Asheville TAASC

The American Adventure Service Corps

Exploring Female Leadership

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This week our six and seven year old Taasc girls embraced the dark as we turned our attention toward our upcoming day trip to go caving! These girls have already been building trust with one another at meetings. It wasn’t that long ago that each girl was leading her blindfolded partner on a trust walk in the woods, and then they took it to the next level as they back up belayed each other at the climbing gym.

During cave exploration each girl will not only be taking responsibility for herself, but will support the group through her leadership.

In Girls Taasc we explore the many faces of leadership. Leadership looks different for each unique girl, and we honor each individual expression.

On our climbing trip, the girls began to explore four expressions of leadership through the window of Angeles Arrien’s Four Fold Way. We began to learn about the way of the warrior – showing up and being present, the way of the healer – expressing care, appreciation, and gratitude, the way of the teacher – sharing what you know, and the way of the visionary – telling the truth about what you see without blame and judgment.

The girls made some pretty cool pictures of how they are warriors, healers, teachers, and visionaries.

As you might guess, there are lots of opportunities to work with themes of courage, support, and adventure as we move into our caving theme. And there are lots of opportunities for straight up fun, too. Last week the girls transformed into bats and pups (baby bats), with blindfolded mama bats locating their babies through sound and scent.

Mini Girls Taasc is so awesome! Am I ever lucky to spend my Thursday afternoons with this group!

By Lucy MacGregor

TAASC Wilderness First Aid Course

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Congratulations to the 16 TAASC students and parents that completed their Wilderness First Aid course!

Everyone did really well and learned valuable new skills they can share and use. I highly recommend these courses to TAASC students and parents that spend time outdoors with their kids (or on their own). They are some of the highest quality programs I’ve ever taken . I know several people who were so inspired from taking courses like these that their life trajectory was influenced and they ended up at medical school!

We do get to learn and practice a lot of these skills in TAASC, but this program will get you a certification and will really improve your skills. First Aid skills are some of the most important skills you can have to help others!

 

Real Life Situations

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Real life environment“The kids are allowed to be who they are at that developmental stage without constantly being under scrutiny. While they are being kids, they are learning how to do important things and being tested in real-life situations. When they are out on the water, those are real-life environments. And when they come back, they are very aware that they’ve done something important.”
-Casey Fletcher (Alumni TAASC mom)

Learning to Lead

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learning to lead

The traditional view of leadership is stale and outdated. Many young people do not want to be the person at the top or front, making decisions and telling everyone what to do. They want something different, something that feels right to them.

That’s where we come in. Our job is to help kids re-imagine leadership, to show them that it’s not about being at the front or making decisions, but about being self-reliant and helping others. When they realize that these are forms of leadership, they are often surprised. “Really? I’m a leader? That was leadership?”

Creating these opportunities is simple: take a group of kids outside, give them a mission to accomplish, and watch the leadership spirit emerge. We see it all the time on TAASC trips. The trick is to coach students to see it, and then to help them find a leadership style that feels natural to them.

The truth is, leadership can come from anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing, what matters is choosing to be the person who makes a difference and helps others. As Simon Sinek says, “Leadership is a choice, a choice to look after the person to the left of us and the person to the right of us.” At TAASC, we teach our students to look for these moments and to practice and experiment with them, so that they can find their own personalized and inner-connected leadership style.

“TAASC was different because it pushed me so much harder than any other sport or group I was ever in. You have so much personal responsibility — bring your own clothes, your own food, your own water — but you have the double responsibility of being a part of a group and helping out your group mates and being aware of what they may need. That amount of responsibility has made me be a better person in other groups I have joined.”

-Freya Pollock, Age 21
Clark University student
Alumni 10 years in TAASC

Girls TAASC

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An outdoor leadership program specially designed for Girls!

Girls TAASC is an opportunity for girls to create a safe and welcoming environment where they can grow through discovery and development of their strengths.

