On-Campus Information
RESPONSIBILITIES OF A VISITING TEACHER
Your most intense work of coordinating adults and students and buses is finished once you have arrived to Sly Park. Congratulations! You deserve a week in the woods. RESPONSIBILITIES OF A VISITING TEACHER
Your most intense work of coordinating adults and students and buses is finished once you have arrived to Sly Park. Congratulations! You deserve a week in the woods.
RESPONSIBILITIES OF A VISITING TEACHER
Know where your students are at all times. The first afternoon our Office Staff will provide you with a list of your students including their cabin and hiking group assignments.
Monitor the health and safety of your students. By being present at meals, stone circle gatherings, attending classes, and hosting your class meetings, you should have a gauge as to how your students are faring.
Design behavior interventions and consequences for students acting out of line. Cabin Leaders are asked not to disclipline students, but rather, report the behaviors to the teachers.
We will provide you with a POCKET GUIDE on campus. Take a peek in advance if you're curious!
meeting basic needs of a visiting teacher
meeting basic needs of a visiting teacher
meeting basic needs of a visiting teacher
- Visting Teachers will sleep in the Mountain Misery Cabin attached to the Office and Med Bay. Mountain Misery has individual bathrooms/showers for your convenience. If the nubmers permit, single occupancy accomodation is possible. However, some weeks require teachers to double-up in a room. While our single bunk bed mattresses are comfortable, if you generally sleep in something more luxurious, we have heard talk of a mattress topper helping increase the sleeping experience.
- Visiting Teachers will eat in the dining hall at a Teacher Table. If there is room, you may eat with at the student tables. Please notify the dining hall if you have special dietary needs. Mountain Misery has a full refrigerator, coffee maker, and micrwave if you choose to bring your own food/snacks.
- The water at Sly Park is cold and delicious! We offer water, coffee, tea, and milk in abundance and occaisionally iced tea. If you prefer to consume other non-alcoholic beverages please pack them.
ON-CAMPUS DUTIES OF A VISITING TEACHER
ON-CAMPUS DUTIES OF A VISITING TEACHER
Where you should be-FIRST DAY
Times and locations may vary dependent upon arrival and weather
12:15 pm (or earlier) DINING HALL
Students are given an orientation to how our meals operate beginning around noon. Serving starts at 12:15.
1:30 pm (or later) OUTDOOR COURTS or GYM
Students gather for introductions and first hike. Be prepared to introduce yourself and your students.
2:30 pm (ish) CONFERENCE ROOM
Swing by for a personal introduction to the Cabin Leaders
4:00 pm STONE CIRCLE
Please be available for any Sly Park Teacher who needs to check in with you after the first hike with the students
4:10 pm STONE CIRCLE
The fire drill sounds at 4:10 on the first day. Please attend the drill.
4:15 - 4:55 pm GYM OR OUTDOOR COURTS
While the Sly Park Teachers are with the Cabin Leaders, Visiting Teachers are to monitor students for rec time. Please send students back to cabins at 4:55 to wash hands before diinner. ***This is a nice time to take a class photo before anyone goes home!
5:00 pm DINING HALL
Dinner is served.
6:15 - 7:15 pm WHOLE GROUP ACTIVITY LOCATION [OUTDOOR COURTS or GYMANSIUM]
7:15 - 8:15 ASSIGNED LOCATION [Education Building, Conference Room, or Gym]
Take the students who are NOT on a night hike for an evening check-in time. Please note ROOM G is accessed via the covered deck on the WEST side of the Education Building.
8:15 - 9:45 pm DINING HALL
As the evening wiinds down, you are needed to distribute cookies to ALL and evening medications to those who need it. Cabin Checks begin at 9:20 to help any cabin that is not calming down do so before lights out at 9:30.
Morning Wake-Up Call
7:00 am Daily
The Visiting Teachers have the fun responsibility to announce to all of campus that it is time to get out of bed and start the day! Have fun with this responsibilty!
Our campus-wide announcement system is functional from the phone in Mountain Misery, the Visiting Teacher dorm. Instructions are by the phone. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CHOOSE THE INSIDE ONLY OPTION out of respect for our neighbors!
Morning and Afternoon Rec Time
Rec Time follows each class session with a Sly Park Teacher.
11:45 am - 12:10 pm Morning
4:30 pm - 4:55 pm Afternoon (except Thursday)
This is a time for students who choose to attend to socialize, hang out, be outside and play. Students who opt to have a quiet and calm space head to their cabins during these times.
Please release students to CABINS on time so they may wash hands before the meal.
Visiting Teachers are required to monitor the Basketball Courts [inside the gym in rain/snowy conditions] where we hold rec time. The first Rec Time is not optional, and ALL TEACHERS SHOULD BE ON THE COURTS. However, not all teachers are needed for the remaining Rec Times. A schedule is provided for Visiting Teachers to sign up on the first day.
