Catching Up With CAT: Finding AHA Moments

Welcome back to Catching Up With CAT. It's Noah here.

This week during after school programming we were working on knots, bowlines and clove hitches. Teaching knots always brings me back to when I was first learning them. At the start it just felt like a pile of rope and by the end it's a careful use of friction to manipulate rope to your needs. You can see it happen in real time. Someone ties it, looks at it for a second, and has a how I did that moment. You ask them to show you how they did it and sometimes they get it again, sometimes knot, but suddenly there is a click and you get it and as long as you keep practicing them you will hold on to them and even get faster. Watching a group of middle schoolers hit that moment this week was pretty amazing. It’s one of my favorite parts of teaching outdoor skills, seeing that A-ha moment for people, especially little humans.

A lot of the rest of my week has also been spent getting our gear ready for the summer season. At CAT our trailers put in serious miles every year making programs possible, and getting everything checked, repaired, and organized is a big part of getting ready for the busy months ahead. If you want to help us get ready for summer, consider supporting our trailer fundraiser on Facebook. Any support helps keep the gear moving and the programs running.

-Noah