"Snow, Confirmed: A Project Realized," by Mr. Bisson

During a recent weeknight, I left the snug warmth of my apartment to open one of the academic buildings after hours.  I felt tired.  It had been a long Monday, and I was beginning to rally my students for a two-week push to spring break.  Still, two of my guys needed to get into the building, so at 7:50 p.m. I got into my car and drove down the hill.

Two young men, James and Ben, were expecting me.  They had requested permission from their dorm heads to miss a portion of evening study hall to come down and work on their Edge project.  When I pulled up in my car, I saw that they were already busy.  They had attached the hoses to the spout, and once we greeted each other and gained access to the building, they began to move their parts outside.

The Snowmaker.  The brainchild of months of planning and collaboration.  It had started when James - overhearing Ben's work on a terrain park - mentioned the equipment needed:  a pressure washer, an air compressor, a fan, and some nozzles.  "It's easy!" he had said.  Not long after the conversation, the two had presented a schematic for the device that - when it came down to it - looked like a combination of an oversized hairdryer and a cannon.  They had described the interaction between the three major components, assuring the Edge Team that they would get the apparatus up and running.  We agreed to support them, and with that, they were off and running.

That night the Snowmaker emerged, piece by piece.  Onto the quad James brought forth a barrel that a friend had painstakingly transported from his local town.  One would think it an ordinary drum if not for one of the School's logos (double "K's") spraypainted on as well as the fan positioned at one end.  Ben led the air compressor outside, spurring memories of the two men crouched over the device pleading for more horsepower.  Finally, the two summoned their pride and joy:  the pressure washer.  Having realized that the device exceeded their financial means, James and Ben had begun a GoFundMe campaign a month earlier in an attempt to raise the $850 necessary to fund the component.  They saw small movement at the beginning of their drive, but with regular parental and faculty promotion of the profile, the two had made their way up to $585.  They decided to foot the bill for the remaining funds (with the idea of conducting a final push during the spring).  It was with no small sense of gravitas, then, that the two men brought that last piece of machinery outside.

With the device assembled at last, James and Ben flipped the switch.  As a mechanical droning enveloped us, the machine began to create elaborate clouds in the air.  The water particles danced in the mild, late winter wind.  James and Ben scurried between the plume and the machine, alternating between adjusting the rate of flow on the pressure washer and nozzles and feeling the water with their hands.  Measuring the temperature against the 39 degree air, sure, but also reveling in the feel of the spray.  As a boy might touch a sprinkler in summer.

At a crucial moment, James decided to pull out all of the stops on the nozzles.  The cloud began to writhe as the plume grew more furious, and James, Ben, and I touched the water more often to gauge its temperature.  We strained our eyes against the darkness to try to spot flakes either in the air or on the grass, but we could see neither.  It was with anxiety, then, that we knelt and turned the lights of our phones toward the ground.

And that's when we saw them.

Crystals.

Not the delicate snowflakes one sees after a storm.  Nor inches of accumulation.  But crystals nonetheless.  Crystals, alien-shaped and strange, gripping the blades of grass across a wide spread of the ground.

It was working.  The boys had done it.

The reaction I saw in James and Ben will stay with me for the rest of my life.  As they whooped and bro-hugged first each other and then me, I felt a profound moment of joy and tenderness.  And I thought back to a topic I had researched through my PLN but only really understood at that moment.  Part of the reason why students disengage from school, and part of the reason why there is such alarm surrounding education (alarm to inject more rigor, to reform it, to revolutionize it, to hold more individuals accountable) is the frequent lack of real stakes in schools.  For students, test scores and grades are abstract data points with no lasting, concrete bearing on their lives, their problems, their aspirations.  On one end of the spectrum, we educators and administrators step in and create surrogates for genuine concern (partly using the incentives and challenges that reach us at our own levels in the bureaucracy).  On the other end (on the more humanizing end, I think), we educators create new opportunities for our learners where they can feel invested in non-standardized work.  Where they transcend abstract data to the intellectual and emotional highs and lows of work that matters.  In allowing those opportunities to emerge and our students to control them, we not only prepare our kids for real projects; we prepare them for the turbulence of real life.

No other moment than James, Ben, and I hugging could have brought home that lesson more earnestly.  A thought experiment yielded to a schematic that, in turn, yielded to a machine that, in turn, led to the water vapor that surrounded us.  James and Ben's work constituted the success of a months-long process of design thinking and iteration, of entrepreneurial spirit and industriousness.  And those tiny, alien crystals clinging to blades of grass were the evidence of their achievement.

Though I left at 7:50 tired and worn down, I returned to my apartment at 9:35, my hair disheveled and my glasses foggy, beaming.  And that smile returned when I pulled up to campus the next morning.  For among the mud and sodden brown grass that reigned supreme in that 40 degree weather, an anomaly - a small patch of fresh, white snow - remained.

