“The exclusive purpose of this corporation shall be to operate for education purposes..., including to educate members and the general public regarding the sport of orienteering” -- Article II of the Articles of Organization, as amended 2/28/2008

Issues for consideration of the Board

Please review policy below on payment for services and use of maps.
Paul Pearson has been asked to make a map for a school. Some years ago he helped someone write a grant to pay him to produce the O map, but that did not get funded. He says that there is funding in the Education budget. What is that, and how do we decide to distribute it? Paul says that the school would own the map. Ballpark price: $300-$400. Depends somewhat on availability of base map.
I am working with schools in Cambridge, and those programs need funds for printing. We did get a grant for the bus for one field trip; there are other field trips pending. How should those schools apply to NEOC for funding?

Education-Related Policy for the Board to Review

Payment for services

Some NEOC members volunteer their time to put on educational events. However, we also encourage NEOC members to find ways to be reimbursed for their time when teaching orienteering.

Use of NEOC maps for educational programs

NEOC maps may be used for educational events, with the following guidelines:

Permission to use the land for the event must be obtained from the landowner.
The event must be used as an opportunity by the event organizer to maintain and ideally improve good relations with the land manager.
Cost for educational use of each map is $1, not including printing costs. This cost can be waived upon request by the event organizer. However, we do ask that this fee be paid, if the event organizer is earning a profit from an event that is greater than the living wage as computed by the Living Wage Calculator.
Maps must include NEOC name, web site and contact information, copyright information, use restrictions, and credit for map authorship (field checker, cartographer).

Reporting to NEOC

We ask that organizers of orienteering education keep NEOC informed of their activities. This will help us improve our educational programs, and maintain good relationships with land managers,

Report

Clinics and workshops for NEOC members

Ian and Andy are developing mapping clinics. May add e-punching clinic.

Need to develop a list of potential workshop teachers. Barb needs access to membership list, and other lists of past volunteers and expertise, for this purpose. Suggestions requested from the Board.

Training with CSU

Proposed; need to move forward with this. CSU is meeting soon to lay out training schedule.

Adventure Kids

Franchise program from Canada?

Programs for groups

Two Rivers Middle School, East Hartford (Paul Pearson)

A teacher wants maps made of Two Riverse Middle School in order to add an orienteering unit to her PE curriculum. She is interested in educational funding, and asks how it works and whether it is available.

Graham and Parks Junior High (Barb)

80 students in two-week unit. 4 classroom sessions on navigation, route-planning, team dynamics. Homework. Study guide and exam. All-day field trip to the Fells. Teams of 4 students navigate to find off-trail “team” controls and on-trail “landmark” controls. Tickets are earned for finding controls and picking up trash, as well as attending NEOC meets. Tickets are exchanged for prizes and snacks. After the trip, students write a reflection on the experience.

In an exciting development, after learning of the entire program, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation waived the requirement for a permit, because they consider us a clean-up crew!

Funding for the bus transportation provided by a grant from the City of Cambridge Mayor’s office.

Graham and Parks 5th grade (Barb)

Students have a classroom session in which they learn about navigation, and split up to learn different skills (distance estimation, feature reading, etc.). Then teams are made, with one student who has been trained in each skill. On a later date, go to Fresh Pond and do an orienteering game. Street-orienteering map to get to the park. Puzzle pieces in envelopes are clues to where a prize is. Later, write reflection.

Morse School 5th grade (Barb)

Full-year curriculum, with activities approximately monthly. Students make maps of class, then school grounds, and use the maps. Street-O. Park-O. 3D model building from topo map. Classroom lecture. Trip to Fells with “star” pattern: Class orienteers all together for a couple of controls. Then teams split up for individual controls and return to meeting place. Orienteer together to next control. Teams then split up and go on to next control. And again. Then, lunch. Finish with regular white-level orienteering course. Students write a reflection after the trip.

Funding for bus applied for, from the Target school field trip grants.

Barb may receive some money toward expenses from the school.

Graham and Parks 1st and 2nd grade (Barb)

2009-2010 was the final year for this program, as the teacher, Linda Fobes, retired. Full-year curriculum, with half a dozen activities throughout the year. Class goes to the Middlesex Fells to orienteer with the junior high, after in-class preparation. Students placed on teams with the bigger kids for the first “map walk” portion of the field trip. Additional park orienteering in the fall. Discussion in class of maps. Map-making and games in school. Visit to Harvard to learn about insects from Jessica Rykken. Study of maps for the field trip: Street maps, subway maps, harbor maps, orienteering map of a Harbor Island. Field trip: first to one island for biodiversity survey of insects, followed by second island for lunch and orienteering on a map Barb made.

We have plans to document this for use in other classrooms.

High school cross country (Barb)

Arranging meeting with Cambridge coach Scott Cody.

Education event for Northstar Homeschoolers 9/13/10 and 9/20/10 (Pete Lane and Paul Windt)

10-12 kids aged 11-13, at Great Brook Park, Carlisle. Charged $10/child/class. Contact was Jan Power.

