Outdoor educator looks back on wrangling tough kids, leveraging diversity

"But what the pioneering educator remains most proud of are his nearly four decades taking troubled and at-risk Bay Area youngsters out into the world, mostly into nature for hiking, backpacking, trail-building, and rope-climbing, but also inside an infamous prison, and, carrying meals, into the homes of people dying from AIDS. Kids learned to surmount challenges, survive discomfort, collaborate and mitigate risk. Highest on Taini's goals list were instilling confidence and compassion as foundations for their futures."

"Taini, now 84, started a wilderness program for students in 1967 at Jefferson High School in Daly City, an initiative that continues to this day as the Wilderness School for students in the Jefferson Union High School District in Daly City, Pacifica, Brisbane, and Colma. Also remaining are rope-climbing courses he created in a redwood forest in La Honda and in eucalyptus groves on San Bruno Mountain."

"Reno Taini has been many things: safari guide in east Africa, explorer-biologist in Mexico, rope-climbing instructor in countries as far-flung as Myanmar and northern Ireland. Closer to home, he's the teacher who, while looking down over a Peninsula graveyard from a school district office, coined the phrase, "It's good to be alive in Colma," the town where the vast numbers of dead people in cemeteries greatly outnumber those still walking the earth."

Reno Taini spent decades guiding troubled and at-risk Bay Area youth into the outdoors, teaching hiking, backpacking, trail-building, and rope-climbing, and arranging service visits to a prison and to people dying of AIDS. He started a wilderness program in 1967 at Jefferson High School in Daly City that evolved into the Wilderness School serving the Jefferson Union High School District across Daly City, Pacifica, Brisbane, and Colma. He created rope-climbing courses in a La Honda redwood forest and on San Bruno Mountain eucalyptus groves. He shepherded more than 2,000 students, retired in 2007, and appeared in the documentary Reno's Kids. He lives in Woodside and coined "It's good to be alive in Colma."

Read at The Mercury News