Pursuing Purpose

It’s a cold morning in March. About twenty students are seated in desks along the periphery of English teacher Dick McCarthy’s room. On a table in the center lies a collection of artifacts—a tanned deer hide, a willow basket, an unstrung bow, hand-carved bowls. Their maker, LI alum Caleb Genereaux ‘16, stands before the class. 

Genereaux isn’t here to give a workshop on bushcraft; he’s here for a much deeper purpose. He’s come to talk about life and learning and how we can best weave the two into one. He is the most recent guest speaker invited to address one of LI’s newest courses—a class called Pursuing Purpose.

Genereaux starts by telling his “learning story.” It’s a bit of the path less traveled compared to most people’s experiences, but that isn’t unusual for most of McCarthy’s guests. Early on, in addition to being home-schooled, Genereaux spent time at The Roots School (Reclaiming Our Origins through Traditional Skills), a wilderness school where he’d later become an instructor. “Coming back as an instructor at the age of 16 was a great opportunity,” Genereaux says. “I gained experience working with younger kids, peers, and adults.”

When it came time for high school, he enrolled as a part-time student at LI, taking advantage of its choral program with Susanne Norwood, training with John Kresser on the alpine team, playing ultimate frisbee, and later engaging with more academic classes like AP English Literature. He credited his time at LI with developing both his skills and focus. 

“A lot of education is about discovering what excites you,” Genereaux tells the class.

After leaving LI, Genereaux deferred admission to Sterling College, a small school in Craftsbury focused on ecology and sustainability, and took a gap year. 

“I wanted to engage in something physical,” he says. “I asked myself, ‘what would make the next 12 months better for you?’” 

The answer was travel. Genereaux trekked his way across the world—Europe, New Zealand—and spent time learning about permaculture through working on farms and in workshops developing his bushcraft skills. Eventually, Genereaux's stint abroad ended with a 6000 mile trek from LA to Burlington in a rattling $1,200 car to land him back in the homeland in time for his first classes at Sterling. 

Genereaux later transferred to the University of Vermont. “I loved going to UVM, but it’s a big school and easy to fall through the cracks. So I learned the importance of self-advocacy, especially in terms of getting the classes that I needed as I moved from an environmental studies major to focusing on natural resources.”

In the end, Genereaux left UVM with a degree that complimented his passions and set him on his career path as an outdoor educator and ancestral skills teacher.

Throughout Genereaux’s presentation, he fields questions about his life’s journey and hand-crafted tools he’s brought. At one point, he even gets the class up and has them engage in a bracketed roshambo tournament, one in which each round’s losers are required to root for the winners who defeat them, infusing the crowd with both a sense of comfort and energy and lots of laughter. 

But he goes beyond his story. He talks about the differences between classroom learning versus hands-on learning, emphasizing that both are important, both have value. He talks about the importance of communicating emotions effectively and how to give effective feedback that is specific and actionable. 

Towards the end, McCarthy asks the class: how does Genereaux embody the spirit of the course? How does he reflect the idea of “pursuing purpose”?

Students offer a range of answers. “He talks about the value of charting your own path,” one says. “He focuses on how you build a community,” another offers.

Building community, charting new paths—these are core values of McCarthy’s Pursuing Purpose class, currently in its first year.

“[Head of School] Brian [Bloomfield] and [Dean of Academics] Terha [Steen] came up with the notion for the course originally,” says McCarthy. “The goal was to create a cohort of academically diverse, like-minded kids who would be interested in broadening the idea of what school is. It’s really an act of stewardship in terms of the learning community at LI. How can they improve the social and academic opportunities for our students?”

With that in mind, McCarthy approached individual students last spring who seemed like they might be a good fit for this year’s pilot program. 

“Parts of the course are modeled on AP Seminar—kids look at issues, ask essential questions, conduct research, and develop solutions. But we didn’t want this to just be another AP class—we want a range of students with different kinds of academic skills and backgrounds but who are united in an interest and willingness to engage with each other and the spirit of the course,” he says.

The course revolves around a few focal points, one being LI’s Transferable Skills initiative, with an emphasis on Collaboration, Problem-solving, and Self-direction in particular. 

The other, says McCarthy, focuses on an essential question: “If grades didn’t matter, what kind of student would you be? Would you take risks? Would you flounder?”

The question is connected to an even bigger proposition: What would school look like if it didn’t look like school?

“In terms of pure acreage and natural spaces, we have a campus that most schools would give anything to have,” McCarthy says. “There's a lot of untapped potential. So our first big project last fall was to spend time just walking around the grounds and seeing what kinds of opportunities there were for different forms of teaching and learning.

“For example, we’d go down to the bleachers or out into the woods around the nature trail and ask, ‘What does teaching a short story look like if we taught it here?’ or ‘What form would a chemistry class take if we had to do it in this space?’”

Students were broken up into groups and each given a core subject—English, history, science, and math. Their challenge? To consider the question: What could learning look like if it wasn’t happening in a classroom?

McCarthy explains the process: “The goal was to design usable lessons for teachers within the content areas. They researched best practices and read up on expert voices around productive learning and student engagement. They also spent a lot of time interviewing teachers, finding out what their objectives were and considering the challenges.” 

The challenges are real. “It can be hard for teachers to balance content and skills, to create activities that cover both in a satisfactory way. And doing that outside the normal parameters of a classroom can be even more challenging.  Our goal is to try to help make that easier for them, to give them ideas and resources. Many hands make light work, and this process helps put a premium on collaboration. What the students are discovering is that, sometimes, less is more.”

