Teaching Teamwork Through Tractor-Tugging
By Peter Cleary
A young boy crouches on a small rock in the middle of the river. Six girls stand around him, barely fitting on the same rock as they all watch the river waters swirling past them.
If it were up to the boy alone, he would not make it across the river. His face is desperate. He curls his body up, perched on the rock as far he can be from the river's water, which is only a few inches away.
While he would surely survive a fall into the water, it would be a set-back for his family. They would all have to go back to the bank and begin the perilous trip across the river again.
The boy's fear is real, but the river and rocks aren't. It is a team-building exercise Lynn Marshall puts his campers through on the first day of Pioneer Camp at Boyd Hill Nature Park.
The Pioneer Camp, which, according to parents, is unlike others in the area, teaches children cooperation and respect through such pioneer activities as the river crossing, fire building and butter churning.
In addition to crafts and games, campers learn about farm life from the camp's 89 farm animals. The children watch chicks hatch during their week at camp, feed a calf named Lego and run with baby goats named G.I. Joe and Tonka. The animals are the favorite part of camp for many of the 40 children who attend camp each week. One girl likes the animals so much that she became a vegetarian at the age of nine.
But the man who runs the camp, Lynn Marshall, 51, wants children to learn more than just how to milk a cow or start a fire.
Marshall, whose graying ponytail sticks out from behind the fedora hat he wears, uses the camp to teach children that more can be achieved through cooperation than competition.
While the camp's lessons are purposeful, the camp's theme came about by accident. When Marshall started the camp seven years ago the only space available was the Pinellas Pioneer Settlement.
Marshall struggled with how to adapt a pioneer theme to a camp that was really about cooperation. How, for example, could he use games such as tug-of-war to teach the children that they'll all do better if they work together?
Marshall found a solution. Instead of having the children pull on the rope against each other, he would have them work together to pull a farm tractor across a field. Helping each other, about 30 children moved a full-sized tractor. They also moved a trailer holding another 30 children attached to the back of the tractor.
The tug-of-war trick worked, and Marshall began adapting other pioneer activities such as shelter building and blacksmith work to teach cooperation. After seven years, Marshall has refined the activities and can fill a whole week with pioneer activities.
The children seem to learn the lesson. "Working together makes it more fun and successful," says Danielle Kirschbaum, 11, who attended camp earlier in the summer and has come back as a volunteer helper.
Just like most parts of camp, cooperation helps the children get across the "river." The scared boy crouched on the "rock" is not as alone as he feels. One of the six girls towering over him picks him up and begins carrying him between the rocks. A big smile spreads across his face as she picks him up.
Marshall divides the campers into two "families," or teams, for the river-crossing activity. He's only given each family enough rocks to get halfway across the river. Although they can move the rocks once the family is on the river, Marshall says he hopes the children will figure out that if they pool their rocks they'll have enough to get all the way across without moving any rocks.
"It will only be through desperation, the mother of invention, that they'll think of that," he says.
Marshall says he believes that children learn best through showing others something they know. Pioneer Camp offers many opportunities for that.
He teaches some of the campers how to make a craft and then lets them show the other campers. In one activity, the campers make a device called a "whammy-diddle," which is a ridged stick with a propeller on the end. When a camper rubs another stick along the ridges, the propeller spins.
"You will never forget how to make one the second you teach someone how to make one," Marshall says.
A veteran camper, who has crossed the same river in years past, leads her family across the river, but she leads from behind. She calls out to the river-crossers in front of her, directing them and dealing with difficulties they encounter. As the crossing progresses, the family breaks a few rules and Marshall penalizes them by taking away the rocks.
In the exercise, the leader's job gets more difficult as they have fewer rocks, but she perseveres. At one point, she shouts out that at least six children must be on a carpet.
Towards the end of the river crossing, one family has made it across the river while the other family is only about three-quarters of the way. The family that has safely made it to shore begins giving the rocks they crossed on to the family still making it across.
Marshall was hoping this would happen.
After the game ends, Marshall gathers the group to discuss how the girl led from the back of the pack. He says he wants to be sure the children understand the lesson of cooperation they taught themselves and that leaders are not always the people standing out front.
Marshall, whom the campers call Mr. Lynn, seamlessly merges fun with learning and character building, never leaving a moment for the children to get in trouble.
About 40 campers show up each week, and Marshall, along with his daughter Jessica, 21, are the only adults at the camp.
"It's been a dream," he says. "The thing's running on it's own. I could go home now."
He keeps them busy, but he also gives the children more responsibility than they get outside of camp. Marshall says he knows the children may fail, but believes the lessons they learn through failure will be just as important as the confidence they build with success.
He lets them participate in rowdy activities such as banging on drums, but when Marshall claps his hands he has their full attention.
Marshall says that if he shows the children he cares about them, they will respect him. On the first day of camp he knows all the campers by name, and there are about 40 campers each week. He always maintains eye contact when talking or listening to a camper.
Marshall says his responsibility is compounded by the fact that parents with children who have attention problems such as attention deficit disorder, or ADD—those whom Marshall refers to as the "alphabet kids"—find Pioneer Camp a safe place for their children.
Although most children respect him right away, Marshall does encounter a few problems. Children sometimes keep talking after he has asked for their attention or stray from the group during activities. But when a camper gets out of control, Marshall deals with it through cooperation and respect.
He first explains to the kid that everyone must get along for the camp to work. If that doesn't work out, Marshall gathers all campers and asks them how they can work together to ensure that the problem child can stay at camp.
Marshall says he occasionally has to send a camper home halfway through the first day, but the kid always comes back the next morning with an apology and plan for how to behave during the rest of the week.
It is perhaps Marshall's control and engaging character that keep the children coming back. "There's generations of people who will be talking about this," Aviva Kirschbaum, Danielle's mom, said.
"Look at them," she added, "They're wet. They're dirty. They're running with animals."
After both families made it across the river, they all went back to the one-room schoolhouse to meet their parents. The farmyard animals, which had been lingering in the field during the game, followed them back.
Animals are a big part of the camp, and Marshall's life. He uses the goats, horses, chickens and other animals at camp to teach about respect and compassion.
The children pet and run around run the animals during lunch and between activities. It is their responsibility to help care for the animals. The campers must make sure the animals, such as Lego, are fed and exercised. "We take him out to run him, but sometimes he runs us," Danielle said of the calf.
"Oh, ho, ho, this place is a zoo," Marshall said. It wasn't clear if he was referring to the children or the animals.
Marshall's home is also somewhat of a zoo.
He lives in a place he calls "Toad Town," which sits at the end of a long sand driveway in the countryside of Hillsborough County. A sign saying "Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be prosecuted" guards the driveway, but the scene on the other side of those signs is more inviting.
A friendly donkey named Sadie the Honkey Donkey greets visitors as they approach Marshall's house.
Next to the house, which he designed himself using a personal computer, live some of the 235 animals on his property. Marshall couldn't remember animals he had when he first thought about it.
"I'm not sure I want to know the answer to this," he said. Only after his daughter spent half an hour making a list could he provide an exact count.
When camp has ended for the year, Marshall takes all of the camp animals to his house. He doesn't want to slaughter them and then tell the children of their fate. Eighty-nine animals live at camp this summer. This will bring the total to 324.
Like the camp, Marshall's menagerie is also an example of cooperation. The land around his house provides food for many of the free-range chickens. His dogs scare off any predatory animals that may eat his animals. And if one of the roosters becomes anti-social or overly aggressive, it also learns the lesson of cooperation – the hard way. Marshall makes that animal into a meal for one of his pythons.
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