By Jill Goetz
Senior Joshua Spitzer spent much of this past winter working with other students, but not always in a Cornell building or even on the Cornell campus.
For his honors thesis, Spitzer, a senior in the university's College Scholars program, created and taught a writing and outdoor education course to 10 high school students at Ithaca's Alternative Community School.
The weekly course, "Authors, Essays and the Outdoors," involved intensive essay writing and field trips to local nature preserves, including the Cornell Plantations.
Through a series of assignments and exercises, Spitzer sought to
highlight for students the relationship between how a writer approaches crafting
an essay, regardless of the topic, and how a nature lover approaches the
natural environment. He also tried to show how the students' interactions in the
field
resembled those in the classroom.
"I see the way that people access natural places as very similar to the way they approach the composition process," he said. "I wanted to find a series of lessons that would relate the experiences of sitting in front of a computer to being in the forest.
"Authors use many of the same skills that outdoors people use to survive in and enjoy the back country," he added. "Both must be confident, resourceful, daring and playful."
Likewise, "In the field, each student attends to the whole group's comfort, safety and instruction, while in the classroom, each student practices peer-review to develop fellow students' writing," he said.
Passions for writing and nature have long intersected for Spitzer, whose résumé lists writing, cycling, backpacking and cross-country skiing as pastimes. He has been a coxswain on the Cornell crew team, an instructor for Cornell University Outdoor Education, a member of the board of directors of New York State Recreational Resources and a seasonal manager at Cayuga Mountain Bike Shop -- all while making Dean's List and Phi Beta Kappa.
But for Spitzer, teaching at the Alternative Community School has been the highlight of his Cornell career.
"The course has been my own finest opportunity to explore this intellectual and terrestrial world we inhabit," Spitzer said.