Moscow students team up to study Oregon Trail

As the sun was rising Thursday, students from Doug Ackley and Robin Barnes’ outdoor education program at Moscow High School were at East City Park in Moscow, setting up their Dutch ovens for a final project. They had coals, aluminum foil and an assortment of sweet treat ingredients, and they would be joined hours later by fourth grade students from nearby Lena Whitmore Elementary School.

The students are also mentors in a new program with Lena fourth graders and were making crumbles and cobblers to share with them in a celebration of the first year of the program and the conclusion of the Oregon Trail history unit. The celebration is part of Pioneer Day, where students get hands-on experience with what life was like on the Oregon Trail.

The outdoor education program, Barnes said, includes activities like biking, roller skating, fly-fishing, rock-climbing and even Dutch oven cooking. The goal of the class is to show the variety of activities the students can do now and for life.

Ackley and his wife, Lena fourth grade teacher Lindsey Lee, started the program. Lee had heard about the Dutch oven cooking project for years and the pair had wanted to foster a community between the schools.

“We’re doing yearbooks right now and all the students said one thing they want to remember is their high school buddy,” Lee said.

Last year Lee said they brought the fourth graders over to a cookoff but wanted to give them an opportunity to get to know one another. The meetings were held for an hour a month, and for the first two the high schoolers were in charge of teaching the fourth graders a new outdoors activity. In the third meeting the roles switched and this meeting was the last of the year.

“We were really trying to focus on building a community,” Ackley said.

Some of the fourth graders arrived at the park dressed like a pioneer. Lee said one even sewed her own bonnet. The high schoolers had been primed with questions about the Oregon Trail to ask the students, and some gave presentations about how Dutch ovens relate to the Trail.

The students partnered up early in the morning in groups of eight: four high school students and four fourth graders. To start the day they had an activity the high schoolers had planned and talked over with one another. In waves the groups headed to the Lions Club picnic shelter for a serving of one of four desserts.

While the high schoolers provided the desserts from an apple and “funfetti” cake to cherry and chocolate cobbler, the fourth graders brought bread, dried fruits and other foods the pioneers might have eaten on the Trail.

“The students love it,” Lee said. “It’s been a great way to teach them leadership as well.”

Kali Nelson can be reached at knelson@dnews.com.