Old Colony Boy Scout Camporee (Pete Lane)

Held at Wrentham Fair Grounds October 15th and 17th.

Educational event 8/26/10 - Don Hall

Don Hall put on a small event Thursday August 26th at Colt State Park. He set a white course. There were 8 attendees. He made a Colt State Park White Course Kit with controls, clue sheets and master map, and put it all in one bag so that it can be re-enacted on a moments’ notice. The kids really enjoyed it. [This came to Pete who cc’d me. I’m not sure how or to whom it was advertised.]

Orienteering for ISMB attendees (Barb, Deb Humiston)

Barb directed an orienteering “ice-breaker” in the Boston Common for attendees of a conference in July. Deb Humiston supplied the maps and course; Barb obtained funding from the conference to pay Deb.

Sporting Chance for Youth at Riverfront Recapture - Jun 19 (Paul Pearson)

Write-up to come.

Connecticut Scout Show - Jun 5 (Paul Pearson)

Eastern Mountain Sports Connecticut Rivers Jamboree at the Hebron Fairgrounds. Over 7000 Scouts and Scouters reserved a spot.

NEOC was one of the exhibitors at this major scouting event. I used the map below of the Hebron Fair Grounds in order to set out 4 short courses.

Our NEOC crew included

Paul & Sue Pearson

Kevin Burnham

Don Jacques

Caleb Warner

Fall Scout-O (Paul Pearson)

This Fall, our scout-O at JN Webster will be incorporated into The Hockanum River camporee on November 6 & 7.

MCC Orienteering course offering - Sep 15/18 (Paul Pearson)

Write-up to come.

Permanent courses (Paul Pearson)

Write-up to come

Maps for Mt Tom DEM map and compass program (Paul Pearson)

Write-up to come

Scout-O (Pete Lane)

Proceeding along just as we have done for the past several years. Registration opened in August as scheduled. Jim Paschetto got on-line registration open just before Labor Day. Annual coordination meeting to be held next week or so. Other than on-line registration, same program and everything else as in the past.

Other

I know there are other people doing orienteering education -- please let me know who they are so that I can work with them.

Outreach Ideas

Karl Stephens (and others in RI?) interested in reaching out to Brown University outing club.
AMC - advertise a class or events? This is probably the domain of the publicity/PR person.
Running clubs in the area - form a relationship?

Community Running. They meet at MIT and around the Charles river basin. “We are a fun running club in the Boston-metro area. We offer coached workouts each week and year round. Our workouts are perfect for everybody, regardless of age, experience or ability. Our core membership is made up of "middle-to-back-of-the-pack" runners who run for fun, fitness, and often for a good cause. We currently have about 100 active members and many more who train with us during the indoors season.”
Cambridge Running Club. Wow - Scott Cody is the coach! (He’s the CRLS cross-country coach too)
Boston-area clubs

National Orienteering Day

Great events lined up.

NEOC Times training article

Not happening at the moment. Suggestions?

Junior Program

Currently nonexistent. Need a volunteer to run this.

Library

Unsure of status.

Education Resources

Club teaching resources

What do we have? I am not sure.

External resources

Orienteering for Beginners video

Successor

Any suggestions?

Educational Portion of Website

Need to look at this.

Inquiries

Dianne McGaunn 8/12/10

(How did Dianne originally contact NEOC? Paul Pearson replied to her asking her location, which is the Cape Ann Waldorf school in Beverly Farms, MA, on Hale Street)

Dianne McGaunn, a 4th grade teacher on the north shore, wrote asking for help. Pete Lane sent email to me, Jim Terluzzi and Paul Windt (pwindt@comcast.net) asking if they could help.

I didn’t have a chance to get to this email until 9/15/10, and wrote this reply:

Dear Dianne,

I understand you are interested in teaching your students about orienteering. That's great! I'm sorry for the delay in replying. I've been a bit swamped - teaching orienteering!

I would love to talk with you about possibilities with your class.

Currently I am working with a 5th grade teacher in Cambridge on activities throughout the year relating to orienteering. The students start by mapping their classroom, then an area outside on the school grounds. We do some orienteering in the neighborhood, in a local park, and then in the woods in a final field trip. This year we also hope to build 3D models of an area from topo maps. I've worked with kids in grades 1 through 8 on various orienteering programs.

I'd be happy to talk with you in more detail about some of these activities. We could arrange a time to talk, or perhaps meet at a local event or elsewhere.

There are also some good reference materials available.

Here is a start:

USOF's education page

Books for teaching orienteering

Greg Sack's resources on orienteering in schools

Another teaching orienteering page

If you have any funding available, one possibility would be to hire someone to put on a program - for example, you could contact Deb Humiston who is trying to make a living teaching orienteering and putting on events. Alternatively, you should be able to put together a reasonable program yourself, and we might be able to find a volunteer or two in your area from our club. I have just recently joined the NEOC Board and don't yet have the contact information for members, but when I get it I can look into this if you're interested.

Thanks,

Barbara Bryant