essential skills

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Transcription of a discussion between Ben udy and Will Sutherland. Will: Ben (at the time of the phone call) was director of a K-6 school in Honduras. Many of the students attended the school was supported with donations by Ben's friends and family. for 90% of the operating costs.

will sutherland transcribe work as a team A they are going to learn how to work as a team. If they on't work as a team, it doesn't happen. They don't have to like something in order to work. These are skills that the participants can take away and apply in their lives and in their work. Meanwhile, we're going to use technology to hook up the students with

educational resources.

Ben Udy: get volunteer teachers in Honduras to live in the village with no electricity and sometimes no running water and no hot water. I've had many volunteers who in the first three weeks are ready to go home. "I can't take it, I can' t deal with it." As long as I can convince them to stay another week, within three or four months, their attitudes change. "Wow, I"m glad you convinced me to stay because I've never learned so much in my life." They've learned to work together.

They had to carry water sometimes, little things that I'm used to because I've lived in the Third World for more than a decade. So what? There's no water today. Or the electricity went off for three days. You can't get US and European youth in their early 20s and they are lost. You probably find the same thing on your boats. In the early period of a young person's stay on your boat, they will complain. They have to persevere byond the point of GIVE UP It's a phenomenon that I've observed for years. The older people don't get it, but the young university kids or high school graduates on their gap year (break year), they suffer form the food change and the dust is everywhere. Electricity was off, they couldn't get this or that, so they couldn't have breakfast, where they are screaming, they want to go home, take me to the airport right now. On the occasion when I've not been able to persuade them to stay, most people never contact us again. but the ones who have stayed and we got them through the first few weeks, they want to come back. This is the greatest experience of my life. They've gone through a challenge, they got through things that would never happen in their usual life. They are too protected and insulated from discomfort in their homes. They could not imagine that electricity could go down for a week.

work as a team part B Will If the boat were any bigger, they would have to have a commercial qualification to drive the boat. For me, the whole point is to get them to take turns being in charge. WHile I was at

Aiglon, I had a 36-foot boat in the meditarranean in Antibes and I used to take four students for a 3 week course, one at easter and three courses in the summer. i used to spend the first three days teaching them deck work and

1:18 left 11:40 good to 12:58 pm

work as a team part c I showed them how to use a map. Then I gave them a destination. We can leave anytime you want, but we need to leave at night. I want to be there for 4 pm tea. So the kid who was selected as captain said, "Okay," and he made some calculations. then he came back and he said, "we need to leave at 2 a.m., sir." I said, "That's right. So, I want us to leave silently. we are not going to wake up our neighbors when we go, so we aar going to get absolutely ready and then we'll go to sleep. Alright? now, what about the weather forecast?"

Note, for fans of Barak Rosenshine and Richard Clark, notice the guided instruction. Will is just asking questions.

"Oh, yes," the student said. "I'll get the weather forecast." He rings up Monaco radio on the VHF radio. "Monaco Radio, Monaco Radio, this is yacht free will, yacht free will, we'd like a weather forecast please." The guy comes back, "Yacht Freewill, this iis Monaco, where are you going?" "We're in Antibes and we're going to Cowvie." "How many people are on your boat?" "me, I'm shoji, and there's a boy from India, he's called Hasan, and my friend Michael, he's 14 and I've got John here, he's 14 too."

You could hear the incredulous silence on the other side of the radio. " and there is my teacher" and you could hear a deep sign and a whispered "Thank God." "All right, Shogo," he said, "you're going to have fine winds tomorrow 4 street to four, they are coming form the Northwest, so they will blow you all the way to Calvie nicely. You'll have a nice trip" Shogo was pleased with that news, he wrote it down and so we went to market and bought the food and we prepared for the evening sail. When we got about 30 miles off the coast of Corsica, I said to Shogo, "Where are you? do you know where you are on this chart?"

he said, "Yes, I think so." he drew a circle with his fingertip on the map. "We're somewhere in there, sir." I said, "Good boy. If you had put your finger on the map and said that we are there, I wouldn't have believed you. You are not really sure where you are, are you?" he said, "No." Doesn't matter. You're going int he right direction. But how are you going to be sure that you're going into the right harbor?" What do you mean? When you hit the coast, do you turn right or left? I'm not sure. Well, you've got a 50-50 chance of being right. If you want to be 100% sure, you ned to make a mistake. Sir? Japanese people do not make mistakes. I smiled and I said, "I'll tell you to make a mistake. Head off your course 5 degrees to the left, that means when you hit the coast, you know you've got to turn right to get to Calvie." Oh, that's a good idea," he said. "We'll do that." He gave the helmsman a new course to sail and the next four or five hours we sailed on the new course. When we neared the coast, we turned right.

