Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 21, 1993 TAG: 9311220253
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
Mollie Prillaman stood near McCallister on the leaf-strewn ground, also offering reassurance to the out-of-her-office-element psychologist above. ``I wish I'd gone higher,'' she said.
Nearby, another group tackled another tree-climbing task.
Swinging, climbing, jumping from tree to tree, traversing 30-foot high cables, suspended from limbs overhead, these New River Valley psychologists, teachers and specialists had come here to teach and be taught.
They'd come to learn the ropes.
For about three years, they've brought students - kids from area high schools and middle schools in need of counseling - to ropes courses at Radford, New River Community College, Natural Bridge, St. Albans Hospital and elsewhere.
``It's kind of a paradigm shift in terms of education,'' said Barbara Reasor, a Montgomery County schools psychologist. ``Often schools look at students as [something] in which to pour information.
The outdoors adventure on ropes is ``something more than the three `R's','' she said. ``It's empowering, really.''
And, ``It's popular - that in itself is something. The kids really don't know that this is a therapy program.''
Sometimes it's the macho, boisterous type who finds he needs to be cautious or listen, or the withdrawn child who becomes a leader in accomplishing a task.
``A lot of barriers are broken,'' said Prillaman. ``They come back in sometimes, but we're hoping that they'll stay down.''
Reasor has been instrumental in getting the New River Valley Community Services Board using ropes courses and other Project Adventure Inc. - which built the Radford ropes course - ideas in its drug prevention efforts. Project Adventure markets educational and therapeutic programs for school systems, corporations and communities.
``It's a new approach'' around here, said McCallister, a prevention specialist with the board.
And the group's participants, in training to work with their kids, were bringing their own network closer.
``It's one of those things that keeps pounding home - the fact that we have to work together,'' said Prillaman, a Christiansburg High School special education teacher. ``It makes it easier when we take it back to the classroom with our kids.
``It's very emotional for all of us. We're a little intimidated at first,'' she said. ``I dreaded looking stupid in from of my peers. But as it ended up, that was OK.''
That fear of appearances is in some ways the most difficult to overcome.
``The overwhelming majority of us are spectators in our culture,'' said Gary Nussbaum, a certified trainer for Project Adventure and an assistant professor of recreation and leisure at Radford University. ``It isn't that they're feeling they can't perform. They're worried how they're going to look.''
But, ``so what if I don't look like Katarina Witt?'' retorts the mustached man.
The physical dangers are less than they seem, Nussbaum said. Participants train in teamwork exercises before ever going to the course, then on the low ropes before the higher ones. What few injuries there are - a twisted ankle, a strained shoulder - usually occur on the low ropes when people don't think they need to be as alert.
Otherwise, ``We try to maximize the perceived risk and minimize the real risk.''
Nussbaum, who helped design the university course and uses it with his own college students, said it makes people test their fears and forces them to trust in others.
``We have a contract to value the group, each other and safety,'' he said. ``We call [each other] on it.'' The goal is to transfer the cooperation back to their everyday-world experiences.
Working with the group, he explained one of the course's elements: two trees spreading apart from the ground up, with footholds for the climber. The higher one climbs, the further the trees spread, until the climber has to bounce from one tree to the other.
As with all the high ropes exercise, three people will be holding a belay rope attached to the climber's harness, but still he tells them, ``You have to let go - and that's where the challenge is.''
There are other tasks: a rope spider web to pass through without touching. An unwieldy ladder of logs hanging by ropes to be surmounted. A tree to climb and a cable 30 feet off the ground to cross. A limb to step off - trusting in others not to let you fall.
``It makes people look at how they solve problems and how they use resources,'' Reasor said. ``That's the thread that runs through the whole thing.''
by CNB