Class is out: Outside for 5 months, Leyden student takes lessons along the trail

By RICHIE DAVIS Recorder Staff email this writer [ Originally published on: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 ] LEYDEN

-- Sixteen-year-old Joey Becker ''couldn't handle sitting still all day, and was feeling bored at school,'' recalls his mother, Rhonda Wainshilbaum. ''School doesn't interest Joey. It never has.'' Now Becker is skiing the length of Vermont at the rate of 4 to 10 miles a day as part of a semester-long Outward-Bound-type experience that began with slaughtering a pig for food and will culminate in spring with paddling down the length of the Connecticut River in a canoe built by the 10 expeditionary teenagers themselves. ''I like learning about looking at the world in a different way,'' said Becker, who's taking time off from Four Rivers Charter School for Kroka Expeditions' 5½-month Vermont Semester. ''You have to try to be competent and put in your piece for the group. You need to learn to take things into your own hands and do the best you can. Otherwise, it doesn't get done.'' Wainshilbaum and husband, Lewis Becker, learned along with their son about the Marlow, N.H. based program, created by an ex-Russian outdoor-education enthusiast, after a presentation at the Greenfield charter school last year. ''He needed some challenge,'' Wainshilbaum said. ''There's a lot of boys who feel the same as Joey. He felt that school was a very artificial environment and felt he was learning a whole lot of stuff that he'd never use. Four Rivers is a fabulous school, but there's no school that could have made Joey happy. ''He knew what he needed to do. He needed to get out of school.''

Becker, who has always liked adventure, challenging himself physically and taking risks, said his mother, now seems happy feeling self-sufficient and living simply ''in the most beautiful place on earth.'' One of seven boys and three girls, ages 15 to 19, making the trip along with three group leaders, Becker said his favorite aspect of the experience is skiing in a serene setting every day. ''It gives you a lot of time to think about things,'' he said, while on a two-day layover in Plymouth, Vt., to rest up, fix gear, re-supply and catch up in journal writing. ''You learn a lot by not doing much. It's learning about looking at the world in a different way and trying to put in your piece for the group.'' Each member of the group has one or more jobs, and Becker is a group scribe and keeper of pots and pans.

In e-mail updates to parents every other week, he sends missives like this: ''Chris wakes before us in the morning and starts a fire to warm the tent, he sings us awake. Then the cooks for the day cook breakfast and everyone else packs up gear. After a sloshing full bowl of breakfast, which is usually some sort of grain with sausage from the pig we slaughtered and fresh biscuits, we pack up the tent and disperse boughs, leaning them in piles up against logs to create homes for rabbits. When all is packed and the evidence of our passing is minimized we may have a lesson about trees, how to identify them and their many gifts. By 10 o'clock we say goodbye to our home and ski back on the trail, brave explorers pursuing further towards their final destination -- the Canadian border.

Founded in 1996 by Misha Golfman, who trained in Russian outdoor leadership programs before emigrating to this country at 22, Kroka offers not only semester programs in Vermont and Ecuador, but summer adventures and school programs to ''empower young people to become capable and confident beings through mastering adventure sports … (and to) develop common sense, awareness and understanding through traditional wilderness living .'' Without teaching participants to overcome nature, Wainshilbaum said, Kroka emphasizes an appreciation for nature, cooperation and community building. ''To me, it makes perfect sense,'' said Wainshilbaum, adding that she expects her son will get enough school credit after completing some math work, to be able to pass 10th grade. ''There's no TV, no radio, no movies or any entertainment, so he's away from all this mass culture. It's him and nature and a group of really nice people, so I think it's fabulous.'' Golfman, who led the first Vermont semester in 2004, remembers also struggling through school and then ''being so enchanted with the American dream, then coming to this country and seeing the implications of the environment being compromised, and needing to find a balance.'' Kroka grew out of his studies at Antioch New England, he said. ''If you take a group of kids who are interested in a very specific project -- for our kids, a 600-mile journey by ski and canoe -- you bring them together because they're enthusiastic and interested. ''You give them a lot of responsibility, set very high expectations, give them opportunities to make a real world thing out of it, and they're proud of what they're doing.'' Whether in an outdoor program or one based around music, theater or another fully-realized experience, he said, ''They rise to the occasion and become very responsible, working very hard out of their own will, not because somebody's pushing them.'' Program coordinator Lisl Hofer said the experience of making their own knives, mukluks, food and even a 23-foot wooden canoe and paddles -- and especially making their way together -- builds self-awareness, confidence and character. ''What shapes them the most,'' she said, ''is coming out of this having confidence to be able to do things they never thought they could do.'' Becker's mother, who along with the rest of his family will ski with her son in March and watch as he helps build the canoe in April, added, ''I'm so proud of him for following his heart.''

On the Web: www.kroka.org You can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 269