Ambrose: Illustration # 4

- Piece submitted by Ambrose (3/10/17)

Ben: Outreach on Trail-Building

For the last two summers I was a lifeguard for the town of Lake George at the public beaches.  It's easy work and pays well, so it's a really good summer job.  However, I have really bad ADHD, so it is super boring for me to sit still.  I was talking to my mom about getting a job at some place like Gore Mountain to build mountain bike trails.  That way, I could gain experience in the job I want to go to college for.  Right now, I want to go to college for Ski Resort Management, and after college I want to be a Terrain Park Designer in the winter and a Mountain Bike Trail Builder during the summer.  But I'm a junior, so that could change (though I highly doubt it).

Over the summer, I was trying to gather information on trail-building so that the next summer I could gain some experience.  I was talking to everyone.  I learned about places like Gore Mountain and the Lake George Land Conservatory.  My close friend, Owen, told me he had a friend who works for a company that builds trails.  Owen gave me his friend Andrew's contact information and I texted him the messages below.

Benjamin: 
     Hello Andrew,

     My name is Ben.  My friend Owen told me you are a trail builder and gave me your contact information.  I’m 16, going into my Junior year, and when I get out of high school I want to go into a career in trail-building and snow park building.  I want to build mountain bike trails like downhill, cross country, slope style, dirt jumps, etc. in the summer months.  During the winter I want to build ski and snow parks.  

     I'm looking for some information about what sort of skills and training would put me in a good position to be hired and excel at the job (college? trade school? etc.).  Would you have time to let me know your thoughts on this (as well as giving me an idea of what a typical day at work looks like for you)? And finally, so that I can get more experience, do you know of any places that I might look into for a summer job?

     Thank you so much for your time.

Andrew: 
     Hi Ben, I'm Andrew.  Rry I couldn't respond sooner, I had a cross country meet yesterday.  I joined the trail crew at the beginning of this summer when I was 17 for my summer job.  It's meant for college age kids, but I had a lot of training doing trail work with the teen trail program run by the adk mountain club.  So they hired me.  Anyways, this is probably the best entry level job for you if trail building is what you're aiming to do.  I'm not sure what precise degree, but if you do this as a summer job, there's quite a few people u can get options from.  The best school would probably be SUNY ESF in Syracuse.  Probably the most important skills would be practice with hand tools like rock bars, mattocks, axes, shovels, and rakes.

     A good place to get training would be the teen trail program.  It's a week long course where u camp out and do trail work at a job site.  It's really fun.  I did it for 3 years in a row and I feel like I learned a lot from it.  Also Moreau Lake has trails days every once and awhile.  That could be good training too.  For my job exactly, you can find information about it by just Googling "Saratoga trail crew."  It's a team of 4 of us.  We're based out of SPAC, and we're probably hiring at least one or two people next year.  Our boss normally assigns us different projects, and we travel to various state parks around the capital region.  Normally if we're making a new trail he will have already flagged and designed it.  Then we go make the trail for him.  We also build bridges and drainage systems.  If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

Benjamin:

Thank you!

Andrew:

No problem!

At the same time, my mom, who works for the town, was asking around.  One of the people she talked to recommended that I approach the town and offer to build mountain bike trails for them.  So, we set up a meeting and I approached the mayor and I told him that I wanted to build technical trails for mountain biking at the Transfer Station (where the cross country running and skiing trails are).  I met with him so I would know if he was interested.  I would then know if it was worth the time to write a proposal. 

He suggested that I offer to work half the day as a maintenance worker and the second half the day building trails.  We talked about stuff I would need, compensation, and if it was actually possible for any of this to happen.  At the end of the meeting he gave me some maps of the land at the Transfer Station.  He told me I should write a proposal for a upcoming town meeting.  I wanted to cover everything, but I also wanted it to be short (so that it could get read at the meeting).  The proposal is below:

Proposed Mountain Bike Trail (addition to Transfer Station Trail System)

What do I want to do?
I want to build technical mountain bike trails with berms (banked turns), natural obstacles (roots and rocks), and a few features (jumps and bridges).  It's been suggested that the Village hire me as a seasonal worker:  scheduled for a few hours a day with normal seasonal responsibilities and the rest of a day to build trails.

Where will I build this?
I would build these mountain bike trails off of the cross country running/skiing trails at the Transfer Station.  Exact trail location to be decided (but within the existing trail boundaries).

How will this help Lake George?
In Lake George there is a lack of mountain bike trails, which is unfortunate considering that the Adirondacks are known for mountain and forest recreation.  In Lake George, the mountain bike trails are too far from the village and are largely unknown.  Having mountain bike trails closer to the village will bring mountain bikers, both locals and tourists, into the village, which will boost the economy when they stop for lunch or buy a keychain at the gift shop. It is giving Lake George one more activity than the next town, so they choose Lake George.  

What do I need?

Common yard tools, such as shovels, rakes, saws, clippers, and wheelbarrows.  Occasional help from a back hoe would be nice, but I can do without that if it's not possible.  

A few days after the meeting I got a call from the mayor and he told me my proposal got approved!