Mount Logan Discovery

"Some people see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' Other people see things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'" - George Bernard Shaw 

"My mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school,  they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told  me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”   - John Lennon

Mount Logan Discovery was a field-based outdoor experiential learning program offered to sixth graders at Mount Logan Middle School for eight years, between 2008 to 2016. The program's goals were to enhance reading and writing skills and develop deep understanding of science and social studies concepts through real-world experiences. Cache Valley was our classroom.  Educational research points to the value of incorporating movement, relevance, physical experience, and background knowledge into instruction. That's the essence of Mount Logan Discovery.

The design of Mount Logan Discovery was based on years of successful summer learning programs, years of middle and elementary school classroom experience, and educational research. In August, 2008, Eric Newell and Bryce Passey, with the help of Dave Anderson, founded Mount Logan Discovery after effectively piloting the idea for six summers with smaller groups of students--ranging in ability from struggling to advanced. 

Logistics were fairly simple. We had two groups of 36-38 students, a morning group and an afternoon group. Each three-period block lasted about two and half hours and included Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science. In 2011, math was added to the block to accommodate the master schedule. This severely limited the progress we were able to make with enhancing reading and writing skills, but was necessary for the life of the program (the first three years, we read 18 books as a class, after math was added that dropped to 9 books per year). About once per week, each Discovery student participated in a meaningful, curriculum-based mini-field experience, with seven or eight other students during the three period block. Students didn't normally miss any of their other courses on the days they were in the field.  By utilizing small groups, we were able to maximize the quality of instruction while on the road and in the field. The purpose of field experiences was to build academic background knowledge that allows students to make relevant academic connections.  Every field experience had a strong writing component by design.   

Destinations of mini field experiences included places like the Logan River trail, the Bonneville Shoreline trail, Cutler Marsh, and Green Canyon. During the winter, students assisted Hardware Ranch with their elk feeding program (click here to see a sample video). We don't believe any other public school program in the nation engaged more students with the natural world on a consistent basis than Mount Logan Discovery. Mount Logan Discovery students were involved in authentic service learning projects that continue to have real meaning to the community.  We strived to embody the mission of Mount Logan Middle School (though it has since changed): To engage students in learning experiences that will foster confident, self-directed, lifelong learners.

Discovery was created to implement the fifteen elements of effective adolescent literacy instruction recommended by The Carnegie Report, Reading Next, published in 2004. The report was based on meta-analysis of research conducted on middle and high school literacy programs. They are: 1) Direct, explicit comprehension instruction. 2) Effective language arts instructional principals embedded in integrated contexts. 3) Motivation and self-directed learning. 4) Text-based collaborative learning. 5) Strategic tutoring. 6) Utilize texts that have diverse reading levels and topics. 7) Intensive writing instruction. 8) Technology component for literacy instruction. 9) Ongoing formative assessment of literacy skills. 10) Extended time—two to four hours—for literacy instruction each day. 11) Long-term professional development. 12) Ongoing summative assessment of student performance. 13) Interdisciplinary teacher teams that plan and coordinate instruction. 14) Leadership in implementing best practices by teachers with a solid understanding of how to teach reading and writing. 15) A comprehensive interdisciplinary literacy program that coordinates with out of school organizations and the local community.  

During the first three years, when Discovery was true to its design, Discovery students averaged gains of 1.8 grade levels in reading ability. For the following four years, when math was added out of necessity due to budget cuts, reading gains and standardized testing results dipped expectedly, with students averaging about 1 year of growth in reading ability.  Discovery students read 18 books during the school year the first 3 years and when we added math, that was cut in half to 9 books. Regardless of these kinds of results, healthy financial status, more than a thousand satisfied parents and students, programs like Discovery are vulnerable to the pressures of conformity and traditional practice in public schools. Some teachers at the middle school felt Discovery placed an increased burden on their teaching loads and created inequities. During the life span of Discovery we worked hard to remedy these concerns, but ultimately were not successful in resolving them for all teachers. For the 2015-2016 school year, Logan School District hired a new superintendent and a new curriculum director. The same year a new principal and assistant principal were hired at Mount Logan Middle School. The Discovery model did not fit into the new vision for the the district and the program was discontinued. These decisions were made by well-meaning people who are striving to offer the best education possible for students in Logan School District. Though obviously disappointed, we do hope other teachers and schools trying to implement similar programs can learn from the full life cycle of Mount Logan Discovery.

ESL Discovery (English as Second Language) was a sister program generously funded by Carlos Roundy and run by Bonnie Judd from 2009 to 2013.  Sarah Kerley-Weeks ran ESL Discovery in 2013-2014, the final year of ESL Discovery (grant funding ran dry). ESL Discovery utilized the same concepts as Mount Logan Discovery but focused explicitly on students who had limited English mastery and who qualified as "ESL" status.  Mrs. Judd, and later Mrs. Kerley-Weeks, worked with content area teachers and ESL teachers at Mount Logan Middle School to pull students our of class and provide small group field experiences that would enhance background knowledge for academic subjects and build academic vocabulary.

Mount Logan Discovery served approximately 550 students during the 8 years it was in operation and more than a 1,000 students participated in Summer Discovery/River Rats programs in Cache Valley and Grand Teton National Park.  ESL Discovery served approximately 600 students during the 5 years it was in operation.

Update: March 2023

Bryce Passey left Mount Logan Discovery between 2011-2014 to serve as the director of the Promontory School of Expeditionary Learning in Perry, Utah. He returned to Mount Logan Discovery in the fall of 2014 to take Eric's place through the 2015-2016 school year, the last year of Discovery.  During that year he also served on the Board of Directors for the Center for Creativity, Innovation, and Discovery (CCID) to help the school open in the Fall of 2017. He taught 6th grade at CCID for the 2017-2018 school year before working as the Education Director at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge until the fall of 2020. Bryce is now retired.

For the 2014-2015 school year, Eric Newell took a leave of absence to teach education courses at Utah State University. Beginning in the fall of 2015, Eric accepted a position as the Director of Experiential Learning and Technology at Edith Bowen Laboratory School at Utah State University. In 2018 he completed his PhD with a focus on Outdoor Experiential Learning through the EEJ College of Education and Human Services at Utah State University, with the goal of giving credence to outdoor experiential learning programs in public schools. His dissertation "Undercurrents: The Life Cycle of an Outdoor Experiential Learning Program in a Mainstream Public Middle School" details the rise and fall of Mount Logan Discovery in an autoethnography.

Jann Humpherys was part of the Discovery program from 2011 to 2016.  She continued to teach math and science at Mount Logan Middle School for the 2016-2017 school year, then taught  6th grade in St. George, Utah for two years before retiring.

Though he didn't teach in the Discovery program, Dave Anderson was a key person in making the program a success. He continued to work at Mount Logan Middle School for several more years and now works at Logan High School, developing maker spaces as a CTE teacher. Dave continues to explore innovative approaches to engage students in learning.   

With appreciation to all who were part of building this dream, 

Eric Newell

eric.newell [at] usu.edu 

Bryce Passey

bpassey [at] comcast.com