Interim has long been one of CA’s signature programs, a shining light of experiential education that harkens all the way back to the school’s halcyon days of the 1960s when Head of School Chuck Froelicher helped found Outward Bound in Colorado.

 

From an administrative perspective, Interim is challenging indeed. This year our 411 students will be involved in more than 30 different experiences involving over 50 faculty and staff, along with numerous additional supporting guides and personnel all over Colorado, Utah, South Dakota, and New Mexico. We allot around $400 per student to run Interim, so one can do the math to figure out the total budget demand. Most schools have dropped these kinds of programs because of complications with logistics, faculty buy-in, student apathy, rising expenses, transportation problems, or legal restrictions. 

 

Every year, as some new logistical challenge presents itself, I find myself asking, not altogether seriously: Why in the world are we doing this again? There are always last-minute or late-breaking complications including weather issues, transportation snafus, and students who have suffered late-season injuries in sports and can no longer go on their original trips.

 

And then the trips go out, the experiences are wonderful, even life-changing, faculty and students return with glowing faces, full of stories and adventures, and I am reminded why we do it.

 

Our students really do love these Interim trips. They look forward to the week in May when we completely change the pace and take them out of their comfort zones—in some cases like Mike Davis’s “Exploring the Canyonlands,” we take them far out of their comfort zones. In other cases, like our Woodworking Interim, the journey is not quite as distant.  But in any event, we do remove them from the usual classroom setting and bring them into the “great beyond” of life.  Because so much of our usual academic, arts, and athletics programs are so precisely planned, students really do value the sense of spontaneity and surprise that comes with an Interim. Whether here on campus or 500 miles from home, students appreciate the fact that they don’t always know what’s coming next. They have a blast simply being open to the surprise and wonder. Interim is experiential education at its best.

 

Alumni also have fond memories of their Interim experiences. Ask them and they will say the same things our current students do. They recall situations where they were tested, pushed, where they bonded with new friends and faculty members, when they faced what seemed like immediate disaster, or when their vehicle broke down, or when someone did something amazing and unexpected.  When they challenged themselves to do something they had never done before–-and did so even better than they thought they could.

 

Of course students and parents must trust that we and our hired guides know what we’re doing (we do) and that all necessary safety precautions have been taken (they have). Spontaneity is great; reckless endangerment is not.  Led by director Forbes Cone, we continue to work on safety protocols and do our best to predict every eventuality, even when students are traveling to remote places or testing their physical limits in some new activity.

 

One experience we offer every year during Interim connects to our Global Travel program as well. This year a group of students traveled to Belize on a science-based adventure for which they will work with a group called Toucan Ridge Ecology and Education Society (TREES). They will perform field research and conduct experiments and write up their experiences. Thanks to science teachers/chaperones Lisa Boes and Dani Meyers as well as English teacher Stuart Mills who helped the students prepare with a specially designed technical writing course this past trimester.

 

For more on T.R.E.E.S,. see: http://www.treesociety.org/

 

Interim catalog: http://news.coloradoacademy.org/2018-upper-school-interim-brochure/