How I And Two Co-Leads Created And Facilitated A Learning Experience To Turn Cornell Students Into Backcountry Cooks

Audience: Cornell Undergraduate and Graduate students. 

Responsibilities: Learning Experience Design, public speaking, facilitation, collaboration.

Tools Used: Backcountry cooking equipment, Google Drive.

Problem And Solution

I love the outdoors, but when I ask my friends why they don't one thing comes up quiet a lot: I don't want to eat oatmeal for three days in a row.

This is a tragedy because I believe nature is one of the greatest teachers and connectors on the planet. I was blessed enough to grow up in a small rural town with nature all around and repeatedly went on outdoor adventures to The Adirondacks, Teatons, Yellowstone, and more throughout my childhood.

College students especially would benefit from nature as they are in one of the most moldable periods of their life. In a world beset with dopamine chasing, technology, and loneliness, nature can change these students lives.

My hope was creating a learning experience which would teach students to cook better might help them and their friends fall more in love with the outdoors.

I and two other Cornell Outdoor Education instructors created and facilitated a backcountry cooking learning experience over four weeks for eight Cornell Undergraduate and Graduate students. Over four weeks our learning objectives were to teach students core backcountry cooking skills including, knife safety, stove safety, leave no trace, food storage, planning, and basic cooking, as well as how to collaborate with others to make a meal.

Here's how we created and facilitated the course over the four weeks to achieve this.

Week 1

We taught the students knife and stove safety, as well as the basics cooking skills like sautéing, dicing, chopping, and searing. We made sure to divvy up the teaching to all instructors to create an equal power dynamic. For each activity we included stories to add emotional glue to the student learnings.

Following Gagne‘s nine events of instruction we made sure to start teaching the skill ourselves, then allowed students to give it a try with proper instructor guidance. As the students cooked, we made sure they didn't explode themselves or cut their own meat instead of the chicken.

After the cooking we split into different groups depending on the activity students wanted to do. It's essential to be mindful of differing wants for different students so some of us walked while others stayed back and made friendship bracelets.

Here are some pictures of our cooking:

Week 2

We taught students leave no trace, how to plan a backpacking trip, and food safety.

While teaching students these things we made sure to tell stories from our own experience to make it stick more and asked the students follow up questions to make sure they understood.

Here are some pictures of the cooking:

Week 3

This was the big week! We drove out to Watkin’s Glen and had the students cook a big homemade burrito meal for another class at Cornell Outdoor Education: Geocaching.

In week one we told them they would be cooking for this class.

Suddenly, there were stakes.

Their bad cooking could now harm others, namely the sanity of college students already on the brink of death from chronic cramming. This gave them an epic goal to work towards and, therefore, more motivation to learn during the first two weeks. The third week came, and they were tasked with making homemade burritos full of guacamole, sour cream, cheese, ground beef, and, of course, love.

They killed it, getting five Michelin stars from Geocaching.

Here are some photos of the cooking:

Week 4

The last week we led the students in an overnight at Fox Fire lean two.

Because it was the last class we allowed them to lead all the cooking activities as well as have more control over the activities we did between cooking. The overnight is an entirely different experience compared to just cooking during the day. Many of the students reported after class it was where they truly fell in love with the outdoor experience.

Here are some pictures of the night:

Overall, we believe the class was successful because of the students’ ability to cook for another class during week three and on their own during week four. In addition, we received the first straight 10 score rating across the board ever in a backcountry cooking class at Cornell Outdoor Education. Students repeatedly said they wanted to lead their own outdoor adventures with their friends which was exactly what we were looking for at the beginning.

It brings a smile to my face knowing more people are getting to experience the wonderful thing that is nature.