If you could have seen that kid's face when he sailed that boat into the marina, you wouldn't believe it. He was on Cloud 9: 36-foot yacht, six people on it, he'd done it all himself.

all i'd done was do ask a few questions. I didn't tell him what sails to put up or how fast to travel, I didn't tell him what time to cook, what time to leave, who to put on watch, when to change, he did the whole lot himself. When he went back to school, the teachers asked, "What did you do to Shogo during the holidays? He's a completely reformed character! We're not having anymore trouble with him in class, he's doing his work, he's great fun, he's a great raconteur, but he's working hard." I said, "I don't know. We just went to Calvi." He just came back with life skills, self-confidence, self-esteem, the fact that he could talk to anyone, even if they were older than him. We did the same fo the other three on the boat, they all had a go at being skipper across the sea. In a three-week period with four kids, you can do wonders. That's what we're going to do with these pilot cutters. Give some of these young adults a boat like that with a skipper who is 25 or 26 years old. who has been trained by us to show these students how to do the sailing themselvess. The Skipper is not meant to be imposing themselves on the group -- it will bring the results.

We're replacing the mountains of a Swiss village (where kids could explore and gain leadership skills) with the sea. That's our environment to play with.

Udy: That's learning in reality, not learning a string of information. You can get the information, too. My experience in that Swiss school in the mountains was that information was often made into reality at some point. The teacher wasn't there just to make sure that we would pass a quiz at the end of the week and an exam at the end of the term.

Will: I went sailing with another student who had done a lot of sailing with his dad. OK, you can be skipper tomorrow. Take us to St. Tropez." We were in Antibes. "I want to be there at tea time."

SO he said, "Okay. Let's go into town, get some groceries and make a nice salad for lunch." We left the harbor, he was very good, he got the sails up, it was sailing beautifully, we sailed right past Nice airport, we were heading past Menton and Monaco one of the boys looked at me and asked, "Aren't we going the wrong way?"

I said, "Yes, but don't tell him." We carried on until 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I said, "Where's St. Tropez? It's teatime. I want my tea." He said, "It's just there, sir, look. There's the entrance."

We took the sails down, we motored into this lovely little harbor. There was a little man in all his whites standing on the dock and he prepared to take our lines. He showed us into a nice berth, but he was speaking Italian. And one of the kids turns around to me and asks, "Sir, isn't St. Tropez in France?" I said, "Yes." "Then why is he speaking Italian to me?" "Look on that building up there. It says Casino. What's it say underneath it?" "Oh, it says San Remo." "That's right," I said. "Where do you think we are?" "San Remo." "I thought we were going to St. Tropez." He said, "So did I." "Listen, you are not to get upset. I know a brilliant pizzeria here in San Remo, we'll have an excellent meal and tomorrow we'll go to St. Tropez. What you did was get your chart plotter upside down and you've been sailing on a course that is 180degrees in the opposite direction to the one you wanted to sail." You'll never do that again, will you?" Every so often at school reunions I see that kid, and he reminds me, "Remember the day when I got the chart plotter upside down? I don't do that anymore." For the rest of the holiday, we had no more of the strutting about, "I'm so much better than the others," and the other boys gave him a little repartee about the mixup. That's what it's all about. They will learn from their own mistakes but the mistakes are directed.

Ben: The reason for school learning is to make a place where it's safe to make mistakes. The whole point is to make mistakes in a safe environment. Will: Sometimes in a good school you make a decision that is for yourself. When you get to the top of a mountain after walking for two hours, there are no trails around and there are acres of virgin snow waiting for you. You choose your path. There's no question: you have to go down that steep slope. You might be frightened but you have a guide who will give you information to keep you safe. to get back to a warm room and cooked food, you have to get off that mountain. For people who have never skied down virgin snow and who might have a fear of an avalanche, that's a major decision to make, to go over an edge and go down an off-piste slope. It's that sort of guided decision making. when you go on a hiking trip in the summer in small groups, you have to make decisions. If you didn't make the right choices, you didn't complete the route and you didn't get be to school on time. If you didn't get the right food, you wouldn't be properly fed. All these things were part of the expedition program at school. You also learned some responsibility for keeping school property in good condition, since you borrowed tents and cooking gear.