Part of this initiative is to get students outside more, to get them more active, and to have them work together to utilize outdoor spaces more regularly, aspects which dovetail nicely with several of Head of School Dr. Brian Bloomfield’s own initiatives for the school. 

“The original idea for this program was to have a cohort-based experience for students working at the highest level, something that is research and community-based,” says Bloomfield. “In terms of the approach Dick [McCarthy] has taken with the course, everything I’ve seen so far has involved collaboration, both in terms of small groups and the class as a whole, collaboration that is research-based, service-oriented, and action-oriented. What’s exciting is they’re not just putting together ideas, they’re actually pitching them to authority.”

All of which leads to this current semester’s project.

“Our focus this half of the year has been to work toward developing one or more impermanent structures on campus, places that will allow teachers to take students into the outdoors regardless of conditions and allow us to utilize campus more fully. The students have been exploring all different kinds of design ideas—basic post and beam structures, the use of tarps, structures that have open sides but are weatherproof,” says McCarthy. 

“It’s been quite a journey! I share with them the line from Theodore Roethke’s great poem ‘The Waking’—‘I learn by going where I have to go.’ It’s really what it’s all about. The kids are discovering that great ideas require change and that nothing worthwhile is easy.”

The project has not only involved researching different locations and designs and understanding physical spaces and their requirements, it’s also involved some lobbying. Students have been working on putting together presentations and meeting with administrators, including Bloomfield and Steen, as well as Director of Physical Plant Operations and Maintenance Dwight Stahler.

“It’s been interesting watching them go through this process as they move from the normal adolescent ideas to mature solutions that are more pragmatic and practical, learning how to adjust when people say no. Hopefully, we’ll have a good outcome,” says McCarthy. “Again, the idea is developing a sense of stewardship, of leaving the school better than they found it.”

Which brings us back to Genereaux. His visit concludes with a discussion around the class’s project. They give him a run-down of the process they’ve gone through and the ground they’ve covered. They show him several design models for different types of structures. As an outdoor educator, Genereaux knows a thing or two about these kinds of learning places. He asks questions about their ultimate goals and challenges; together they brainstorm ideas and some fresh approaches.

“Guest speakers are an important part of the class,” McCarthy tells me later. “A person like Caleb gives kids a great example of a non-traditional learner, someone who is also an enlightened intellectual and has smart hands.”

McCarthy’s idea for making extensive use of guest speakers, many of whom are LI alums, was inspired by several of his J Term classes, including The Face of Business and Taking the Leap, both of which involved inviting in people from the community to share their work and life experiences.

“Bringing in guest speakers gives students a refreshing change of pace and offers lots of new perspectives. Any time you can change the channel from your own voice, it helps sharpen the kids’ attention.”

Besides guest speakers, students are matched with LI alumni mentors, recent graduates they can reach out to for advice about college or the future in general, another aspect of community building. 

At the end of the day, from McCarthy’s perspective, it’s what Pursuing Purpose is largely about.
“In some ways, the program hearkens back to the Vail Scholars Program [former Latin teacher] Roy Starling and I ran for a few years, which was about letting kids know they have more potential than they may sometimes think they have and getting them working together toward a goal.”

The seminar format is especially conducive to this process. “The time they spend together and the work they do reinforces the idea that the commitment they have is to each other, not themselves.”

The year will end with each student making a formal presentation behind a podium to a limited audience—a parent or two, a teacher or coach, and another individual of their choice—based on communicating what they’ve learned during their time at Lyndon Institute and how they are planning on taking their education to the next level.

For senior Clio Steele, the class has been a pleasant surprise.

“When Mr. McCarthy approached me last spring, I wasn’t sure at first. But he eventually sold me with the promise that it would be lots of hands-on learning and a lot of student-based opportunities. Overall, it’s been super interesting.”

The guest speakers have been a highlight for Steele, along with the field trips.

“A few weeks ago we traveled down to Thetford Academy to look at some of their outdoor structures for inspiration and also got to tour Dartmouth College while we were in the area,” says Steele. “And I loved it when Caleb came and talked to us.”

LI alumnus Evan Carlson ‘02, who was instrumental in forming NEK Broadband and who currently works as Chief Products Officer for the local geospatial technology company Whiteout Solutions, was another guest speaker who left an impression. “His talk focused around using technology and applying it to his environmental survey work, which was really interesting,” says Steele.

As a senior who is aspiring to eventually go to law school and become an attorney, Steele also appreciated the parts of the class that focused on life beyond LI, part of which included an in-house guest speaker—guidance counselor and Director of Upward Bound Lindsay Carpenter.

“At the beginning of the year, we talked a lot about what we expected college to be like. Mrs. Carpenter’s visit was helpful. It made me feel better to hear that whatever we imagine, it’s probably not going to be what we expected, so try not to worry. Hearing that took some of the pressure off.”

As the year ends, Steele is grateful she took the course. “I like that Mr. McCarthy lets us follow whatever path we design for ourselves with these projects. It hasn’t always been easy. When the parameters are loose you have to kind of make things up as you go. It’s liberating but also challenging.”

While Steele doesn’t anticipate bringing this semester’s project to total completion, she’s proud of the work they’ve done and the foundation they’ve laid for next year’s class. “I’m excited to come back and see what happens next with it!”

McCarthy is also excited for next year when Pursuing Purpose will be complemented by a second course called Pursuing Passion, a Capstone course where students will combine classroom passion with a personal passion to research and develop their own projects.