Day in the Life

The schedule at Alzar School varies by location, activity, and expedition. While no day is typical of the semester experience, here is a glimpse at a more common academic day at our campus in Idaho.

After a quick shower, you head over to the Confluence Building for a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and fresh fruit. This week you are on the Confluence Building crew, so you help build a fire in the fireplace.

You’ve started the magical realism unit in class in preparation for the upcoming departure for Chile. Today you are having a Harkness discussion about the Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story you read for homework. You and your peers drive the entire discussion by asking clarifying questions and analyzing the reading as a group.

Today you are shifting trigonometric functions and starting a project creating an image of a kayaker running a rapid using only functions to draw the lines. Using your iPad, you create a video of the image coming together.

You grab a snack from the bowl of fruit in the dining hall and then head out to meet the group for a 30-minute run. You are training for the upcoming 10K, and find that your legs feel plenty strong after the 5 day hiking trip you just finished.

Everyone heads down to the outdoor amphitheater where your classmate (the designated Leader of the Week) is running the meeting. You spend the hour discussing the transition to Chile and what specific actions you can take to integrate into the communities we visit.

You hit the salad bar and enjoy a piece of lasagna today.

You spend some time playing spikeball and then walk the perimeter trail along the river with friends. You put your kayaking equipment in the trailer and load your boat so that you are ready to go to the whitewater park at the end of the day.

Some of your Chilean peers join class today, and you go over the conversational challenges project for your first week in Chile. You create a plan and practice interviewing your peers with the questions you want to ask about the local dam project that was being considered for the Rio Baker—a river you will paddle while in Patagonia.

Today you are submitting your analysis of the role that nationalism and Enlightenment ideals played in sparking anti-Colonial revolutions during the 1750-1900s. Specifically, your group focused on Central and South America. During the class, you discuss commonalities in different regions around the world during this period, and put these developments into historical context.

Your faculty mentor meetings you in the dining hall to grab a snack. The two of you walk to amphitheater while discussing how to make the most of your time at study hall. You discuss ideas for your culminating leadership project and make plans to celebrate a peers birthday at lunch tomorrow.

Half the group heads to Kelly’s Whitewater Park just two miles up the road. You surf the second wave while another group practices rolling. The other half of the group is on campus learning to bake biscuits on their camp stove for the upcoming backpacking expedition.

Burritos! You build your own with the many toppings at your table, eating family-style. Tonight everyone is speaking Spanish, and you laugh as you work to figure out that your peer wants you to pass the sour cream. Your community task crew works to make sure the school building is ready for the week by stocking firewood, clearing recycling bins, and cleaning whiteboards.

You elect to work in the quiet study space so you can make good progress on your homework for the evening. The on-duty faculty member, who happens to be your English teacher, is available to help with the project. Later, you move over to the collaborative space to work on your math assignment with your classmates.

You head back to your yurt, organize your things for the next day, have a dance party with your yurt mates, and build a fire to keep the yurt warm for the night.

The on-duty faculty member and a teaching fellow check you in for the night.