Welcome to the first installment in a 4-part series on Colorado Youth Outdoors’ teaching model: PACD.
PACD (Participate, Appreciate, Communicate, Dedicate) is what we’ve come up with through teaching 20+ years of outdoor recreation. Our goal has always been building your relationship.
Building Your Relationship
PACD is a toolkit to help frame the way you think about and interact to one another. To make it work, we mix in new activities, challenges to complete together, and a bit of the out-of-doors. (We’re onto something – read about Colorado’s Outdoor RX)
Now, we don’t claim to be therapists. We’d never want a talk about feelings to get in the way of catching a bass.
In fact, we’d never call our PACD toolkit ‘therapy’. It’s more like character building. Think of it like that pocket knife you carry around: it takes a hard job & makes it a little easier.
Enough chat, let’s jump in!
First Word: Participate
It’s pretty easy. Life isn’t a theory class. You gotta get out there and do.
Example: Scared of the noise, the kickback, the lethal potential of a shotgun? Good. You should be — firearms are dangerous. Instead of saying ‘no thanks’ . . . what do you gain by participating in a class using firearms?
- Safe handling skills and a healthy respect for firearms
- Improved understanding of the lesson
- Teamwork, including increased cooperation with those around you
- Active learning
- A sense of accomplishment
- Confidence
- Boosted retention of the stuff being taught
What does this have to do with relationships?
Fair question. Well . . . .do you have to participate for a relationship to work well? Yeah, buddy! That’s the first step. To create anything meaningful between two people, you have spend time together.
Here’s the lesson plan:
Find your activity. It should not be a teacher and student situation – take yourselves out of the natural parent/child roles and learn something new together.
Fix up an old car, decorate a cake, design a robotic arm, learn to crochet, build a gnome home . . . it all works. Pick something you’re both curious about.
For us, mastery isn’t the goal, it’s the participation along the way. Here’s our suggested goals for your project together:
Try all activities – work as a team – be together – share your experience
Download our template to help create your own goals for your personal journey. (Yes, it’s a target. We can’t help ourselves.)
Questions to discuss together and the end of your activity:
What would you have missed if you chose not to participate today?
How did you and your partner work together?
What did you enjoy most about the activity?
What was most challenging for you?