Service and Adventure
Service and Adventure Teacher: Alex Ezzell - alexezzell@yahoo.com
Service and Adventure Teacher, Alex Ezzell, arrived at Grass Valley Charter School four years ago via his love for all things adventurous! During this time, the Service and Adventure Program has grown from a rough concept into a keystone component of our school.
Alex is currently developing a kindergarten through eighth grade Adventure Benchmark curriculum. The scope and sequence of adventure benchmarks aim to create the optimal environment for students to experience and internalize these ten character traits: compassion, courage, discipline, integrity, perseverance, respect, responsibility, stewardship, teamwork and a spirit of adventure. The emergence of these character traits is closely linked with experiences in both wilderness and urban settings.
Alex is responsible for teaching technical skills that allow students to safely challenge themselves in a wilderness setting, as well as orchestrating the transference of emergent character traits experienced during an adventure and applying that trait in an academic context or the broader world.
He is the recipient of the 2005 “Nevada County Resource Conservation Educator of the Year” award as well as the 2007 “Full S.Y.R.C.L. Educator” award. Alex is certified in the following areas: Wilderness Medical Institute’s “Wilderness First Responder” certification, Rescue 3 International’s “Whitewater Rescue Technician” certification, and National Outdoor Leadership School’s “Risk Manager” certification.
Enter your text here . . . . .
Classroom Sites
Parent Resources
Alex humbly states, “As the service and adventure teacher I am tremendously fortunate because it combines many of my passions. I have a true love of adventure. I have learned my most valuable lessons while kayaking technical rivers, persevering over great distances, and striking the right balance between courage and risk management. My interest in adventurous activities began in a fashion typical to young men. Adrenaline! However, at some point, without even being aware, my motivation evolved. I began to seek adventure for internal discoveries over external triumphs. I now aim to harness the remarkable potential of the natural world to teach life lessons and I relish the opportunity to guide my students on that journey, tempered soberly by my understanding of the responsibility for those learners’ safety.”
Adventures most commonly take the form of stand alone experiences. Instead of being grounded in classrooms expeditions, adventures are designed and scaffolded by grade level to create optimal situations for experiencing and fostering the character traits and developing the hard skills associated with each adventure.
Service takes many forms at GVCS. Often it is imbedded within an expedition in a way that heightens and lends authenticity, urgency and an application of their newly gained skills. This authenticity is the cure for the age-old question asked of teachers by their students: "Why do I need to know this?" Students immersed in authentic service learning always know "why."