Mealtime
Our Dining Hall provides great, hearty meals and a phenomenol salad bar. Your duties at meals do not include the meal service side of the Dining Hall. Rather this is a time for Cabin Leaders, students and Sly Park Teachers to easily find and connect with you regarding any number of things that happen on campus. This is also a time for students to recieve medications and mail.
Please have at least ONE teacher per school at each meal.
Song Night
Gulp. On Tuesday night of a 5-day program, each class will get on stage at our amphitheater and perform a song. Practice before you arrive if you have time. Remember-this is more about the experience of getting up in front of a crowd. Have FUN! You can find your own song, create a song on chatGPT, or you will be sent a link in registration process with some ideas.
Cookie Distribuition
After dropping off students from the class meeting to the courts/gym, Visiting Teachers gather in the Dining Hall to distribute the evening cookie to students and Cabin Leaders.
The cookies are in the Dining Hall on a wheeled cart. No cookies contain nuts or traces of nuts. Any cookies for those with special dietary needs will be in separate bags individually marked for each person. Everybody deserves to finish their day with a big cookie!
Extra cookies will be placed in a new container by the Sly Park Teacher.
Cabin Check
After Cookie Distribuition Visiting Teachers are to wait in the Dining Hall while cabins prepare for lights out. Students should be out of showers by 9:15 pm, so Visiting Teachers may begin to make their rounds as early as 9:20 pm. Remember, we are prepping the students to settle down to sleep!
After 9:30 pm, Visiting Teachers wait while Sly Park Teachers do their rounds.
All head to Mountain Misery once the campus seems settled.
Astronomy Night
Weather and Night Sky conditions permitting, Sly Park hosts Astronomy Night as an optional activity for students who with to forgo an evening shower. A Sly Park Teacher, along with the assistance of ONE or more Visiting Teachers will set our telescopes on the moon, planets, or other celestial objects.
Visiting Teachers are helpful in getting students TO the Observatory and monitoring one telescope as students cycle through.
Class Meeting information
You will be assigned an inside meeting location to meet nightly with your students from 6:15 - 7:15 pm. This is a way to check in with how things are going in the cabins and on the trail. Class Meeting information
General Information
This one-hour time slot includes transition time from the prior activity and to the Evening Wrap-Up Assembly, which usually translates to about 45 minutes of time with your class rather than a full hour. We have created two versions of a journal you may download and print that can help the students process their experience.
- Nightly Journal that encompasses only time at camp
- Journal that has pages included for BEFORE coming to Sly Park
Some general guidelines:
- Please escort your students both to and from the class meeting for student safety.
- During the transition to and from class meeting, have students refrain from screaming to avoid disrupting the serenity of the groups on a night walk in the forest.
- Please tidy any mess created in the room you are using.
- Avoid giving letters from home this late in the day... they tend to induce sadness rather than joy :)
- Avoid giving students candy and gum during this time.
Options for how to structure your class meeting:There is room for flexibility in how you meet your students. If you have more than one class from your school, you may choose to personalize the structure of your class meeting.
- Meet as an entire school in one location.
- Offer different experiences for their students and let them choose. One teacher hosts a calm, quiet spot for reading, cards, checkers, etc.; another teacher offers a more lively spot for games; another a purely social hang out and talk spot; another the gym for active games. You will need to coordinate how to distribute the students AFTER the classes are dismissed to each teacher.
- Most common-meet with your own specific students.
Escape Room
We currently have one Escape Room available for your class to check out. If it becomes a raging success, we will create more.
Materials in each Classroom & Conference Room
Sly Park has the luxury of having several indoor spaces. However, they are not like a typical classroom in either size or infrastructure. Most do not have desks for students and many do not have tables. You need to get a little creative!
The days are long and the students are prone to getting a little crazy if you do not actively set the tone. You have the flexibility to create the space you want and run structured activities or be a little more free-flow. Essentially, this is a designated time for you to be able to interact with your class and monitor how they are doing and assess if they need any additional support to thrive at
Each room in the Education Building offers:
- Basic classroom supplies [paper, pencils, crayons, colored pencils & coliring pages]
- Basic games [checkers, jenga, keva planks, decks of cards]
- Stories
Some visiting teachers bring games they know their class enjoys. We have tried stocking games, but the pieces and parts disappear too quickly to make it worthwhile.
Creative Ideas We've Seen
- Anonymous note box for concerns
- Make thank you posters for Cabin Leaders
- Late season activity: if it is still light out, sidewalk chalk decorate the empty parking spots
- Class Photo shoot (if you have all your students)
Class Challenge Contests
This is an upcycle of our former Cabin Challenge Night in the cohorting days post-covid.
We currently have 1 Class Challenge available fully stocked with instructions and supplies to have a group of <30 divide into 2-3 teams to try to "survive" by successfully completing 70% of the challenges or "thrive" by completing > 70% of the challenges. We will make more if this is a popular event.
Activities include:
- Long division WITHOUT a calculator!
- Maze completion
- Keva tower construction
- Bucket ball toss
- Ping Pong Dribble
- Traveling ping pong
- High Level Alphabitizing
- knotty Jumprope
- Tangrams
