Teton Science School

Sean Dowling
October 17, 2017

Today we woke up very early in the morning, around 5:30am, because today we were visiting the Teton Science School and had over an hour drive to get there. After shiver through our breakfast and packing things up, we headed out. on the bright side of getting up early, we saw some awesome views of the Tetons and even two moose, though it seemed like the sun was trying to blind us for looking in their direction. When we pulled into TSS, we were greeted by Jordan who gave us one of the greatest gifts you could give someone in the morning; coffee. After a brief description of what TSS does and how they design their curriculum, he sent us off to view how they work in their different groups. Today they had some middle school kids from St. Anthony's. Boz, Kara, and I saw the TSS instructor, Sam. He lead them in a lesson about Geology. He started them off by having them do a team building exercise called "chocolate river" and taught them one of my favorite games called "camouflage". Everyone then headed out to continue the lesson on a trail loop in the Tetons. There, Sam taught the group how old the rocks were and gave us all a dance lesson with Rockity -Rock-Rock while we learned the three types of rocks. Throughout the hike, students did a skit about the rocks types, investigated some scats and tracks on the trail, and made their own stories about rocks they had found and their journey to how they found them. We could not stay with them the whole day sadly but before we left they gave us "three cheers" and a heartful goodbye. Walking back to the van, the three of us got to see a huge bull moose while crossing a bridge over Glacier Lake, which made arriving back at the parking lot a tad late worth it. We then went back to TSS to finish the day with a more in depth discussion with Jordan. When we got there, he surprised us with even more gifts of coffee cake and more coffee! What a great guy! After a video, discussing our day, TSS, and our future plans, Jordan then introduced us to a wonderful lady named Dorris, who Boz was overly excited to meet. Dorris spun and dyed her own wool that she used to make a variety of things from colorful butt pads, tapestries, and even 3D animals like bison and sheep. She then let some of us try a team braiding technique that they spent a good time trying to do and having lots of fun doing it. Before we left, we had to give some gifts of our own to Jordan, Dorris, and the three instructors we followed before giving our goodbyes. We then headed to our campsite and to keep this short was a small adventure in itself.