Outstanding Experiential Teacher of the Year 2007
Carrie McGown
by Ben Moore*
Since 1997 AEE has recognized one individual each year as the “Outstanding Experiential Teacher of the Year.” In 2007, that honor was awarded to Carrie McGown, originally from Parry Sound, Ontario, currently a Ph.D. candidate in Education at the University of New Hampshire.
Before coming to the northeast, Carrie taught for eight years as a faculty member at Briercrest College in Saskatchewan, where, most recently, she was the Program Coordinator for the Outdoor Adventure & Administration degree program.
The teacher of the year award is given to recognize “an individual who demonstrates an active passion for experiential education principles and theories in teaching practice in a public or private school system.”
Carrie gets her passion from her belief in teaching through experiential and adventure education philosophies. One example of this passion is the two-and-a half-month expedition she led to the Northwest Territories of Canada with a group of her students from Briercrest. Taking six students on a two and a half month, 1,000-mile canoe expedition is noteworthy in and of itself, but Carrie didn’t want to teach her students just about canoeing and expedition travel. Her goal was to teach her students about the racial divide in Canada, and how they could use adventure as a means to reach out to Canada’s Native population. Specifically, she and her students wanted to use rock climbing as a mechanism to begin to bridge the deep cultural split between Canada’s nonnative and native populations.
"Climbing?" you ask, "but this was a canoe expedition!?!" Such details did not deter Carrie who, with the help of one of her students who ran a challenge course building company, designed and built an 800-lb. portable climbing wall that fit in two canoes to take along on the trip. This trip, down the Mackenzie River, stopped in eight Aboriginal communities along the way. Using their canoes and the climbing wall, the students interacted with the Native communities and learned about their struggles, the staggering suicide rate among Native youth, and how the only way to solve these problems is by reaching out and creating connection.
Carrie came to the University of New Hampshire to become a better equipped and more sustainable educator. Her focus is on experiential education as it relates to faith. When not pursuing her studies, Carrie can be found exploring her new home here in the Northeast. She “loves it” and having come from the prairies of Saskatchewan, she plans on taking full advantage of the many nearby outdoors resources. Most often, Carrie can be found paddling her canoe on rivers and lakes within just a few hours of her home in Barrington.
Carrie, a skilled paddler, and her best friend became the first women team to paddle across Canada. Their 5,500-mile, three-year expedition was sponsored by the Royal Canadian Geographic Society.
*Ben Moore is a Master's student at UNH in the Outdoor Education Program, where his research interests include the effects of outdoor orientation programs on incoming students and upper-class leaders, as well as the effects of conformity on decision-making. Besides school, Ben works as a program manager at the Browne Center for Innovative Learning, and in the summers instructs for NOLS.
