The Gift of Education
I’ve summited Mt. Everest, climbed the highest peak on every continent, kayaked down the Grand Canyon, and been to the top of a thousand peaks in between – all of it blind. However, many don’t know; before all of that, I was a middle school math and English teacher, as challenging as climbing any mountain. To assist me, I used a Braille seating chart, a high-tech scanner that converted print into speech, my textbooks on audio, and most importantly, the thirty sets of perfectly-working eyeballs of my eager students.
Both in the classroom and the outdoors, I’ve tried to live what I call a “No Barriers Life.” Simply put, No Barriers is a map we can use to navigate through the toughest obstacles towards growth, change, and transformation. Throughout the school year, your students will be learning a myriad of exciting subject-matter and skillsets, but rarely do we spend enough time on developing the right mindset, the healthy lens through which we see the world, based on a guiding belief-system and perspective that carry us through difficult situations to emerge stronger on the other side. Yet mindsets aren’t built simply through positive affirmations or motivational posters. Instead, they’re built by diving in and exploring a No Barriers Life, the deep framework to break through personal barriers, grow resilience, and ascend towards our greatest potential.
For this purpose, we’ve developed two educational programs. The first is my Touch the Top Curriculum Program, which uses my first memoir as a multi-discipline delve into the experiences that formulated my mindset and life’s vision. The second is our No Barriers Climb Program, an activity-based curriculum to teach the No Barriers Life in a lively and engaging way. The learnings in these programs have been hard-earned, through thirty years adventuring blind, developing content in the classroom, and leading dozens of No Barriers expeditions with youths of all abilities and backgrounds. Participants include those with physical disabilities, as well as those with invisible barriers: first-generation Americans, teens in the foster-care system, young people who have faced physical or emotional trauma, and kids in the suburbs who simply crave purpose and direction. These programs are for anyone who yearns to thrive in the face of Everest-size challenges and tap into our No Barriers belief, “WHAT’S WITHIN YOU IS STRONGER THAN WHAT’S IN YOUR WAY.”
Keep Climbing,
Erik Weihenmayer