms. Don't be that person - you can prevent (and fix) tweaky shoulders, ankles, knees and backs sooner than later. Love yourself, self care: Let's start today!

Working on the river: paddlers have some big guns but horrible internally rotated shoulders, yuk!, which can be a source of shoulder injuries

In the 21st century, what is the role of an Educator?

This past weekend I spent time with friends Caleb and Carrie who live in Winston Salem. Caleb is currently a divinity student at Wake Forest University and Carrie is a classroom teacher. As typical with them we asked big questions and had engaging discussions. Caleb, based on some discussion with his sister, posed the query: In this current reality where technology and information is so accessible (at least in the western world) via the internet, cell phones, etc, What is the role of the Educator?

Both Caleb's sister and Carrie are classroom teachers and have experienced that kids in school no longer really get their information from their teachers. In this day and age, anyone can simply jump on the internet and within seconds or minutes have the answers to any school curriculum related questions. "Oh just google it" has become a natural respond to finding out about what you don't already know for both adults and kids alike. Now with the advent of cell phones like the iPhone, you don't even need a computer station or laptop to get on the internet and start googling away. Information is much easier to come by these days and it is simple with the internet to find the most updated, most current information out there. Given that this reality growing is in every school and community across North America, what then will be the role of that Educator? If we as educators are no longer needed to provide our students with information and knowledge, what the heck are we there for? What is the future of education?

In our discussion several thoughts came up: Perhaps, as Carrie believes, the role of the educator in the classroom becomes solely a care-giver and behavior manager as kids begin to find and google information on their own. This in one way is already happening on the college level with on-line classes, where the physical presence of the "professor" is gone and they simply post expectations, assignments and quizzes online for students to complete in their own time. In this model the educator is not even a care-giver or behavior manager and they become more of a collector of assignments and tests that students complete and an assessor of whether the student meet the requirements to pass the "class". Strange huh? Already the educator is becoming stripped of the need to actually impart knowledge. The imparter of the knowledge is the assignments, the internet and the tests.

In the ancient greek world Pedagogue was the slave that took the student (males) to school, meaning they literally walked and traveled with the student to the place of knowledge and might carry their belongings. They were not the giver of knowledge, they were the vehicle for which the student got to the knowledge place and looked after them. In modern English, pedagogy (derived from Latin and Greek) means the art or profession of teaching, preparatory training and instruction; pedagogue refers to a schoolteacher or educator. Therefore our modern notions of pedagogy go beyond, the etymology and define the pedagogue as the source of learning and knowledge for the students.

Perhaps the introduction of and access to information technology in both society and schools is going to lead to a new pedagogy. Technology has already and will further change the role of the educator and force them to use new methods of instruction. Technology will also continue to change the role and needs of the learner. What impact has our fast paced, audio-visually stimulating, video gaming, googling culture had on our societies children? And how does that affect their learning abilities?

Perhaps the modern pedagogy will make a slight return to the ancient Greek definition, where the educator's role is once again to bring the child to the learning but not to be the source of it. To look after and care for the child, whom developmentally can not attend yet to their needs entirely on their own. I suspect that the new role of the educator, in fact the true need for the educator in the 21st century will not be to giver of knowledge, but will be to mentor and facilitate the students character and ethics. Children today have access to a wonderful yet scary amount of knownledge via the internet - they can study about any subject possible, including how to make homemade bombs. Kids today are smart and with technology at their fingertips it is not a huge leap for them to go from making a prank stink bomb to creating something more dangerous. I know that is a dramatic example, but my point is - the new role of the educator may have always been to development character, judgement and a sense of ethics in their students, but going forward into this next decade I think that role is even more critical than before. With knowledge comes power and what principles and values are the foundation of that power? The mind of a child and adolescent is under constant development and they have access to information but do they know how to use that information and power for good and not evil? Okay I know dramatic again, but hopefully you understand my point.

I want to wrap this up with a plug for the world of outdoor education and experiential methods. The photo at the beginning of my post is a picture of the the outdoor classroom and of instruction and learning in action. In the realm of experiential education the educator introduces challenges that the student has to meet and those challenges are very real,  authentic and relevant. The more real the challenge the more the student becomes an invested learner and seeks to solve it. After the student has tackled the challenge, the educator then gives an opportunity for reflection so the student can evaluate how they did and helps them to identify areas of strength and how they might better meet the challenge the next time or a similiar challenge. In the photo the instructor is leading a backpacking trip and is teaching the students how to set up a backcountry kitchen and how to cook their food. This is a relevant lesson - if the students do not engage in the learning then they won't eat dinner or they may not cook it well. The character building aspect of this exercise comes in the fact that the group must figure out how to feed everyone, they have to experience cooking for someone else or having someone cook for them. They choose how to serve out portions and who gets seconds, they have to clean up their dishes and kitchen, in essence they have to engage in community with others and learn an intricate dance with others and experience how their actions either positively or negatively impact other group members. If the one whom is serving and dividing portions does not give equal shares, there will be natural consequences to the group that they will have to address and work through to make the experience positive for everyone. Character development is at the heart of outdoor and experiential education -  where is it in the 21st century classroom and what is the role of the educator in our increasingly technological world?