Through games and problem solving activities, art, reflection, and instruction of adventure outdoor skills, we talk about how girls perceive themselves and women in society. We examine how girls and women are often seen and heard and how this reality can affect their leadership style.

The program aims to build community, develop leadership, and foster individual growth, as well as build close relationships among group members. Students will develop their inner and outer strength in an all-female environment where they can discover courage and abilities they didn’t know were there. Mindfulness, compassion and caring will also be explored.

Mostly though, this program will create the opportunity for a new generation of female leaders to learn, grow and develop in an outdoor setting in a way that is best for them.

Girls TAASC is run by several of the amazing women in our community. All of these ladies have extensive outdoor experience and bring educational experiences from their various backgrounds. We are all very lucky to have their energy, wisdom and magic to be shared with young girls from our community.

Click here to get meeting times, tuition and other details 

Why Learning Advanced Skills is Important

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advanced skillsOur students get to learn advanced skills in all the outdoor activities we do. In rock climbing, TAASC students learn the basic skills like knots, harnesses, belaying and climbing techniques. These are required for a safe day on the rock, but there is so much more to learn about climbing, which we teach.

Our students learn how to build a climbing anchor so that it is both super safe and redundant. Doing this develops judgement and an ability to think things through. These are key skills that can be applied in other areas of life. They help connect detailed  focus with overall big picture thinking and even more importantly help foster a real feeling of responsibility.

TAASC is able to do pull this off due the experience of our staff working for programs like Outward Bound, as well as their personal experience with these activities. Learning more advanced things makes it so much more fun and interesting for our students and inspires them to really get into it more. This could even influence a person’s career choice – I know of people who have been so interested in learning wilderness first aid that they eventually went to medical school!

Other examples of advanced skills we teach are: technical rescue skills; advanced wilderness first aid skills; paddling whitewater; navigational skills and many other outdoor tricks of the trade. Overall from a personal development standpoint I believe exposing younger students to these skills helps develop their judgement skills by adding a new layer of responsibility and reliability. All these qualities are going to help make a difference in a students life as they transition into adulthood.

Urban Adventure

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TAASC at the White HouseThis summer we did something completely different and went Urban for a few days. The funny thing was that we were as uncomfortable and out of our ‘zone’ in this setting as regular city folk are when the go into the wilderness. So although we took some strain with navigating our way through this environment, it still had the same adventure elements that we so love to experience.

For this trip we got to explore around Washington D.C which is such an interesting and crazy city to visit. We stayed at a campground within subway striking distance from downtown. Usually when we start a wilderness expedition the team knows what they need and how to make it all happen – from navigation to getting water and simple things like using the woods if you need to go. But in the city this all changed. Suddenly we got stressed out trying to figure out buying subway tokens or passes and where to get on or off and which line do we take. On our first time in we actually lost 2 team mates who didn’t get off the train in time. So wow – they just disappeared into the darkness of the train tunnel and were gone! We reconnected thanks to the marvel of technology and our phones became a major tool for figuring out this entire environment. We could navigate with them, find each other with them, find places we needed to go, get information about anything we were looking at, and the list goes on. Smart phones are way more useful in the city!

Highlights of our expedition were:

  • A tour of the Capitol Building – very impressive with so much to see and do, plus the air conditioning was worth the entire visit as was their restaurant!
  • Getting to see the White House – for some of us this was our first time seeing this famous house and it’s always exciting to be right there.
  • Exploring the many world class museums and monuments of DC
  • Getting a feel for our nations capitol city and what it’s like to be there.

Travelling with a group of teenagers is also super interesting and I wanted to include a list of the best ‘Travel Hacks’ I discovered travelling with this lot:

  • Using Uber taxis to get around downtown and between sights
  • Travelling ultra-light in the city (no backpacks or extra gear) and using Starbucks for free ice-water and a/c (again)
  • Using google maps to navigate the city as a pedestrian – it’s a game changer and so fun. We found the app even zooms into museums and then you can navigate their too on your phone.
  • Using Barnes and Noble bookstores to get out of the rain and simultaneously re-charge your smart phone.
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