Ben: We didn't realize it at the time but thing that i have with the culture here in Honduras is that kids aren't allowed to make mistakes. the teaching culture is the homework has to be perfect, even if the parent does the work. There's very little learning happening. Some kids bring me homework with whiteout in some spots. I tell them, "I need to see what you did. I want to know your mistakes. No more whiteout."

A story from running a house at a boarding school.

Older teenagers ("prefects") are part of running a house of younger teenagers in a British boarding school. These prefects used to ask Will, "What privileges do I get for being a prefect?"

None. You're doing this work to learn how to manage people. This is hard work, but I'm more likely to say yes to you if you ask me to do something. I'm trusting you to be responsible and I trust that you will be on your best behavior. If you screw up, I will help you put it right. If you do something really silly, I'm going to say to everybody, "That was really silly, it was a big mistake, and he won't do that again." That doesn't mean that I'm taking away your position as a prefect. On the other hand, if you find yourself in a situation where you don't know how to react, always stall for time. Never put

yourself in a corner. say, "Let me think about this," If someone is questioning your authority, your answer is, "I need to think about what I'm going to do about this." Walk away and come and see me. Tell me what the situation is and what went wrong. What you weren't too sure about what to do about it. I'll help you think it through and I'll back you up. But do not wash our dirty linen in public. We air our concerns in my office with the door shut. When the door is shut, you can say what you like and nothing ever leaves the office. I would go past a kid on the stairs who had obviously recently smoked a cigarette. I could smell it. I would talk with the prefects after supper. So, "Little Jojnny has started smoking. Is anybody on it?" One of the prefects would say, "Yes sir, I've had a word with him about it." Is Johnny taking any notice?" Well, sir, I don't know. OK, check it out, let me know in a few days. A few days pass, the prefect comes to me and says, "No, Johnny's still smoking. He's not taking any serious notice of me whatsoever." "Have yo had a serious talk with him?" Yeah "What are we going to do about it? Either you're going to deal with it, or we're going to deal with it together with him or I'll deal with it on my own. What do you want to do?" Often they'd say, "Let's deal with it together, sir." "Bring Johnny in after prep." The prefect would bring Johnny into my office, shut the door and report, "Sir, I caught Jonny smoking, I've asked him to stop smoking" Johnny would jump out of his chair, "You rat! You rat! I'd say, "Whoa, just sit down. You speak when I ask you to speak." The prefect added, "I told him to stop smoking and he told me to f-- off." I asked, "Is that right? Did you tell this prefect who cares about you to get lost? When he's trying to explain that it's not just a school rule smoking is not good for you, you don't need it, you don't have to be one of the boys, it's not going to get you anywhere, it's not going to create you any credibility. What's the point? This prefect is trying to help you and you tell him to f--- off? He's three years older than you, he knows the culture of the school, he's a prefect and he's got all that experience and you think he's stupid?"

Johnny turned around to me and said, "I'm sorry, sir."

Don't say that you're sorry to me. Talk to the prefect. He's the guy who is concerned about you. You either listen to him or I'll bust you myself. Do you understand? Now get out of here.

I'd see the prefect two or three days later and I'd ask, "Did it work?" and he'd say, "Yes, sir." or No, sir" and then we'd figure out where Johnny was smoking and I'd go and catch him. I might find him, he'd start to light up and I'd come out from behind a tree and I say, "Okay, you're with me." Their eyes would widen.

"I warned you. Because I warned you, you're not going to get the standard punishment. You're going to get it worse. You took no notice of what i said and you ignored the advice of your prefect."

Build a Family I used to get asked, "Will, do you have a policy sheet for the house staff or a guide book for students to follow?" I'd say, "Have a look at this," and I'd hand them a copy of Mario Puzo's book, The Godfather. "What's this? This is a novel, it's about the Mafia and it's brutal." No, it's not. It's about a family. the head of the family makes the rest of the family look after each other. This is about looking out for each other and seeing that each other is okay and keeping the dirty linen in the house. That's what I ask my students to do. A school's rule book should be a little square booklet that you can put in your pocket.

When I started as housemaster in 1971, the school's rule book was eight pages. By the time I'd become housemaster of Alpina six years later, the rule book had become a 200-page A4 document. All i'm interested in is that people are polite and courteous to each other. Your job is to make the other person feel at ease. If you are going to do what you can to help them. I expect you not to upset me. If I see you badly dressed, you are letting me down and you're letting the house down.

One of the boys came to me and said, "I'd like to do something speical for the house.