Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
At the Pocahontas County Board of Education meeting May 3, Adventure Pocahontas Nature’s Mountain Classroom director Tracey Valach gave a report on the past year’s success and plans for expansion of the program to include all grade levels.
In its first year of implementation Nature’s Mountain Classroom provided educational adventures for students in grades second through fifth. Valach explained that the plan is to continue the second through fifth grade programs – with second grade learning to ski, third grade learning to hike, fourth grade learning to kayak and fifth grade learning to bike.
“We have the same mission, but expanding into Playground Adventures for the little guys and then going into the middle school with some real out-of-the-box thinking and new partnerships,” she said. “Then with the high school, working with Adventure Leadership and building in sustainability for Adventure Pocahontas through using our leaders in the high school.”
The Playground Adventures will be designed for preschool through first grade and will be implemented by high school students in the Adventure Leadership program.
For the middle school students, Valach said the sixth grade will participate in a Science Adventure Camp at Jackson’s Mill in Weston. The program is provided through WVU and will be promoted through Nature’s Mountain Classroom.
“This is a content area-based program that is four days, three nights and the cost is only seventy-five dollars per child,” she said. “The real cost is about eight hundred dollars per student. WVU has funding from large grants to cover the rest of the tuition for our students.
“All we have to do is transport them and Ruth [Bland] has already agreed to make that happen,” she continued. “This would be in the fall. We would go in October to Jackson’s Mill and they would spend four days, three nights.”
For seventh grade, the focus will be on safety and outdoor adventures, including ATV and shooting sports safety, with a focus on environmental conservation education.
With the eighth grade, Valach explained she is hoping to partner with Experienced Learning in Spruce Knob or Summit to provide backcountry adventure. The plans are still taking shape, but Valach did mention she hopes to include a trip to West Virginia’s National Park at the New River Gorge.
Along with having the high schools help plan and implement Playground Adventures, Valach wants to connect students with local businesses and entrepreneurs to get them involved in the community.
“What I see happening with Adventure Leadership – in addition to helping with PreK through one planning and implementation – that we could actually connect our high school students with local entrepreneurs, local business owners – for example, we could have a student who likes to fish meet a local business owner who has his own fly fishing business, or meet Anne Mitchell who has her own fly fishing business and actually does what they love for a living and make money off it, and contribute to the economic development of our county, and really start to connect some of those other pieces.”
Valach added that she wants to have the high school students be the ones to teach the younger grades prevention lessons, such as learning about the dangers of using tobacco, drugs and alcohol.
Moving on to the cost of implementing the program, Valach said the board contributed $20,000 last year and explained that if the board could provide $35,000 for the new program that includes all grade levels, she will work to find grants and donations to cover the rest of the costs.
“I feel like if we can work as a community together to throw as much as we can at this program and make it sustainable to where our community can count on it, then maybe at some point I can go to the county commission and talk to them about this dollar amount year after year because we’re contributing to tourism, because we’re checking off these other things.
“If the board can help with this piece, then I can dedicate my time to finding the other pieces of the puzzle that bring together this program so that we can expand it,” she added. “My goal here is sustainability.”
Adventure Pocahontas was not on the agenda for the meeting, so the board was unable to vote on providing funding for the program. The board thanked Valach for her update and said the funding will be added to the next meeting’s agenda for a vote.
In updates:
• Attorney Charles R. “Rusty” Webb attended the meeting via phone to discuss a lawsuit in which boards of education across the country are suing Juul – an e-cigarette company – for marketing its product to teens. Webb explained that if the board decided to join the lawsuit, it would not be expected to pay any attorney fees unless the suit is won.
After the discussion with Webb, the board voted to join the lawsuit.
