If you are an educator, or a camp counselor, or a program leader or wilderness instructor, there is a not insignificant percentage of the time where you are 'winging it'.  We could dress it up, and call it 'creative problem solving' or 'lesson adaptation' to make it sound more professional, but yeah, you are sometimes making things up as you go along.

We have to do that, because at any given time, our students, the school or program administration, or the weather can dictate that immediate change is necessary and we have to scrap what we were doing and figure out some other way to get the job done.

Winging it does sound a little flippant, and 'fly by night', but there is a spectrum of methodology and approach that has on one end a shady, risky, possibly dumb or ill-thought out way of doing it, and on the other side, a safer, generally well considered loose plan that has a lot of leeway as far as implementation and structure.   The Bad Way and the Good Way, in other words.

Since you're already winging it anyway, I thought I'd weigh in on some best practices, share some stories, and offer insights into this powerful, often beneficial and innovative program approach.  I hope to help out the new educators who have never done this before, and maybe give some more experienced educators and leaders some good ideas as well.

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