NOLS Releases Newest Edition of Leadership Educator Notebook, an Instructor’s Toolbox

NOLS is pleased to introduce the newest edition of the Leadership Educator Notebook, a collection of the educational tools NOLS instructors use to incorporate leadership ideas and activities into courses.

What is the Leadership Educator Notebook?
Filled with activities, lessons, prompts, frameworks and quotes, and edited by Zach Taylor, Liz Tuohy, Phoebe Gebright, and other members of the NOLS faculty, this edition of the NOLS Leadership Educator Notebook, or LEN as it is more commonly called, is the latest iteration in a series of leadership notebooks that were first published in 1998.
The LEN, its editors say, was created to help outdoor educators improve their leadership skills, teaching, and coaching, and specifically to offer NOLS instructors the tools and information needed to teach leadership on NOLS expeditions. While designed for NOLS instructors, it was written in a way that its authors hope is accessible to any educator looking to improve their leadership skills, teaching, and coaching.

The making of a NOLS instructor
NOLS’ almost 600 current Field Instructors are skilled craftspeople, experts at creating expeditions that teach wilderness and leadership skills. They, and the thousands of instructors who went before them over our 60 years, have instructed more than 350,000 students, changing lives with each expedition.
Most instructors come to the school with a breadth of experience outside of NOLS and progress to a NOLS instructor course. There, they gain fluency in NOLS’ integrated curriculum and its core areas of leadership, risk management, outdoor skills, and environmental studies. Then they build experience by teaching with senior instructors, participating in personal trips, seminars and other trainings at NOLS and outside of NOLS. They also have access to tools like the Leadership Educator Notebook.

A toolbox for leadership training
From its origins, said NOLS Expedition Education Director Shannon Rochelle, the notebook was considered less a formulaic lesson plan and more a toolbox to teach lessons in the field. In fact, in early editions of the compact and sturdy notebook, designed to travel with instructors into the field, ‘toolbox’ was in the title.
It contains concepts, models, and activities used to explore leadership through the NOLS Leadership Model of one signature style, four roles, and seven skills, the editors wrote in the book’s introduction. The NOLS Leadership Model itself is presented in the first chapter of the notebook. Each of the subsequent chapters explores one of the seven leadership skills.
“It’s full of specific models,” Shannon said. “There are fundamental concepts included in
the LEN that are a must on every course—like Expedition Behavior—and while instructors can use those lessons directly from the LEN, they can also use bits and pieces of lessons from the book as the instructors choose, or as the lessons become appropriate during the course.”
Every course, and how lessons are taught on each of them, is unique, Shannon stressed.
“It depends on the students on the course, the location, the weather, but it is the instructors who take these lessons from the LEN, combine them with those variable “ingredients,” and make the course what it is,” Shannon said.

Why publish a new edition of the NOLS Leadership Educator Notebook?
The last time NOLS revised the LEN was in 2009, Shannon explained, though an annotated version was released in 2019.
“We knew within a few years (of publication) it needed to be updated,” but layoffs that came with the COVID 19 epidemic slowed down that update.

What’s different in this edition of the LEN?
“Our changes in this edition focus on community and belonging,” Shannon said, while also pointing out several adjustments in formatting, meant for ease of teaching. “Our goal is building a broader community, being inclusive, being welcoming to all. Everybody is part of what we are doing on a course because a NOLS course is really about community, about working together in all situations.”
Over the decades, many students have expressed that their NOLS course was a pivotal, life changing experience for them. We believe it’s our instructors, and what they are able to impart about wilderness skills and leadership, who make NOLS courses transformative experiences. And we know it is lessons learned from tools like the LEN that are pivotal parts of that experience for our students.
As Shannon put it, “This book contributes to the magic of a NOLS course.”