Saturday, February 11, 2012

Helping out a fellow Crissy Field Center Program

CAP, Camping at the Presidio provides first time camping experiences for Bay Area youth who traditionally have not been exposed to our National Parks. Today I-YEL lent out a helping hand to CAP by participating in their pilot program about the human history of the Golden Gate Bridge. This program is being designed for youth from third to twelfth grade. Through the course of the program we hiked from Rob Hill Campground down to the Golden Gate Bridge. We started with a self-reflection activity, a map of the progress we have made in our lives; we shared about our personal experiences with nature and life changing events. Next, we headed to Fort Scott and broke into two groups for a role playing activity. Everyone was assigned a character from the Presidio and we had to come up with a solution to what should be done with the area of Fort Scott. In this scenario, we had to accommodate everyone’s wishes to use the space for children, wildlife, plants, and for historical background. Someone wanted Native plants to cover a baseball diamond while other wanted to keep it for little league programs. We all had to argue from our point of view while attempting to create a compromise for the Fort Scott remodeling plan. We learned about compromise and how hard it is to create a plan for an area when there are so many different people invested in it. Also in the program, we had a discussion about progress using the Indian occupation of Alcatraz and the Occupy movement as examples. We debated whether or not those movements could be considered progressive because neither had achieved clear success but they both had spread awareness.  In the last activity we got to make our own bridges out of wooden pipes, wire and cones. We learned that the Golden Gate Bridge was the first bridge to make its workers wear hard hats and tethers to prevent them from dying. After the program we came back to the center and gave our feedback about the program. We wrote what we thought worked and what we thought could be improved. Overall, we agreed that the program was a fun and a wonderful addition to Camping at the Presidio. If you would like to learn more about Camping at the Presidio please visit the following website: CAP

By: Ashley Tolliver

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